It's the aftermath from inventing intellectual property. Patents were once called monopolies. What I find amusing is, you get this staunchly anti-government/libertarians who are also incredibly pro-IP. And yet IP is all based on governments granting monopoly power over ideas, with violations enabling the owner to engage in all kinds of punative behavior with the government as the strong arm. Ironic.
I think there's something valid about a government protected temporary monopoly. But in the case of copyright, for example, it's life plus 70 or more years. It is ridiculous, as in, worthy of ridicule. Medical patents are 20 years, which itself is too long, but it's made worse by rather permissive ways in which they can be effectively renewed by barely changing the medicine.
You know what it is? It's a way to get white collar work to continue to pay out more than, and longer than, the actual amount and duration of work on a thing takes. It's an incentive to do that kind of work. But I agree that it's grossly lopsided when you can't do repair or research on that same material - that's one of the original points of patent and copyright law. Put your ideas on paper so that you not only get protection for a while, but others can create derivatives that are better, and thereby we learn more about it all.
Granting that the Venn diagram of "libertarian" and "Objectivist" is a contentious matter, Ayn Rand was very outspoken in her support of copyrights and patents, and one of the plots of the villainous collectivists in Atlas Shrugged was to nationalize all patents.
Ayn Rand was also very outspoken about not being called a Libertarian, she create Objectivism to be separate and apart from Libertarianism, one of the differences between Objectivism and Libertarianism is copyright/patents
That Venn diagram has little to no actual overlap at all.
The objectivists just find it to be to their advantage, these days, to make it appear that they might. The controversy that you suggest is as manufactured as the controversy about anthropomorphic climate change.
I permit others some rope when it comes to labeling themselves. I mean self-labeled libertarians, and it's pretty much all of them that believe completely in IP being literal property to be treated every bit as much, if not more than, real property. Even a couple anarcho-capitalist friend strongly believe in it. They'll all say they don't like the government's involvement, they'll say the Ip owner's insurance company should sure my insurance company if I violate a patent. So it ends up being the same thing in the end.
And I'm aware a sizeable chunk of anarcho-capitalists think IP as a concept is bullcrap.
It's not really weird when you think about ownership just being a bunch of people agreeing to mess up anyone that tries to take something you've claimed. It takes a lot of work to maintain such an agreement, so people have to be compensated for it. If they aren't compensated to their liking, they'll take that thing and maybe other things you've claimed and maybe ruff you up for good measure.
I'd argue the "power to punish without being punished back" stems from "being a bunch of people that agree" - ie: a bigger bunch of people than any one sub-group they might want to punish for being in disagreement.
Then there's the shift in power that comes from control over weapons and infrastructure ... but AFAIK the coordinated masses still have power on their side - partly from the assumption that given enough "external" disagreement, some people on the inside are likely to cross over.
Indeed, one could argue that the most terrifying part about the Snowden disclosures on mass surveillance, is that the current government is poised to deploy counter-measures long before any opposition consolidates and organizes. This might take the form of buying out individuals - or "dissappearing" or taking out individuals that are perceived to be in the process of becoming important.
Of course. The only 'natural right' to property is the right to physical control over the things you are presently holding in your hands. As soon as you set them down, you lose every natural right over them and some social system has to step in.
I thought patents were an incentive to invest in research and development. Without patents, anyone who invests in research is at a disadvantage because when they come up with something good, their competitors can copy them at no cost.
No, both they and their competitors are equally advantaged once the invention has been made. What paents give them is not freedom from disadvantage; it is an artificial advantage to justify making the investment.
Society/the government is ostensibly afraid nobody will invent if they are not artificially advantaged. Those with working intellect consider that trade secrets are enough of a protection against competition.
I remember reading that the idea behind patents was to improve the knowledge transfer that trade secrets didn't offer. In exchange for a temporary exclusivity right, you are required to make public your discoveries and advancements.
The article went further into how trade secrets allowed a company to have its employees sign non disclosures and actually sue the employee and whoever else used the employer's "stolen" knowledge in criminal court, while patents changed this to be only civil and prevented employees from being sued at all.
As everything in life, a balance between the two is probably the most optimal. So I agree patents might have started going too far one way, but I doubt trade secrets would be any better in addressing OP's complaint that patents prevent the free transfer of knowledge and limits innovation.
While I never lived when trade secrets were the norm, I believe most people supporting it in favor of patents suffer from the same problem a lot of younger programmers suffer from. We keep reinventing the wheel and making the same mistakes over and over. It's all a cycle, we'll go back to trade secrets and then their issues will become more "apparent", people will have forgotten the inherent issues with patents and we'll move back to patents again, repeating the cycle.
So I personally disagree with both, you rarely solve issues by reverting back to older ways which the people before us had already tried in vain. We have to try something else, maybe a hybrid, maybe something totally different.
Once upon a time, they did serve a purpose for people such as Edison who got ripped off right and left, or so I'm told. These days, it's more about putting money in lawyers' pockets because that alleged "protection" technically isn't free: you have to pay someone to defend it. That's why the little guy still goes under. Not to mention his patent might overlap with someone else's just enough for them to try to sue him for stepping over his bounds, supposing he tries making an "improvement". Patents and copyrights are nothing more than a legal minefield. There's nothing intellectually aiding about them, at least not in this era.
I think there's something valid about a government protected temporary monopoly. But in the case of copyright, for example, it's life plus 70 or more years. It is ridiculous, as in, worthy of ridicule. Medical patents are 20 years, which itself is too long, but it's made worse by rather permissive ways in which they can be effectively renewed by barely changing the medicine.
You know what it is? It's a way to get white collar work to continue to pay out more than, and longer than, the actual amount and duration of work on a thing takes. It's an incentive to do that kind of work. But I agree that it's grossly lopsided when you can't do repair or research on that same material - that's one of the original points of patent and copyright law. Put your ideas on paper so that you not only get protection for a while, but others can create derivatives that are better, and thereby we learn more about it all.