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0 pointsCerthas1y ago0 comments

The irreducible state role in a free market is to enforce property rights.

Almost all free market fans I have seen think that this should extend to some notion of intellectual property.

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Y_Y1y ago

I think the standard answer to your point is that you can recognise "intellectual property" without granting a (limited) monopoly. There are plenty of proposals floating around for copyright and patent reform that curtail or replace the ability of the creator/owner to unilaterally set the price and decide who can license the material and how they can use it.

AstralStorm1y ago

Thing is, HDMI forum is not a monopoly. It's a literal cartel of a few corporations and other cartels. Other cartels pushing for it include MPAA.

Y_Y1y ago

The monopoly here is HDMI LA, who provides the required licenses.

> HDMI® Licensing Administrator, Inc. (HDMI LA) is the agent appointed by the HDMI Forum to license Version 2.1b of the HDMI Specification and is the agent appointed by the HDMI Founders to license earlier HDMI Specifications.

https://hdmi.org/adopter/index

CerthasOP1y ago

Mostly I think the person who mentioned that this is free markets working as free markets is largely right. You can't defend free markets on the basis that property rights are enforced by the state, and thus somehow changing the free market outcome.

I also think critizising intellectual property on grounds of granting a monopoly is muddling the language. If I write a novel I have exclusive rights to the novel. But I am not the only supplier of mediocre novels. I don't have a monopoly in a relevant market.

None of this contradicts the point that IP and patent rights are in desperate need of reform, or that they can play a central role in abusing a monopoly position (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange-Book-Standard).

Edit: Maybe my post was unclear: I would agree that IP should be abolished. But this is not a position I have seen classical market liberals and other free market advocates take. Instead, they tend to favor strengthening all forms of property rights. If I am wrong on this point, I'd be happy to read some examples.

Y_Y1y ago

I don't think we disagree, I would just like to add that this subtlety about "monopoly" depends on the (subjective) existence of substitute goods. Maybe as a consumer I just want any old book to read and so an individual author has no market control. On the other hand you can imagine, say, a technology that's practically or actually unavoidable as an input for a particular business (suppose HDMI had no viable alternative), then the IP holder could extract super-normal profit and make the economy less efficient.

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Y_Y1y ago

AstralStorm1y ago

Thing is, HDMI forum is not a monopoly. It's a literal cartel of a few corporations and other cartels. Other cartels pushing for it include MPAA.

Y_Y1y ago

The monopoly here is HDMI LA, who provides the required licenses.

https://hdmi.org/adopter/index

CerthasOP1y ago

Y_Y1y ago

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