Intellectual Property : Half Truths

It should not have to be said "beware lawyers." If lawyers are known for two things it's making strong arguments regardless of what they're defending, and the art of misdirection. Unfortunately, the familiarity of the average person in regards to copyright and patent law is so poorly understood, that it can be described as *"Headline quality,"*1 and as such makes the average person extremely easy to mislead.

To those who have spent at least several hours independently researched Intellectual Property, many Abolish-IP arguments are borderline insulting. Simply reading the first half of either Title 17 (Copyright law) or Title 35 (Patent Law) should be enough to convince most persons that almost the entirety of anti-IP arguments are arguing against a strawman. Rampant among those who seek to Abolish-IP are persons unfamiliar with the theory behind, or even existence of various parts of copyright law, such as fair use, derivative works, and work-for-hire.

Imagine common law, whereby competing values and interests over several hundred years help in the construction of perhaps imperfect, but at least moderately constructed set of "law" which sides with neither side but attempts (perhaps imperfectly) to create a balance over several hundred years. Now imagine someone with a background in law decided to create a compilation of every argument made on "one side" while simultaneously pretending that no arguments existed on the other.

The problem with most Abolish-IP arguments is not that they're explicitly false, but rather that they're half-truths or incomplete-truths. The vast majority of IP objections are already covered by existing IP law in some way, which indicates many who make these arguments are either willfully misleading or simply unaware. Unfortunately, the reign of several bad and misleading anti-IP arguments has revealed to me that amongst all of the economists at the LVMI, there appears to be a severe shortage is a background in Law *(specifically property law)*.

In a way I think there needs to be more "IP opposition" but not the kind promoted by the LVMI. There needs to be persons who DO educate themselves in IP law, and then are aware and intelligent enough to realize that various scams perpetuated as "IP" (such as SOPA) really have nothing to do with IP.

Also, what I find shocking is that, amongst all of the anti-IP objections, is missing the most obvious of all: The ownership of the determining power when & how IP is (and is not) enforced, as well as mandating standards for expiration, and exempting certain classes of materials, or exempting certain classes of persons has effectively made an indirect claim to all IP, in a similar way to how property taxes are another kind of ownership claim.

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