UC Berkeley

It is sometimes argued that legal protection of intellectual property is illegitimate because intellectual objects are not subject to conditions of scarcity and can simultaneously be consumed by everyone. I argue that this line of argument is problematic. By itself, the claim that intellectual objects are unlimited and can be consumed by everyone simultaneously does not imply that we have some sort of moral claim to intellectual objects that is inconsistent with the legal protection of intellectual property. While this claim is certainly a reason against thinking that protection of intellectual property is morally justified, it falls well short of conclusive because it does not contain any information about what respective interests the creator and third parties have in intellectual objects. I conclude that a proper analysis of the legitimacy of intellectual property rights must take into account the morally protected interests that content-creators have both in the expenditure of their limited resources (e.g., time, energy, and intellectual labor) and in the value that the expenditures of such efforts brings into the world.