PHIL 270 Lecture 14: BE 3.22 (L) Intellectual Property
4 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Business Ethics
3.22 Lecture Notes – deGeorge and Rosenberg
Lockean v. Humean theory of property
- Locke: inherent right to body and labor and fruits of labor
- Hume: property rights are a useful social convention
- How do we go about thinking about intellectual property?
Locke
- How long should the IP be?
- Lockean proviso
- …provided you leave enough and as good for others…
- Leave the possibility for people to think about similar ideas – leave enough in the
intellectual commons
Hume
- Keep property rights as long as it optimizes innovation
- How many people live in the world, how many live under favorable political institutions
that foster trade
- The more people there are working on problems, the better
- The more we share information, the more discoveries
- While for Locke, we care about you as an individual as well as others
Napster
- Filing sharing network – Napster
- DeGeorge – In Canada it was illegal to download but not upload
o Legal and enforcement practicality
- Some consumers made the fair use argument – recording music off the radio and
sharing it
- Having the right to share v. having the right to share with everyone in all circumstances
- George – not really a moral theory becomes a question of cost and benefit
- The rule of thumb: if an IP law is widely flouted, that is probably an indication that
legislators are out of step with what benefits people and what most people want
- Public goods – non-excludability – it is not cost effective to exclude you right now with
the current technology
- Counter: 3D printers may incentivize many people to copy everything around them, IP
laws would be flouted for sure, but that would not be what benefits people because
innovation would predictably slow down
Rosenberg
- HIV medication – a lot of protest in the 80s that the companies were heartless and
should make it accessible for everyone
- In the short run, giving away the drugs will save a lot of people, while in the long run, a
lot of life-saving medicines would not be innovated
- Governments and NGOs can buy it and give it away
- Alternatives to patents: prizes – government gives away a prize for anyone who can
invent a medicine for ___ (does not supplant the patent system)
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Locke: inherent right to body and labor and fruits of labor. Hume: property rights are a useful social convention. Lockean proviso (cid:862) provided you leave enough and as good for others (cid:863) Leave the possibility for people to think about similar ideas leave enough in the intellectual commons. Keep property rights as long as it optimizes innovation. How many people live in the world, how many live under favorable political institutions that foster trade. The more people there are working on problems, the better. The more we share information, the more discoveries. While for locke, we care about you as an individual as well as others. Degeorge in canada it was illegal to download but not upload: legal and enforcement practicality. Some consumers made the fair use argument recording music off the radio and sharing it. Having the right to share v. having the right to share with everyone in all circumstances.
