PVC 3/4" Sch.80 Threaded Union

I think Robin makes a good argument, that legal sstmeys influence what economic sstmeys are viable within a culture. Robin is mistaken, I believe, in his attitude that being able to copy from others without permission/attribution is somehow sad', or wrong'. I happen to agree that attribution is a socially beneficial good', but there are enough social carrots / sticks (reputation, shame, pointing-to-recognized-authority, gratitude), that it doesn't need to be encoded in a legal framework with real' carrots and sticks. Farming/cattle ranching being made uneconomical due to a poor legal system is sad'. At the end of the day the system that produces the most goods' with the fewest bads' is the one that is going to win. With real-world-physical items, a legal concept of property' is a winner, because of the non-sharability of physical items. Land can either produce crops, or graze cattle not both! With information, a legal concept of property' is a loser, because there is no downside except, some think, the lack of incentive to create. I would argue that the lack of incentive' position is mistaken. If anything, the world of fashion, and open-source software, has shown that we get MORE creativity, not less. In fact, we so much creativity, it becomes a difficult problem of filtering what is wanted. The super-abundance of riches' problem, is kind of a nice one to have. Unfortunately, our own poor legal framework, with bogus protections, makes it harder to solve. If Steve Jobs didn't have patents and copyright, he would have turned to something else to enforce control. Probably just his own reputation and name, mixed with a bit of public-key cryptography, similar to Linus Torvalds. The lost opportunity cost is hidden and large.No system is perfect, but some are better than others, depending on the goal. The key is to keep focus on what the real goals are: more goodies for more people. Protections, for those who seek to close-off and rent out the intellectual-spaces the've stumbled upon, is not a good in and of itself.

I will assume that you are not using the pharse IP to help muddy the waters, like confusing trademark (a consumer protection) violations with counterfeit medicines, (endangering the public) or anything like that.I too, have objections to the second-to-last paragraph:But if true, this is a sad fact about our limited abilities, not a fundamental natural law or right.True, but as Riedel points out above, it implies nothing else.You have no fundamental right to enjoy the innovations produced by others without compensating them.I would like to think I have right to use my own inventions, but the IP proponents would deny me:Patents, are so named from the pharse literare patentis , ( open letter , wherein the inventor explains the invention) are intentionally incomprehensible, overly broad and filed in such quantities for so small, incremental inventions , it's impossible to keep up with any field. Even the invention of the idea of inventing something that does X is apparently enough to deny me the use of my own invention.You owe them, at least your gratitude.I would say, that you also owe them the truth of acknowledging them as the originators (or even just inspirations) of whatever you take. Yes for now it may be best to let you take innovations freely without paying, since the alternative seems too expensive.Again, the idea that monies are the whole of the issue is completely absurd. Even if you had an effectively infinite supply of money, negotiating with all the (claimed, perceived or just fraudulent) property owners would be absurd. This is, to some extent, why air travel (over others' land) is not considered trespassing.But you have no right to expect that situation to last forever, any more than ranchers had a right to expect they could forever let their animals trample nearby farms.The analogy of light is much better:If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.Thomas Jefferson

Yeah the question is not whteher we have a fundamental right to enjoy the innovations produced by others without compensating them. Granting that we don't, that tells us nothing about IP law. The question is whteher other people have a fundamental right to be compensated for their ideas. I'll note that most academic justifications for IP laws don't actually involve asserting this; for the most part they rely on incentive theories. If the point of IP law is to give an incentive for innovation (as most theorists assert), then the question of who has what fundamental rights (and what that even might mean) is entirely irrelevant; what we need to know is what the best policies are to encourage innovation. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who's not associated with the content industry who thinks the answer to this question is strong IP laws in the form we currently have them.Of course, given that you have some moralistic language in there, maybe you do think people have a fundamental right to be compensated for their ideas, and that this is an appropriate area for state intervention. If so, I'd be interested in hearing an actual argument on that front.