Jusnaturalist (@jusnaturalist)

Natural law versus patents and copyrights The fundamental principle of patents and copyrights is to prohibit others from having the same idea as oneself. This principle is completely iniquitous and a violation of the natural rights of individuals. If, for example, the idea of drinking, eating or taking care of oneself were patented, this would mean that individuals could be forbidden to drink, eat or take care of themselves, simply because they were not the first to patent the idea, or because they did not obtain the rights from the patentee. This is also the case today with new drugs, which are sold at unaffordable prices and deprive many people of healthcare, while the companies that produce them rake in billions in profits. Similarly, when copying is presented as a bad thing, it's actually through copying that children learn to become adults. They copy their parents and other children, so that they can learn, and then improve on what they've learned with their own talents. Copying is a fundamental natural right, indispensable to every individual, and if we forbid this right, we are setting society back profoundly. The argument to justify patents and copyrights is that without them, nobody would want to innovate. This is completely false. To innovate, you have to invest money, so innovation is the responsibility of the rich. But a rich person has no interest in simply hoarding money in a bank, because the only advantage of being rich is that you can spend your money to improve your own comfort. As a result, the rich have an obvious interest in spending their money on innovation, even if they have no financial return on their investment. Once the rich take the risk of improving their comfort, their money is well spent. Of course, if the rich can improve their comfort while earning even more money, they won't go without, and that's what happens because of patents and copyrights. Patents enable the rich to become even more immensely wealthy, to create monopolies and make indecent margins on the backs of the poor, and even to plunder the ideas of true inventors by sinking them through endless legal proceedings or disadvantageous contracts, while forbidding them to continue exploiting their own ideas on a personal basis. With patents, the rich are able to sell you objects of which you are not the real owner, and which you have no legal right to modify or use as you wish. Patents and copyrights kill innovation: today, it's impossible to enter an existing market without substantial capital and the means to pay for lengthy legal proceedings.