An Argument for Intellectual Property

When I have objected to the idea of intellectual property, the reaction I have recieved most often is disagreement without argument. However, I have sometimes recieved an argument in support of the idea of intellectual property. This is one of those arguments.

When some writers produce a work, it is entirely their effort. Whatever one produces entirely on one's own, is owned by the one who produces it. So a writer owns the work that they produce. But the work that the writer produces is not material. It is the story or non-fiction writing that they produce. Therefore, the writer owns the ideas that they write. Since any copy of those ideas is identical with the writer's ideas, the writer owns every instance of those ideas. Therefore, some information is owned.

As it stands, the above argument is valid. However, the argument must not contain a false premise for the argument to be sound. Certainly the first premise is correct. I would not want to say that at least some writers place all of their effort into a work that they do. The second premise is false though. Consider the case of the a worker who is paid to make an item of furniture. They also put all of their effort into building the furniture, but they do not own the finished product. They are paid a monetary amount instead.

Now this is not the only problem with that argument. Let's suppose that I stole some materials to build an item of furniture. I constructed this piece of furniture entirely by my own efforts. Yet I do not own the finished product. Why? Well, because I stole the materials! So even outside of some contract situation, it is still not the case that sole effort results in ownership.

This argument can be altered so that it avoids the two problems mentioned earlier. Let's modify the second premise. It will now state that if someone has placed their sole effort into something, stolen nothing to create it and is not under any relevant kind of contract related to it, then they own it. We now have to modify the first premise as well. Some writers produce a work by their sole effort, do not steal anything to create it and are not under a contract related to it. Now is this revised argument sound?

Now there are some writers like that. Is there a case in which something is created in that manner but not owned by the creator? Well consider this scenario. Let's say there is a scientist that owns some human sperm and eggs. He decides to combine a sperm with an egg inside of an artificial womb that he also owns. He is under no contract at all at this point. Nine months later, a child is born. Does he own the child? He satisfies the conditions set out in the second premise. So if he does not own the child, then the second premise is false. Since he obviously does not own the child, the second premise must be false.

So this modified argument is also unsound. At this point I am open to suggestions as to how to improve this argument. If it cannot be improved, then it does not supply us with a good reason to believe in intellectual property. Now, there may be another good argument out there. This exercise only shows that a particular form of the argument is a failure.