Online ISSN 2286-0266
Print ISSN 1223-0685
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Andreas STAMATE-ŞTEFAN
Academia de Studii Economice din Bucureşti

When people are trying to get into the possession of a certain good, and that good is scarce, and by virtue not abundant, we say that we deal with a property problem. Which one of the many will possess that good? It is clear(isn’t it?), that we need a theory of property rights or, more practically, how we can get, ethically (or, on no conflict basis), into the possession of the respective good.
Therefore, the problem of property rights derives naturally from the problem of scarcity of goods or resources, in general. Only in these conditions (of scarcity), is brought sense to the property rights, and, eventually, to a theory of property rights.
The property right is, even in the statist mindset, an alienable right, or transferable. In other words, if you have in property a car, the state is giving you the permission not only for collecting revenues by lending it, but also from the sale of the car. But, here we speak about tangible goods, as the common law defines them. We can not apply the same theory to the intangibles too (for example, an idea), because of their nature, their nature of scarcity goods. Which means that state cannot protect the property upon intangible goods, offering in this way some sort of control to the owners, if it doesn’t legally enforce this right, action which we know that limits the liberty of others. In a manner of speaking, any governmental attempt to create a theory of property rights on intangible goods which aren’t scarce, represents an aggression. Of course, that doesn’t mean that we invalid the existence of such theory. On the contrary, the property right over an idea exists. The idea can be sold, and the seller can request a price by selling it. But that still doesn’t mean that a priori, after the idea has been created, the seller has some immutable right on that creation; not even after the selling, this being the statist theory of property rights on intangible goods, or the intellectual property rights.


ŒCONOMICA no. 1/2010
Intellectual Property Theft. What’s The Crime? Who’s Guilty? (Stephan N. Kinsella: Against Intellectual Property)