Telegram Archive - week 22, 2025, page 1
- 15 minutes read - 3146 words
For all Italian-speaking Objectivists here, I’ve created this Telegram group for discussions on Objectivism due to lack of italian forums about Ayn Rand’s philosophy: https://t.me/oggettivismo_ita
Please, share the link with your friends and acquaintances to spread Objectivism in Italy
I suggest to advertise it on Montessori forums
?
Also, join HBL, first month is free
Just started following the X page
Follow this Twitter account: go_anthem
@participant-5030 there is more than one person posting on the Go Anthem Twitter account. The last reply wasn’t by me, but by my colleague, who is now managing the account.
Added two links to the Ayn Rand’s biographical page on the website. One is an archive of her endorsements of presidents. The other is recommendation of movies to Objectivists. Both resources are hosted by historian of Ayn Rand, David Hayes.
Having an argument with Stephan Kinsella, one of libertarians “authorities.” Just the fact the guy is rude, says all you need to know about him.
https://x.com/go_anthem/status/1927436655872373210
You’re having an argument with Kinsella???
Yeah , why ?
Where’s his response?
Twitter . Scroll up
Nothing, just that he’s quite famous among libertarians, as you said, especially due to his IP positions
Do you know how to use Twitter ? You open a reply then scroll up to see the thread
Not really. I’m new to it. Thanks for telling me
He called you a “nym”. What is that?
I think it’s something like anonymous
What does it mean in this context?
I try not to respond to personal attacks, that’s unprofessional
And why did Kinsella pick up on the guy who talked about Christianity?
I recommend everyone to follow RockChartrand. He is writing excellent posts. I don’t know who he is, but I followed him.
Based 😂
Ayn Rand’s phrasing is legally imprecise, conceptually problematic, and factually incorrect in certain key aspects
“What the patent or copyright protects is not the physical object as such, but the idea which it embodies.”
The law does not protect abstract ideas themselves, but only their specific expression (in copyright) or concrete implementation (in patents). Rand’s wording blurs this distinction by suggesting that the “idea” itself is protected, which is legally inaccurate. Many ideas are similar without constituting plagiarism, and many inventions are incremental.
@participant-3927 Regardless of everything else, debating someone in their own area of expertise is a losing move. Kinsella is known for picking average people and debating them live or on video — and he usually wins. In my opinion, debating someone who has spent years deeply studying a topic is a losing battle. The knowledge gap would simply be too big.
Good point
And it’s not claimed by AR in that quote what you are arguing against. The idea is presented in a patent application, that’s the subject and context of the whole chapter. By the way, I have three patents.
You are right. Note that Kinsella refuses to debate Adam Mossoff, Objectivist who specializes in patents and copyrights. He is a professor of law in George Mason University.
Kinsella had asked me to debate him in a YouTube comment section back when I was just a kid. Obviously I didn’t even reply. But it just shows you the kind of people he targets: people who aren’t experts with anon usernames
For the record, I was born in 2001
Personally I don’t think patents or copyright law should exist. I’m a programmer BTW. Property is something that can be uniquely assigned to the owner. Copying is not stealing. Everyone is free to keep his ideas, inventions or any other “IP” in their head. Why people choose to share the “IP” anyways? Because it gives indirect profits, such as reputation, advertisement, fame. So I don’t think giving the author a monopoly on copying and reproducing their work is necessary.
I think in the long term it slows down the progress of the civilization, not to mention the build up of bureaucracy and a waste of resources and energy in the courts to arbitrarily resolve IP issues… In the software world it has brought a lot of ridiculity.
Adam Mossoff effortlessly addresses these concerns in this interview (50min): https://youtu.be/QK6u7-fCMIw?si=yyO2Cn4P_2h7Oe6j
Me and @participant-2236 code for a living. Not sure about others.
Ok thanks, gonna watch!
Rejecting the sweat of the brow doctrine, opposing database rights, ensuring freedom of panorama, and requiring a high threshold of originality are all non-negotiable
But if IP should in fact be treated as property, why should it expire? The simple fact that I am dead, doesn’t mean that I can’t pass my property on whomever I want: e.g. I build a chair, I have all the right to gift that chair to my children when I die
Please retweet this post to help the account gain followers: https://x.com/go_anthem/status/1928152856475095074
The PAN, expiration date, and CVV of my credit card can be replicated or reproduced “infinitely,” but that doesn’t mean its unauthorized distribution should be permitted
It’s reasonable to regard property as a limited right to prevent the distribution of child sexual abuse material, fullz and content that violates personality rights; or for easements, and so on
The entire fallacy of right-libertarianism (a distinction invented by Rothbard) lies in the notion of absolute property rights. Such rights are impossible, since exceptions that justify violating exclusivity always exist — for example, in the context of investigations into kidnapping or other illegal activities
Arguing against intellectual property on the grounds that physical property rights cannot be limited is not a sound argument
Rock Chartrand gave a good answer to Kinsella: https://x.com/rockchartrand/status/1928229632169378177?s=46
As I’ve said before, I’m in favor of transformation, because it’s simplistic to say that certain derivative works are just copies. They might use some creative elements from others, but in my view, that’s not enough to justify preventing their use. At most, it makes more sense to require profit-sharing.
I’m fine with limited monopolies on creative works — provided, of course, that they’re actually limited (by time, fair use, etc.)
For example, Screamers is not a copy of Philip K. Dick’s Second Variety: the former is set on the planet Sirius 6B, with a war between a company called N.E.B. and the Alliance; in Dick’s story, it’s set on Earth and the conflict involves the United Nations and the Soviet Union
What if the owners of IP and customers just signed a contract which specified the limits of the use of the intellectual work, instead of having it protected by the government with contradictory rules?
This way, there wouldn’t be any problems concerning the duration of IP or the creation of monopolies of ideas
Moreover, if sb comes up with the same idea, nobody will have the right to prevent them from applying it
What about unauthorized distribution by third parties? A contract only binds the parties who have signed it. Anyone who hasn’t signed the contract (e.g., a user who receives a copy from someone else) is not legally bound to respect its terms
Suppose someone buys a book and uploads it anonymously to a shadow library. In most cases, it’s impossible to determine who uploaded the file. Did they breach the contract? Yes — but no one will ever know.
The shadow library itself, having never signed the contract, wouldn’t be doing anything legally wrong under a contract-only system, and all its users could freely download the book and even print physical copies for commercial use
Pragmatically, the real issue isn’t stopping shadow libraries, but preventing mainstream platforms and retailers from selling unauthorized copies
Let’s say I built a new type of lightning rod and I put it on top of my house, and you passed by, observed it and built one yourself. Your copy would be absolutely legitimate: if the inventor of the fire had put a monopoly on it, we wouldn’t be here rn. Moreover, nobody has the right to enslave other people’s minds.
Regarding illegal copies distributed by customers who don’t abide by the contract, said illegal copies should be destroyed and the wrong-doing customers should repay the original creators
In that case, you didn’t patent it e.e
Yes, the library hasn’t done any wrong. The one who has uploaded the book must repay the author
Are we talking about what we should do given the present legal system or what it should be like in an ideal system?
The fire wouldn’t have been registrable. In any existing or theoretical intellectual property system
(except Galambosianism)
The method to light it, yes. But there are many other inventions we can use as examples: the chair, the wheel, the spoon, the fork . . .
His system is way more coherent than Rand’s: she appeals to a pragmatic argument to state that IP should expire, while she explicitly rejects pragmatism. Moreover, there is no such thing as an expiration date for property, or else it isn’t actual “property”, but rather a loan
You’re misinformed
About what? You’ve made a statement, now support it with reasoning
About Galbambosianism
Alright. Inform me, then. What did I say that is actually wrong about it?
I think any decent system needs clear principles and what you are proposing Alessandro is shady and very subjective in nature. Like I like oranges, but let’s ban plums cause I don’t like them. For me it’s fine, but why should it become the law?
I misread it :)
Can you explain which point?
The principle that individuals should be able to profit from the fruits of their efforts is respected through limited monopolies on creative works
Guys if you are worried about the mosquitos you are not in good shape to start new country. We are starting to build treehouses next week. Cross fingers. Liberland will soon be inhabited exclusively by Liberlanders for two consecutive years. Justin Sun is coming back from Whitehouse this week so I hope that this will bring the final push
Well some people worried about mosquitos so much they eradicated malaria (in a world first) through a systematic program eliminating the mosquito breeding grounds, enabled many people to move there and then … started their own country 😀
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Jacob_Kligler
To be fair though, the country was probably built more by British colonial efforts, and then had a civil war and then declared its independence after Kliger’s death but you know what I mean 🤷🏻♂️
Can you tell me what is it in a nutshell? Voluntarism ? Anarchism ?
An ideology that holds that intellectual property rights are absolute and inheritable. Galambos’ ideas are not easily accessible because his was a closed circle—he required his followers to sign non-disclosure agreements
Ayn Rand’s argument for expiration was not pragmatic. Read that whole chapter, it’s only a few pages
I quoted the main argument , but preceding is important as it explains that the system should reflect the primacy of the mind : https://x.com/go_anthem/status/1927952094570631242
Determining who uploaded it is impossible, so the whole thing is pointless
Alright, then, I guess the author cannot be refunded for their loss
Objectively, what you’re proposing isn’t functional
I’ve read her whole essay “Patents and Copyrights” but there are some contradictions:
On one hand: these laws protect the mind’s contribution in its purest form: the origination of an idea. But what the patent or copyright protects is not the physical object as such, but the idea which it embodies. By forbidding an unauthorized reproduction of the object, the law declares, in effect, that the physical labor of copying is not the source of the object’s value, The right to intellectual property cannot be exercised in perpetuity. Intellectual property represents a claim, not on material objects, but on the idea they embody, which means:
On the other: An idea as such cannot be protected until it has been given a material form. By the very nature of the right on which intellectual property is based—a man’s right to the product of his mind—that right ends with him. (Why doesn’t his material property since she also states at the beginning that material property comes from intellectual work? Every type of productive work involves a combination of mental and physical effort: )
Especially the last two quotes are explicitly contradictory with her claim that material possessions can be inherited
Actually proponents of copyright laws are stealing inventions such as internet, printing press, USB drive, CD/DVD, etc, since they claim the right to tell others how to use them. Why Rand who has not invented printer press should have the right to tell others how to use it. Or why musicians shall be entitled to dictate how to use DVDs. They are all free to keep their intellectual property for themselves. Yet they want to benefit from the inventions that allow one to mass reproduce the work. So this is “I want to eat the cake and keep the cake” scenario.
No one advocates for copyright laws the way you claim they do
Furthermore, patents and copyrights are not the same thing
Because material things have a physical form. They are no longer just an idea.
The object was created form “nothing”. It’s a new entity in the universe, first of a kind. (That’s why there is no issue of scarcity at play. Creation makes new things, not uses up scarce things.)
That’s why the man who made it has it in his private ownership.
But not just this specific object, the blueprint to make it. Again: this object never existed and is a brainchild of the guy who invented it.
That’s why the object can’t be copied by others. It’s our of respect to the originator of it.
But when the man dies, his blueprint still lives on a bit (in case of copyright), and does too. The physical objects he can dispose of how sees fit, they have a life of their own. But the new owner must maintain the physical objects, otherwise they rot away
Ideas can live only in a mind. They can’t be transferred or copied. The law can’t protect second handers. (If you read the Fountainhead). Basically, each man must earn his keep.
Ok, first off: ex nihilo nihil fit; but I get what you’re saying: there’s an idea behind it, but what I was challenging was Rand’s contradictory claims.
Btw, I disagree with the idea that property comes from scarcity
“Each man must earn is keep” is true if only if said man doesn’t have enough to live already: just like you can inherit material wealth and live off your parents’ work (in this case, physical), I cannot see why you shouldn’t be able to live off their mental work, given Rand’s premises (with which I disagree, obviously)
Because you can’t inherit wealth and live off it in any practical sense. Wealth must be managed: that’s work too. Have you read War and Peace? The protagonist Bezukhov was that man who inherited a lot of wealth. He was cluless how to manage it, and lost most of it throughout the novell.
And Ayn Rand says this in the patent-copyright chapter, but you have missed it somehow.
Material property represents a static amount of wealth already produced. It can be left to heirs, but it cannot remain in their effortless possession in perpetuity: the heirs can consume it or must earn its continued possession by their own productive work. The greater the value of the property, the greater the effort demanded of the heir. In a free, competitive society, no one could long retain the ownership of a factory or of a tract of land without exercising a commensurate effort.
But intellectual property cannot be consumed. If it were held in perpetuity, it would lead to the opposite of the very principle on which it is based: it would lead, not to the earned reward of achievement, but to the unearned support of parasitism. … – Ayn Rand, CUNI, Patents and Copyrights