I'd expand a bit to note that jsprogrammer's comment isn't internally consistent; the case for compensation in expropriation of real property is made in terms of access, while that for same of intellectual property in terms of use. These are not the same.
If we take access as the standard, then the use of eminent domain to construct an interstate highway doesn't seem to qualify for recompense, because the interstate highway system is open to the free use of anyone, including any and all former owners of the real property on which it was built.
If we take the standard to be use, then expropriation of intellectual property does qualify for recompense, because if access to the property in question has been made freely available to anyone, then selling such access is a use to which that property can no longer be put.
And of course there are plenty of other examples. To regard such arguments as tendentious is both uncharitable and, given sufficient exposure, somewhat difficult to avoid. What I'd really appreciate is a clear and internally consistent statement on the subject, from someone who's willing to discuss, debate, and attempt to persuade, rather than indulging in reheated anti-McCarthyism.
I should have been more precise. Access and use are synonymous with respect to the topic. The more appropriate word to have used is perhaps taken.
Your land may be taken from you in the sense that there is now a concrete block where your house used to be, but it is difficult to say what is taken when someone else prints a copy of something they saw.
What's taken in your second example is the effective ability to sell that person a copy of whatever they saw and printed; why would he buy it, when he already has it for free?
To the best of my admittedly unlettered knowledge, one of the rights that inheres in property ownership, in our modern system of law and in the traditions from which it's derived, is the ability to resell access and usage of that property in a variety of forms, such as receiving payment in exchange for the privilege of temporary possession of, and domicile in, a given piece of real property - commonly known as "rent".
The argument most commonly put forth by advocates of a fundamental distinction between real and intellectual property seems to hinge on scarcity. That is, it's reasonable for real property rights to include resale of access because a given unit of real property is unique and effectively irreplicable, and therefore scarce; conversely, it's unreasonable for intellectual property rights to include the same, because intellectual property can be losslessly copied and recopied without limit, and therefore cannot accurately be described as scarce.
Where I differ with that argument is in its definition of scarcity. I'd argue instead that uniqueness, and thus scarcity, inhere in the specific arrangement of information that constitutes a given unit of intellectual property, and relegate replicability to an essentially accidental characteristic - interesting and valuable, to be sure, but of no significance to the question at hand.
Rather than analogizing copyright to physical property, I find it more useful to consider a strictly consequentialist approach. If we accept the purpose of US copyright is "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts," and we accept that citizens have a right to know the laws they are expected to obey (as part of due process), then we can conclude that any application of copyright that serves to hinder due process ought to be invalid, and that it is the obligation of governments passing laws to obtain and distribute the text of those laws to their citizens freely.
I don't disagree in the slightest. But that addresses only the specific case in which the text of a copyrighted and privately held document is incorporated by reference into that of a law as passed. Copyright in general is a much broader subject.
The person in question already has a copy in the scenario we are discussing, so there would be no need for them to buy it anyway.
It might be argued that some other person who has not yet seen the design might not buy a copy from the copyright holder, but that is speculative.
The difference that I don't think is getting through is that a design can be copied from a copy, without affecting the original. If I rent your place, I necessarily displace you. The same is not so with a written design. It can be copied without the copyright holders' notice.
> The difference that I don't think is getting through is that a design can be copied from a copy, without affecting the original.
That's hardly a novel claim here; I acknowledged, discussed, and disposed of it in the argument to which you here reply, and whose tl;dr is more or less that copyability and scarcity are orthogonal. That's the argument I would like to see addressed.
You are confusing my argument with yours. It is not a matter of scarcity, but of the fact that a copyrighter's property is wholly intact and unaffected by a third party producing a copy of something the third party possesses.
The same does not hold under eminent domain seizure.
> a copyrighter's property is wholly intact and unaffected by a third party producing a copy of something the third party possesses.
A real property owner's parcel remains intact, in the same sense, when an access easement over it is seized by eminent domain, only his right to exclude others from uses -- the essence of the relation known as "property" -- is impacted.
The requirement for compensation for takings of real property is not limited to cases where fee simple title to the parcel is taken.
I'm contrasting them. I don't argue that the copyright owner's possession of the copied property remains intact. Her rights in that property, I'd argue, do not.
I'd expand a bit to note that jsprogrammer's comment isn't internally consistent; the case for compensation in expropriation of real property is made in terms of access, while that for same of intellectual property in terms of use. These are not the same.
If we take access as the standard, then the use of eminent domain to construct an interstate highway doesn't seem to qualify for recompense, because the interstate highway system is open to the free use of anyone, including any and all former owners of the real property on which it was built.
If we take the standard to be use, then expropriation of intellectual property does qualify for recompense, because if access to the property in question has been made freely available to anyone, then selling such access is a use to which that property can no longer be put.
And of course there are plenty of other examples. To regard such arguments as tendentious is both uncharitable and, given sufficient exposure, somewhat difficult to avoid. What I'd really appreciate is a clear and internally consistent statement on the subject, from someone who's willing to discuss, debate, and attempt to persuade, rather than indulging in reheated anti-McCarthyism.