Either intellectual property rights are real rights or they are fake rights, whether they create economic value is irrelevant

"It would destroy the following industries that produce billions of dollars and millions of jobs.

"Music, movies, television, books, pharmaceuticals, etc."

I realize this is a common belief, but I do not believe it is true. Pharmaceuticals are hampered by the FDA. If you removed these shackles, and high state taxes, the "need" for them to have a patent monopoly (also grated by the state) would be much lower, no? Why have the state grant a monopoly to make up for other penalties imposed by other state actions (taxes, FDA regulation, etc.)?

What is the incentive to create if someone can just mooch off of your ideas?"

I thought the Randian argument was a moral, principled one, not utilitarian. Anyway, using words like "mooch" and the possessive "your" (as if it's similar to ownership) is question-begging, is it not?

Stephan,

"The problem here is it just assumes any "thing" you can identify conceptually may be owned. One problem with this is that it seems to make reality depend on the way we name or conceptually identify things. If I call or understand your output as a "novel," then the "novel" is the unit. But just because this suffices for conceptual understanding of the world does not mean there is some "ontological" class of entities called "novels" that may be owned. In fact our concepts are use to refer to many phenomenon in or aspects of reality--truth, love, the-fact-that-I-woke up this morning, the age of the earth, my favorite drink. Are these things ownable just because they are "things" that can be conceptually identified? I don't think so."

Rand is very clear about the fact that an idea or concept as such cannot be legally protected until it has been given a specific physical form.  It is this specific form which endows it with value because that had to be created, and property rights apply only to that material form�e.g. books, magazine articles, audiotapes, etc.  This material form cannot be reproduced without permission and/or compensation.

"When you ask what things are ownable, before asking who the owner is, you realize the criteria is bound up with the purpose of property rights, which is to assign owners to avoid conflict; that is, they pertain to the types of things over which there can be conflict--that is, to rivalrous (scarce) resources. Clearly not to facts or memories or recipes or patterns or information. So you never get to the question of who owns a poem. It is simply not part of the class of ownable things. Call it a thing if you like; say it "exists"; fine by me. But it's not an ownable thing."

This is a typically libertarian approach to rights, implying that the only issues involved are purely practical and dropping the context of the moral basis of rights.  In Objectivism, rights are conditions of existence required by man�s nature for his proper survival.  Man survives through the use of his mind, and property rights amount to a legal codification of the connection between mental effort and material values.  They assure that the material products of a man�s mental efforts will be his to dispose of as he see fits�to serve his life and needs.  It is a kind of contract which the creator of a novel or article or poem or invention�all of which are very much �ownable�--makes with anyone who might use it to agree to compensate him for his efforts.

Man must create the values his life requires, but it would be absurd to say that he can only own those things which are entirely of his own creation.  The monetary compensation he receives for his material creations can then be used in exchange for goods created or produced by other men (e.g., food products which must be grown, farmed or manufactured).  

"Randians justify rights based on man's "need" to be "productive" etc. I find this a very flawed and non-rigorous approach�"

 
So what constitutes a rigorous approach, in your view?  From your above cited article on self-ownership
 
"�Recall that the purpose of property rights is to permit conflicts over scarce (rivalrous) resources to be avoided. To fulfill this purpose, property titles to particular resources are assigned to particular owners�
"�what distinguishes libertarianism from all competing political theories is its scrupulous adherence � informed by sound, i.e., Austrian, economics � to the idea that property rights in scarce resources must be assigned to the person with the best, objective link to the resource in question; and that, in the case of bodies, the link is the natural connection to and relationship between the occupant and the body, while for all other resources, the objective link is first use."
 
Your approach is purely utilitarian: rights are to be assigned in a way that best reduces conflict.  The objective requirements of human life have nothing to do with it.  So if someone can find a more practical way to distribute property, that would obviously be preferable, given your �rigorous� libertarian views.  Consdering the virtually limitless kinds of conflicts which people would obviously have over such things as land boundaries, waterways, roads, vertical space, air waves, et. al, ad infinitum�and the endless litigtion such conflicts would entail--it would be much more practical to let the government allocate such �scarce resources.�  And that is exactly where pragmatic �principles� such as yours would quickly lead in the absence of a moral approach to rights based on man�s needs.
 
Libertarianism�s focus on 'utility' and 'practicality' will lead to the exact opposite of the libertarian political ideal of so-called �freedom.�  Unless we define rights from the objective moral perspective of the requirements of individual surivival, the all-powerful state will continue to grow and thrive, and libertarianism will have helped pave the way to tyranny.