Note: This article is a rough draft. It is more of a stream of consciousness than an essay.
There is only one thing we really own in life: ourselves. Most governments grant individuals additional “rights”, such as the right to own land. However, in the case of “intellectual property rights”, governments initiate force against peaceful people, and that is an immoral practice which must end.
Whenever you grant someone a right, you take away someone else’s. When governments grant entities the right to own an idea or a digital abstraction such as software or music, they take away the right of everyone else to use that idea or abstraction without the author’s permission.
The argument is that if we don’t allow authors total control over the distribution of their content, the quality of their content will decrease. However, profit motive is only a small part of content creation. Many authors (myself included) create content to express ourselves, promote our ideas, or provide tools to make life easier. Ideas have always been created, even before intellectual property laws existed.
The “moral” argument for intellectual property is that because using an author’s work without their consent hurts their quality of life, intellectual property rights should be enforced. However, on closer inspection, we discover that using an author’s work without their consent doesn’t negatively affect their quality of life. For example, imagine that you are the only human being on the planet. You are responsible for finding food and shelter, and you write a book and compose some songs in your free time. Without your knowledge, aliens record and distribute your songs amongst their entire colony. Are you negatively affected by that? Does it become harder for you to forage for food? Are you physically afflicted by it? Of course not. You are neither hurt nor helped when someone uses your content without your consent. The argument that you are hurt by it relies on the logic that you deserve to be payed by every user of your content—and to justify intellectual property on that basis is circular reasoning.
A third argument that people use is that authors must support themselves somehow. However, that fact does not justify subsidizing the industry by granting authors special rights. Every industry has its pros and cons. One con of content creation is that in a digital age, your work can be duplicated without your consent and without compensation. On the other hand, nearly every other barrier to entry has been eliminated; songs can be recorded cheaply and distributed freely. Authors should know that when deciding to try to make a living off of content creation. Subsidizing authors by artificially giving them ownership over every instance or copy of their work is not fair to other citizens who also must work for a living.
My argument against intellectual property is that the punishment is not justified by the crime. The enforcement of intellectual property laws result in violence against peaceful people—people who did nothing to hurt the content’s author. The only fair way to enforce intellectual property rights is for authors to ostracize people who use their content without permission. If an author finds out that you are using their content (e.g. listening to their song) without paying them for it, they can peacefully deal with it however they see fit—but to introduce violence or the underlying threat of it (in the case of fines) is unwarranted and on an entirely different level.
In conclusion, authors will always create content; they need no subsidy. The desire to express oneself, promote one’s beliefs, create tools for improvement, or to simply make life more fun are enough to ensure the continued creation of content. Authors, like all members of the human race, are responsible for their own livelihoods. Any field has barriers to entry or advantages and disadvantages. Authors should know entering the field of digital work that their content can be copied and distributed without their knowledge or consent. While the unauthorized distribution of an author’s work doesn’t hurt the author, the enforcement of intellectual property rights results in aggression against peaceful people. Therefore, the enforcement of intellectual property rights is immoral and should be immediately ceased by all governments.
Questions for Rebuttal (if you disagree, answer these!):
- Do you acknowledge that the enforcement of intellectual property rights is in discord with the zero aggression principle (the principle that you should be able to live freely as long as you don’t initiate violence against anyone else)?
- Do you believe it is okay to enforce intellectual property rights through fines or jail?
- If you believe that using an author’s content without authorization actually hurts the author, explain why.
- Do you believe that your opinion on intellectual property is more important than mine? If you are pro-I.P., why do you think that your views should be represented but not mine?
