Was the most fervent believer in intellectual property rights an IP thief?
I鈥檝e written before about the quirky scientistic California libertarian guru , and his extreme, crazy IP ideas. ((See ; also ; 鈥�.鈥�)) Galambos believed that man has property rights in his own life (primordial property) and in all 鈥渘on-procreative derivatives of his life鈥濃�攖he 鈥渇irst derivatives鈥� of a man鈥檚 life are his thoughts and ideas鈥攖hese are 鈥�primary property.鈥� Since action is based on primary property (ideas), actions are owned as well; this is referred to as 鈥渓iberty.鈥� Secondary derivatives, such as land, televisions, and other tangible goods, are produced by ideas and action. ((See also , by Alvin Lowi, Jr.))
In other words, man has 鈥減rimary鈥� property rights in his thoughts and ideas, and secondary property rights in tangible goods. Thus, as ideas are the primary form of property, Galambos claimed a property right in his own ideas, and required his students to agree not to repeat them. In I note that Galambos
took his own ideas to ridiculous lengths dropping a nickel in a fund box every time he used the word 鈥渓iberty鈥� as a royalty to the descendants of Thomas Paine, the alleged 鈥渋nventor鈥� of the word 鈥渓iberty鈥�; and changing his original name from Joseph Andrew Galambos (Jr., presumably) to Andrew Joseph Galambos, to avoid infringing his identically-named father鈥檚 rights to the name.
A version of this 鈥減rimary property鈥� idea鈥揺levating property rights in ideas to an even higher and more fundamental status that in scarce resources鈥搃s espoused by Ayn Rand, who incredibly said, 鈥淧atents are the heart and core of property rights.鈥� Likewise, Objectivist IP attorney Murray Franck approvingly repeated the following quote: 鈥渋ntellectual property is after all the only absolute possession in the world,鈥� and Objectivist law professor Adam Mossoff argues that 鈥淎ll Property is Intellectual Property.鈥� ((See Kinsella, ; also my 鈥溾�� and .)) And my friend and neo-Objectivist libertarian philosopher Tibor Machan has said: 鈥渋t would seem that so called intellectual stuff is an even better candidate for qualifying as private property than is, say, a tree or mountain.鈥� ((See my post ; also .))
So it is interesting that I came across a much earlier use of the phrase 鈥減rimary property鈥� in a very similar context, in a 1950 article about the patent controversy by Machlup & Penrose. ((See Fritz Machlup & Edith Penrose, 鈥�,鈥� Journal of Economic History 10 (1950), p. p. 11, and n. 35.)) As they note, in the debate about patent and copyright in the late 1700s:
others went as far as to say that a man鈥檚 property in his ideas was more sacred than his property in things material 鈥�
This was one of the main arguments Stanislas de Bouffler used in presenting the patent bill to the Constitutional Assembly in December 1790:鈥滻f there is for man any genuine property it is thought, 鈥� and the tree which grows on a field does not so incontrovertibly belong to the owner of the field as the idea which springs from a man鈥檚 mind belongs to author. Invention, the source of the arts, is also the source of property: it is primary property, while all other property is merely conventional 鈥�.鈥濃�揂ugustin-Charles Renouard, Trait茅 des brevets d鈥檌nvention (3d ed.; Paris, 1865), pp. 89-90 (first published, 1825).
It seems to me that not only are Galambosians prevented from spreading their own views because of their bizarre self-imposed IP restrictions鈥搉ow they cannot even claim credit for these bizarre ideas, leading to an infinite recursive Galambosian loop.
