[759] in libertarians
patent thread
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (damartin@ampere.mit.edu)
Sat Feb 25 00:42:42 1995
Date: Sat, 25 Feb 1995 00:41:21 -0500
From: damartin@ampere.mit.edu
To: libertarians@MIT.EDU
Cc: setf@MIT.EDU
> Why does an investment in development translate into a
>guarantee of utility? And a monopoly at that. You're making a SOCIAL
>argument, that the greater good is best served by a grant of monopoly
>from the government (and I thought Libertarians didn't like those ...)
Umm. This has become one of those "patent" threads. We had one
about a year ago. The fact is, there is not currently a consensus
among libertarians about patents. So, saying that libertarians must
support the government against Phil Z. because he violated a patent is
not correct.
A libertarian would say that the government is there to
protect your right to your life and property. The exact legal
mechanism by which intellectual property can be protected without
violating the rights of others is not an easy thing to determine, and
libertarians have not yet reached a consensus on it yet. The current
US patent system was devised a long time ago in different times and is
not necessarily the best legal mechanism. Many libertarians say that
the patent system does in fact violate people's rights and should be
modified or eliminated. We therefore have the following 3 positions:
A: You don't accept the conecpt of intellectual property, and you
therfore don't think ideas should be patented.
B: You accept the concept of intellectual property, and you think that
patents are a legitimate method of protecting that property.
C: You accept the concept of intellectual property, but you do not
think that patents are a legitimate method of protecting that
property.
A libertarian might hold position B, but many hold opinion C instead.
-David Martin
