Take this for example:

“If any provision of this License is invalid or unenforceable under applicable law, it shall not affect the validity or enforceability of the remainder of the terms of this License, and without further action by the parties to this agreement, such provision shall be reformed to the minimum extent necessary to make such provision valid and enforceable.”

I think there are circumstances where there is legitimate enforceability with regard to the usage of others’ works. However this statement seems to refer to making enforceable the unlibertarian aspects of the license. If a libertarian supports the license and thereby claims to make enforceable those aspects of the license which are unlibertarian, then it seems that the libertarian isn’t just attempting to defend anti-IP, but threatening also to punish those who commit acts which may be legal in an anti-IP world.

Besides, I am less concerned here about whether it is right or wrong than I am with the infliction of deleterious influence. I lack that “character flaw” of disagreeing with you. Yet I’m worried about the impressions people get from the acts in question and other similar behaviors. Acting in a seemingly hypocritical fashion may have largely the same effect as actually being a hypocrite, even if after close scrutinizing it is discovered that there is no hypocrisy whatever. People can be right about every aspect of whatever arguments are given and still lose a debate. The delivery of arguments are of vital importance as well.

As it relates to there being “no law against murder”, well there is always a natural law against “it”, despite there being no positive coercive law. And the means of legitimately securing compliance with regard to ethical usage of works seem to differ very little from whether one chooses to use CC or forgo it altogether.

So if CC actually does imply a threat of enforcement of unlibertarian laws, then it may be a violation of libertarian principles to use it. Yet even if it does not it still carries with it an impression of hypocrisy, that which seems to come at a greater cost than the likelihood of being ripped off attribution-wise, especially in this age of computer forensics.

No, we’re enforcing anti-IP via state-sanctioned legal threats.

Analogy: suppose the government passed a law making it illegal to destroy anything with a red stamp on it (even if it was your own property). That would presumably be an unjust law. And suppose, in addition, that there were no laws against murder. So, to protect ourselves from being murdered, we put red stamps on ourselves and encourage others to do likewise — and when people come to murder us (and won’t listen to our anti-murder arguments) then we point out our red stamps.

Are we appealing to an unjust law? Sure. But we’re using that law in a particular application that’s just. And after all, we’re not allowed to appeal instead to a law against murder, because there isn’t one. What have we done wrong?

Setting the example instead of resorting to the party line would seem to provide a better example for people to follow and perhaps even a better defense in the long run. CC seems too short-sighted and counter-productive.

Yello!

Hypocrisy only comes in if the person enforces the defensive copyright in a way inconsistent with their ideology.

Yello, Neil!

“THE WORK (AS DEFINED BELOW) IS PROVIDED UNDER THE TERMS OF THIS CREATIVE COMMONS PUBLIC LICENSE (“CCPL” OR “LICENSE”). THE WORK IS PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT AND/OR OTHER APPLICABLE LAW. ANY USE OF THE WORK OTHER THAN AS AUTHORIZED UNDER THIS LICENSE OR COPYRIGHT LAW IS PROHIBITED.”

Yello!

Surely we can leave Justine and Juliette out of this one.

I can see some similarities with the idea in the old common law approach, where what was worth enforced compensation involved a subtle nuance that roughly followed the line “What is likely to lead to violence if not worked out sufficiently some other way?” One doesn’t really need to ask the question before hand; one simply needs a history of precedent in the resolution of violent feuds that form a sort of empirical natural law over time (see Hasnas); there is a charge of legal positivism here but I suspect that you’d bite the bullet on that one. And of course, violence is often the result of your central concept: disrespect.

I think you are right to note that there is a tendency to have an aversion to disrespectful use of intellectual creations (e.g. plagiarism is “bad”) and that doesn’t provide occasion to wonder about why it doesn’t map onto something stronger than boycott (for reasons other than proportionality). This actually seems to take us to where Rand tried to go too, which is starting from IP and working from there to solid property, i.e. all property rights are IP rights. I do know that there are arguments out there against her specific approach, but I’m not very familiar with them. I have to wonder though if they might not strike at your concept of “aggression [sic] as disrespect for ‘ownness’.” At any rate, it might be an interesting way to defend your idea to go to those arguments and cut them off at the pass (or delineate the differences between your idea and Rands).

The difference between the cases seems to be a question of whether “force” can be justly used. And the criteria for that seem to be fairly arbitrary. It isn’t clear that what is wrong in most property crimes goes beyond lack of respect. If crimes involving my stuff (property in one sense) are to be considered invasions of my person (my property in another sense, which presumably is the basis for the first), or some extension of it, then it’s hard to understand how “harms” involving my ideas don’t also involve “property.” A principle of proportionality might suggest immaterial responses to immaterial invasions, or the like, but the hard line drawn between IP and PP seems pretty uncertain to me.

Not being a believer in natural law, of course, all concern for “property” is essentially concern about respect. I suspect that some form of “occupancy and use” criteria would be as workable for IP as for other forms of property.