Information Is Not Property

Revolutionary Wolf wrote:I have contemplated this notion for some time now and have arrived at the conclusion that information cannot truly be considered property of any sort, nor can profit from intellectual monopolization be justified. This is an important aspect of property as a construct and ownership as a relation to realize, as it fundamentally undermines the notion of "intellectual property" and the role it plays in social repression.

Unlike property in the form of physical goods or intangible, yet socially objective, assets (such as stocks and bonds), information is truly nothing more than data which is impossible to extract once it is exposed to the human mind. I will address the possible objection arising from the hypothetical scenario of mental extraction through some form of neurologically manipulative technology by stating that my consideration of information as non-property is in reference to information as an abstract, not to any particular manifestation. Information, unlike real property, is only meaningful once it is interpreted by a sentient being, and as such, it cannot be exclusive in the sense that real property can. Once information is exposed, it is immediately available for interpretation, and its subsequent utilization in the process of production can only be prohibited by arbitration, which is, by its very nature, arbitrary.

Unlike physical property, information can be replicated indefinitely and at virtually no cost: this is another fundamental distinction between information and what is commonly understood as embodying property. Therefore, any profit gained from the mere distribution of information (no matter what its ideal form takes in the material world) is immediately in violation of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's notion of "possession" (i.e., that one can only own that which he uses or occupies), as information is at all times (in the abstract, at least) "possessed" by all individuals with access to it. Ideas are not something that one can "own" for him or herself, because ideas, once transferred to another mind, are immediately "possessed" by that mind.

At this point, one may be inclined to object with the notion of "self-ownership" through some appeal to natural rights: that an individual is entitled to the products of his or her body and labor, and that because information is the product of the mind, it, too, is a valid form of property. This was the position of the lovable Ayn Rand.[1] She distinguished between two types of intellectual "creations": discoveries and inventions. Discoveries, in her view, are "merely" discovered truths, whereas "inventions" are "original" (therefore patentable) creations of the mind serving a practical application. The problem with this stance surfaces immediately: how does one differentiate between what is "discovered" and what is truly "invented." Is there a difference? Do we not all simply arrange matter in accordance with our thoughts? If that is the case, then nobody truly creates anything, since nobody creates nature or natural laws: they simply rearrange them. Why should there exist an arbitrary distinction between theoretical truths (i.e., those which are mathematical, scientific, and philosophical) and practical inventions (i.e., artistic and technological innovations)? From a philosophical perspective, such a distinction truly is frivolous.

From the perspective of capitalist social relations, this approach is perfectly rational: those who can acquire such benefits bestowed them by intellectual property rights will profit immensely at the expense of their competitors (and indirectly, society as a whole). Clearly, this is possible for only practical inventions, as theoretical patents would almost unquestionably result in the utter collapse of the economy, as every new and past discovery, being the sole property of its original creator (or whomever was the patent bearer), would be inaccessible to the rest of society. It is the arbitrary manner in which distinctions are drawn that make the natural rights approach highly problematic.

In the case that such arbitrary distinctions were to be circumvented by claiming that property rights stemming from self-ownership were infinite (as some have advocated; the most radical proponent that I know of being Andrew Joseph Galambos), the justifications become preposterous, since the adoption of such a philosophical outlook would effectively phase out all forms of human expression; in essence, this argument collapses due to reductio ad absurdum.

The notion of social stagnation as a result of "ownership" of information provides us with an interesting revelation: that all inventions are the result of the application of previously discovered or newly integrated information. This understanding profoundly undermines the legitimacy of intellectual property, as it questions the arbitrary distinction between what aspects of an invention may be considered the "property" of a putative "owner." What aspects of a creation founded upon innumerable other creations are truly "original" and legitimates ownership? If we are to remain logically consistent, then the answer can only be: none.

If I have managed to convince the open-minded reader that information is non-property, it has now been established that any profit gained from information itself is untenable. Furthermore, it should become clear that information as property is exploitative. It is exploitative because he who profits solely from the distribution of information rather than participation in production is not productive; he does not contribute labor. This information could be distributed with or without legally enforced "rights" to intellectual property. Patents, copyrights, trade secrets, and other forms of what is considered "intellectual property" are therefore fundamentally exploitative. The beneficiary of such grants is in essence a capitalist, who merely "provides," but does not contribute; who merely coordinates, but does not create. The information acts as all other exploitative private property, but it is not property at all.

Lastly, the perpetuation of intellectual property rights significantly reduces economic efficiency. Enforcement of said "rights" results in the repression of social and economic progress, bolsters monopoly power, and generates conditions of artificial scarcity.

That is my position. Any questions, comments, or criticisms?

[1] Rand, Ayn. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. "Patents and Copyrights," p. 130.

Even now not everything around us is privately owned, and most people would think that what remains privately unowned, such as the air we breathe and the sidewalks we tread, should not be available for privatisation. But most of what we need to live by is, by now, private property. Why was its original privatisation not a theft of what rightly should be held in common?

Notice that the question applies not only to raw resources, but in fact to all private property in external things. For since people create nothing ex nihilo, all external private property either is, or was made of, something that was once no one's private property, either in fact or morally (or was made of something that was made of something that was once not private property, or was made of something that was made of something that was made of something that was once not private property, and so on). In the prehistory of anything that is now private property there was at least one moment at which something privately unowned was taken into private ownership. If, then, someone claims a Nozick-like right to something he legally owns, we may ask, apart from how he in particular came to own it, with what right it came to be anyone's private property in the first place.

. . . A majority of humankind [is] born into the world substantially propertyless and who therefore depend for their survival on someone wanting to buy their labour power. What would Nozick say about them? He would say, of those propertyless persons who do manage to sell their labour power, that they will get at least as much and probably more in exchange for it than they could have hoped to get by applying it in an unregulated state of nature; and of those propertyless persons whose labour power is not worth buying that, though, in Nozick's nonwelfare state, they might therefore die, they would have died in the state of nature anyway.

But we can now make two replies to that tough and complacent talk about the lot of the dispossessed. The first is that, even if we concede that the world is originally, morally speaking, unowned, the fact that those now without worldly resources would have been no better off had the world remained unowned and not been privately appropriated in the particular way it was does not legitimate their condition, since it might be true that they would have been better off still if those private appropriations had not occurred. And the second reply is to withdraw the concession offered in the first one, by objecting that Nozick has not shown that the world's initial normative state is one of not being owned by anyone. What prevents us from regarding it as jointly owned to begin with, even if we also regard each of its inhabitants as a sovereign self-owner?

I conclude that we may dispatch Nozick's inegalitarianism without raising any challenge against the thesis of self-ownership.

. . . Nozick's contention [is] that honouring people's self-ownership requires extending to them a freedom to live their own lives that is incompatible with the equality of condition prized by socialists. Our response to that contention [is] that self-ownership is, contrary to what Nozick says, compatible with equality of condition, since the inequality that Nozick defends depends on adjoining to self-ownership an inegalitarian principle of resource distribution, which need not be accepted. When, instead, self-ownership is combined with joint ownership of the world, its tendency to generate inequality is removed.

There is no more justification for the claim of the discoverer of an idea to exclusive use of it than there would have been for a claim on the part of the man who first 'struck oil' to ownership of the entire oil region or petroleum product . . . The central injustice of copyright and patent law is that it compels the race to pay an individual through a long term of years a monopoly price for knowledge that he has discovered today, although some other man or men might, and in many cases very probably would, have discovered it tomorrow.

[The bourgeois state protects inventors] against competition for a period long enough to enable them to extort from the people a reward enormously in excess of the labour measure of their services—in other words, giving certain people a right of property for a term of years in laws and facts of Nature, and the power to extract tribute from others for the use of this natural wealth, which should be open to all.

Celtiberian wrote:You might find the following arguments against intellectual property, made by the mutualist philosopher, Benjamin Tucker (who, incidentally, was the man who first translated Proudhon's What is Property? into English), interesting and in agreement with the thesis of your essay:

"There is no more justification for the claim of the discoverer of an idea to exclusive use of it than there would have been for a claim on the part of the man who first 'struck oil' to ownership of the entire oil region or petroleum product . . . The central injustice of copyright and patent law is that it compels the race to pay an individual through a long term of years a monopoly price for knowledge that he has discovered today, although some other man or men might, and in many cases very probably would, have discovered it tomorrow." 
Tucker, Benjamin. Liberty, no. 173, p. 4.

"[The bourgeois state protects inventors] against competition for a period long enough to enable them to extort from the people a reward enormously in excess of the labour measure of their services—in other words, giving certain people a right of property for a term of years in laws and facts of Nature, and the power to extract tribute from others for the use of this natural wealth, which should be open to all." 
Bejamin Tucker quoted in Frank H. Brooks's The Individualist Anarchists, p. 86.

Coach wrote:Excellent argument, and I agree 100% with this position!

rockstar1488 wrote:first, I do agree that patents have gotten way out of hand, thats for sure. but I must point out that these patents are necessary, because in fact they protect the small bussiness owner more than the giant mega-corporation.

because think about it, if a guy who lets say owns a deli, has a great idea for an invention, but he does not have the financial resources at the moment to physically create his invention, he would be utterly crushed by the corporation, because the corporation would simply just make it first and a better version of it, as well as a greater number of it.

second, profiting from intellectual property is not exploitation. why do you only value physical labour? intellect is just as important as muscle, niether can exist without the other.

an idea has the power to change the entire world.

third and last, in my opinion an idea should qualify as a product of one's own labour, it can qualify as property in the same sense a house can. your house was built from trees, stones, and other materials found in nature. so then according to your logic, your house is not your property either. but ofcourse a house or car is considered "property", so then why not ideas?