Slashdot Mirror
Royal Society Issues IP Charter
An anonymous reader writes "The Economist
and the Guardian
both have stories about the release of the
Adelphi Charter – an international blueprint for how
intellectual property should be made – by Britain's Royal
Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce.
The Economist says “The Adelphi group are a varied crew
ranging from Gilberto Gil, the Brazilian culture minister (and pop
star) to Sir John Sulston, a Nobel-winning scientist who helped
decode the human genome, and James Boyle, a law professor at Duke
University. They believe that the intellectual-property system is
starting to lean so far in favor of private enrichment that it no
longer serves the public interest.” The charter calls for
evidence-based policy, and a balance between rights protection and
the public domain. It also condemns business method and software
patents."
"They believe that the intellectual-property system is starting to lean so far in favor of private enrichment that it no longer serves the public interest."
p anies-are-literally-grinding-their-employees-and-c ustomers-into-ground-beef" school of "greed is good" Randism^H^H^H^H^H^H^HLibertarianism have considerable influence in American politics, as well as online. I predict an influx of the usual suspects brashly asserting that this is "a free market", and that if you don't like the way the Fortune 100 companies do business, "you're welcome to start your own company", and talking about how great patents are, and accusing slashdotters of hating the poor innocent inventors and wanting their children to starve... (ignoring completely the fact that actual inventors are being screwed over by corporations just like consumers are...)
Well, no shit Sherlock.
However, at present, members of the radical, "laissez-faire-no-matter-what-yes-even-if-the-com
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Arguing over which economic model is like arguing which religion is right, so I will spare you. To be honest, I wouldn't want a 'true' libertarian society and would label myself a moderate libertarian. That said, you have some misconceptions as to what true libertarian ideals involve.
Libertarians are not against consumer protection. If you bought a car in a libertarian society and the second you hit the breaks the car exploded, that would be a criminal act. Libertarians have no problem with inflicting retribution on corporations that sell defective or dangerous products. The difference is that in a perfect utopian libertarian society, if you truly wanted a dangerous product that would only harm yourself, you would be allowed to take it providing that you fully understood the risks involved.
This is most notable when talking about drugs. A crazy ultra libertarian society would let you do heroine. They might make it so that you have to stand before a witness and consent to the health risks involved, but providing it was your own life you were looking to trash, in a libertarian society they would not stop you. This is the key point about consumer protection. Faulty products are inexcusable. On the other hand, doing something potentially life threatening once you consent to the consequences (regardless if its eating a BigMac or doing cocaine) is acceptable.
As far as toxic waste dumping and other environmental topics, libertarians take a slightly different approach. Their approach is to create ownership wherever possible and to focus on the ends of environmental goals. CO2 emissions are a nice example. CO2 is dumped into the air. No one owns the air. A traditional approach might be to order all coal plants to build scrubbers to scrub some fraction of the CO2 and further mandate that no plant can dump more then X amount of CO2. A libertarian approach would be to decide how much CO2 society is reasonably willing to accept being dumped into the air, then sell off the rights to dump CO2 to the highest bidder. The idea behind that is this is that those CO2 rights will be allocated in the most efficient manner possible because now there is an economic drive to reduce CO2 emissions.
Hell, imagine if every single car had to BUY CO2 emission rights? Now when you go to buy your car, you have to also buy CO2 dumping rights at market value so that you can drive the damn thing. Do you think this would make consumers a hell of a lot more aware of how their polluting effects the environment? You betcha. As it stands, consumers are not forced to think about the impact of their SUV. Emissions only get lowered as auto companies, environmentalist, and politicians fight it out. This method brings home the cost of the environment. This is how a libertarian would want to deal with the environment. Yeah, it sounds horrible, but they would want to commodify the commons, set a limit as to how much society is willing to damage the environment, then make anyone who wants to do the damage pay.
All of that said, you are right, libertarianism is not ideal. Libertarians have some great ideas. They are extreme, and like all extremist, they are willing to pick ideology over utility. Personally, I would rather see a more libertarian world. I don't want anarcho-capitalism, but I wouldn't mind if the some power was snatched from the politicians' hands. Most of the 'capitalism' that liberals rail against these days is anything but. If farm subsides in developed nations, land grants via the government to businesses, mother-fucking possession of land for redevelopment (hey, PS. fuck you supreme court), and various kickbacks and tax breaks to some companies but not others is "Laissez-Faire Capitalism, Randism, Libertarianism", then I must have exceedingly poor reading skills. Everything I have read seems to suggest that those are examples of an overly powerful authoritative government, not libertarianism taking hold.
I think you are confusing capitalistic anarchy for libertarianism. Libertarians DO believe that the government has a role. They just differ as to the extent of that role. There are things where libertarians have no problem involving the government. A car that explodes due to negligence isn't the right of the car company unless the car company told you that they were selling you an exploding car. If you really wanted an exploding car, you of course welcome to buy one and use it on your own property, but if a car company sells you a bomb and calls it a car, libertarians would be all for throwing them in jail and litigating them out of existence. In a libertarian society you do not have the right to misrepresent a product any more then you can in this society.
As for drugs, it isn't government permission you need. What you need is to agree to not sue the drug company that sells you the heroin when it puts you in a hospital. If a drug company sells you heroin and doesn't bother to mention that their product is lethal, in a libertarian society you are free to litigate against them. Libertarians DO believe that the government is an arbiter in contract law. A libertarian would not be against mandating that when entering a contract to use a substance that has a great possibility of being lethal and addictive, that the user must go through a training program that fully explains the dangers of the drug before they can use it.
Libertarians have no notion of "public property".
That simply isn't true. I have yet to hear any libertarian advocate private ownership of air. Further, you are taking libertarianism to its fullest extreme. That is like accusing a socialist of being insane because nations NEEED currency to function, all the while having the socialist looking at you like an idiot because he never advocated the banishment of currency. The extreme farthest end of socialism might demand money be done away with, but no sane socialist would advocate doing it because we have yet to develop a method of better assigning value better then money when confronted multiple economic options.
They do have the notion of, "if the air is above my land, it's my air. Stop by if you want to discuss the issue. You have three choices, you can pay me to not pollute my own air, you can get the hell of my land, or you can say hello to my double-barrel shotgun."
From http://www.cato.org/pubs/chapters/marlib23.html
Pollution is generally some form of waste, but even if pollution were unavoidable in certain manufacturing processes, strongly enforced property rights would force polluters to either clean up or close shop. By definition, pollution is a trespass against someone's property or person.
If you want to get technical and take libertarianism to its extreme, in this case if a company that is spewing HCl into the air and that HCl floats over your property line and causes you to vomit blood, you get to sue them out of existence and throw them in jail for causing you bodily harm. Dumping onto private property that is not yours is absolutely forbidden in a libertarian society. As you have already noted, libertarians take the concept of private property very seriously, and dumping your waste onto property other then your own is a massive violation of private property. In the most extreme of libertarian societies were literally everything was owned, polluting would be almost impossible. Every scrap of pollutant you create, you would need to withhold on your own property. If any of that pollution seeped off of your property, you would be immediately held fully liable for it and it would be treated as if you drove a dump truck onto someone's law and dumped toxic waste into intentionally. If you want to talk about extremes, in a truly libertarian society pollution is completely impossible.
Of course, such a society would cease to function. Society needs to be able to pollute to at least some d