Elizabeth Wurtzel: NPR & Intellectual Property

Yesterday, on the way home from my daughter's swim meet, I heard Elizabeth Wurtzel being interviewed on NPR about her new book, Creatocracy. I am not certain if the brief interview was really about promoting her book. It was a typical 5-minute interview where almost nothing about the book was discussed. Mostly her background was noted in the interview.

However, the interviewer did ask her about her book very briefly. Basically, from what I gathered, the book is about Intellectual Property Rights [IP] or at least deals with that concept in the book. When asked about where IP comes from, she offered two reasons. The first was how the Framers of our Constitution had enshrined Intellectual Property Rights. Now I haven't the foggiest idea where they did that, and she didn't offer a single argument. So I suppose you'll have to go buy the book.

Her second and final argument as to why IP is to be accepted was because, "It works." That's right. It works. Of course when those on the other side say it works, it is because it fits their definition of what works. Now what was the framework and definition of what works? I guess you'll have to read her book. How Utilitarian of her because selling books works too.

Now to the interviewer's credit, he raised the question about music artists, who put their music on the internet for free. Her response was simple. That's just crazy and silly. Now you may wonder why that's an argument. Perhaps she knew she had almost no time in her interview so "why bother" offering intellectual thought. But this was NPR. You know. The radio program that claims that we need it to stimulate our intellect. Yet this woman was almost as flighty and goofy as Farah Faucet was on David Letterman.

The truth is, there is no such thing as Intellectual Property. It is made up out of thin air in order to create a monopoly of sorts. The history of Intellectual Property demonstrates this all too well as can be learned in this lecture by Jeffrey Tucker here. Intellectual Property creates a disadvantage and an unfair playing field. It is usually argued that it is not fair for those who copy the original because the inventor loses money in research while everyone else benefits from the invention. However, that is not how inventions come about in the first place.

For example, Tucker demonstrates the Wright Brothers' invention of the plane to be complete propaganda. How often have we watched documentaries showing the brilliance of the Wright Brothers while everyone else was trying to fly by attaching wings to their arms and jumping off of piers. Such was not the case. There were many who were on the verge of designing the wings of the plane. When the Wright Brothers discovered the mechanism to get "lift" on their wing, they had already spent much money on lawyers in order to sue everyone else out of business.

Private Property Rights are not floating in the air or in the mind for inventions. Private property rights are things that I actually own. The reason music artists that do not have big label contracts love the internet is that they are able to circumvent Big Corporations to get noticed by people who would never hear their music otherwise.

For instance, you may go and listen to a group called Sons of Korah on Youtube or other places. Using this medium, this particular group, who may otherwise remain obscure within Australian circles, may reach listeners worldwide. Due to my forwarding their Youtube videos to a friend of mine, he decided to go to their website and purchase their music.

However, this doesn't work in the old way of doing things. Big Record Companies are now practicing what the Wright Brothers did. They got the Mob...I mean the government to hire men with guns to enter homes and steal computers with "stolen" music.

The truth is, my MP3/computer player is mine. The music on it is mine. It is my private property. This is what the Founders argued for, private property rights. If the Founders really believed that ideas and inventions could be monopolized by certain companies, then they should be charging other countries for the idea of democracy or at least paying those from whom they stole the idea.

By the way, if you really believe in IP, you better quit wearing the clothes you have on your body, the ideas for them are stolen. Maybe the government wants them too. But as we have seen, inconsistency is the sign of a failed argument and the idea of Intellectual Property is as inconsistent as they get.