Tournament: Loyola Invitational | Round: 2 | Opponent: Millard North Independents JS | Judge: Gedela, Tej
Permissibility and presumption negate – a the resolution indicates the aff has to prove an obligation, and permissibility would deny the existence of an obligation b Statements are more often false than true because any part can be false. This means you negate if there is no offense because the resolution is probably false.
The starting point of morality is practical reason.
1 Bindingness: A theory is only binding when you can answer the question “why should I do this?” and not continue to ask “why”. Only practical reason provides a deductive foundation for ethics since the question “why should I be rational” already concedes the authoritative power of agency since your agency is at work. Bindingness ow its meta-ethical, so it determines what counts as a warrant for a standard, so absent grounding in some metaethical framework, their arguments aren’t relevant normative considerations
2 Action theory: only evaluating action through reason solves since reason is key to evaluate intent, otherwise we could infinitely divide actions. For example: If I was brewing tea, I could break up that one big action into multiple small actions. Only our intention, to brew tea unifies these actions if we were never able to unify action, we could never classify certain actions as moral or immoral since those actions would be infinitely divisible.
3 Empirical uncertainty – Evil demon deceiving us or inability to know others’ experience make empiricism/induction an unreliable basis for universal ethics. Outweighs since it would be escapable since people could say they don’t experience the same.
And, reason must be universal –
A a reason for one agent is a reason for another agent. I can’t say 2+2=4 is true for me but not for you – that’s incoherent.
B any non-universalizable norm justifies someone’s ability to impede on your ends i.e. if I want to eat ice cream, I must recognize that others may affect my pursuit of that end and demand the value of my end be recognized by others, key for following rules since rules are arbitrary since the agent can form a unique interpretation and understanding which makes it impossible to verify a violation. Only universality solves since universalizing a violation of freedom entails a violation of your own freedom, thus a recognizable violation appears also means universalizability acts as a side constraint on all other frameworks.
Thus, the standard is consistency with the categorical imperative’s system of equal and outer freedom. Prefer:
1 Performativity—freedom is the key to the process of justification of arguments. Willing that we should abide by their ethical theory presupposes that we own ourselves in the first place. Thus, it is logically incoherent to justify the neg arguments/standard without first willing that we can pursue ends free from others.
2 Resolvability: Clarity of weighing under our framework: perfect duties above imperfect duties. Duties in right. Explicit categories that supersede other categories. All other FWs are consequentialist that use unquantifiable prob, mag, or prob x mag.
3 Resource disparities- Our framework ensures big squads don’t have a comparative advantage since debates become about quality of arguments rather than quantity - their model crowds out small schools because they have to prep for every unique advantage under each aff, every counterplan, and every disad with carded responses to each of them
Offense
1Reducing IP is a form of free-riding that fails the universality test, but also uses the creators of the medicine as means to an end.
Dyke 18 Dyke, Raymond. “The Categorical Imperative for Innovation and Patenting - IPWatchdog.com: Patents andamp; Patent Law.” IPWatchdog.com | Patents andamp; Patent Law, 1 Oct. 2018, www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/07/17/categorical-imperative-innovation-patenting/id=99178/.dhsNJ
As we shall see, applying Kantian logic entails first acknowledging some basic principles; that the people have a right to express themselves, that that expression (the fruits of their labor) has value and is theirs (unless consent is given otherwise), and that government is obligated to protect people and their property. Thus, an inventor or creator has a right in their own creation, which cannot be taken from them without their consent. So, employing this canon, a proposed Categorical Imperative (CI) is the following Statement: creators should be protected against the unlawful taking of their creation by others. Applying this Statement to everyone, i.e., does the Statement hold water if everyone does this, leads to a yes determination. Whether a child, a book or a prototype, creations of all sorts should be protected, and this CI stands. This result also dovetails with the purpose of government: to protect the people and their possessions by providing laws to that effect, whether for the protection of tangible or intangible things. However, a contrary proposal can be postulated: everyone should be able to use the creations of another without charge. Can this Statement rise to the level of a CI? This proposal, upon analysis would also lead to chaos. Hollywood, for example, unable to protect their films, television shows or any content, would either be out of business or have robust encryption and other trade secret protections, which would seriously undermine content distribution and consumer enjoyment. Likewise, inventors, unable to license or sell their innovations or make any money to cover RandD, would not bother to invent or also resort to strong trade secret. Why even create? This approach thus undermines and greatly hinders the distribution of ideas in a free society, which is contrary to the paradigm of the U.S. patent and copyright systems, which promotes dissemination. By allowing freeriding, innovation and creativity would be thwarted (or at least not encouraged) and trade secret protection would become the mainstay for society with the heightened distrust.
2 Intellectual property is an inalienable personal right of economic use
Pozzo 6 Pozzo, Riccardo. “Immanuel Kant on Intellectual Property.” Trans/Form/Ação, vol. 29, no. 2, 2006, pp. 11–18., doi:10.1590/s0101-31732006000200002. SJDA recut SJKS recut Cookie JX
Corpus mysticum, opus mysticum, propriété incorporelle, proprietà letteraria, geistiges Eigentum. All these terms mean intellectual property, the existence of which is intuitively clear because of the unbreakable bond that ties the work to its creator. The book belongs to whomever has written it, the picture to whomever has painted it, the sculpture to whomever has sculpted it; and this independently from the number of exemplars of the book or of the work of art in their passages from owner to owner. The initial bond cannot change and it ensures the author authority on the work. Kant writes in section 31/II of the Metaphysics of Morals: “Why does unauthorized publishing, which strikes one even at first glance as unjust, still have an appearance of being rightful? Because on the one hand a book is a corporeal artifact (opus mechanicum) that can be reproduced (by someone in legitimate possession of a copy of it), so that there is a right to a thing with regard to it. On the other hand a book is also a mere discourse of the publisher to the public, which the publisher may not repeat publicly without having a mandate from the author to do so (praestatio operae), and this is a right against a person. The error consists in mistaking one of these rights for the other” (Kant, 1902, t.6, p.290). The corpus mysticum, the work considered as an immaterial good, remains property of the author on behalf of the original right of its creation. The corpus mechanicum consists of the exemplars of the book or of the work of art. It becomes the property of whoever has bought the material object in which the work has been reproduced or expressed. Seneca points out in De beneficiis (VII, 6) the difference between owning a thing and owning its use. He tells us that the bookseller Dorus had the habit of calling Cicero’s books his own, while there are people who claim books their own because they have written them and other people that do the same because they have bought them. Seneca concludes that the books can be correctly said to belong to both, for it is true they belong to both, but in a different way The peculiarity of intellectual property consists thus first in being indeed a property, but property of an action; and second in being indeed inalienable, but also transferable in commission and license to a publisher. The bond the author has on his work confers him a moral right that is indeed a personal right. It is also a right to exploit economically his work in all possible ways, a right of economic use, which is a patrimonial right. Kant and Fichte argued that moral right and the right of economic use are strictly connected, and that the offense to one implies inevitably offense to the other. In eighteenth-century Germany, the free use came into discussion among the presuppositions of a democratic renewal of state and society. In his Supplement to the Consideration of Publishing and Its Rights, Reimarus asked writers “instead of writing for the aristocracy, to write for the tiers état of the reader’s world.” (Reimarus, 1791b, p.595). He saluted with enthusiasm the claim of disenfranchising from the monopoly of English publishers expressed in the American Act for the Encouragement of Learning of May 31, 1790. Kant, however, was firm in embracing intellectual property. Referring himself to Roman Law, he asked for its legislative formulation not only as patrimonial right, but also as a personal right. In Of the Illegitimity of Pirate Publishing, he considered the moral faculties related to intellectual property as an “inalienable right (ius personalissimum) always himself to speak through anyone else, the right, that is, that no one may deliver the same speech to the public other than in his (the author’s) name” (Kant, 1902, t.8, p.85). Fichte went farther in the Demonstration of the Illegitimity of Pirate Publishing. He saw intellectual property as a part of his metaphysical construction of intellectual activity, which was based on the principle that thoughts “are not transmitted hand to hand, they are not paid with shining cash, neither are they transmitted to us if we take home the book that contains them and put it into our library. In order to make those thoughts our own an action is still missing: we must read the book, meditate – provided it is not completely trivial – on its content, consider it under different aspects and eventually accept it within our connections of ideas” (Fichte, 1964, t.I/1, p.411). At the center of the discussion was the practice of reprinting books in a pirate edition after having them reset word after words after an exemplar of the original edition. Given Germany’s division in a myriad of small states, the imperial privilege was ineffective against pirate publishing. Kant and Fichte spoke for the acceptance of the right to defend the work of an author by the usurpations of others so that he may receive a patrimonial advantage from those who utilize the work acquiring new knowledge and/or an aesthetic experience. In particular, Fichte declared the absolute primacy of the moral faculties within the corpus mysticum. He divided the latter into a formal and a material part. “This intellectual element must be divided anew into what is material, the content of the book, the thoughts it presents; and the form of these thoughts, the manner in which, the connection in which, the formulations and the words by means of which the book presents them” (Fichte, 1964, t.I/1, p.411). Fichte’s underlining the author’s exclusive right to the intellectual content of his book – “the appropriation of which through another is physically impossible” (ibid.) – brought him to the extreme of prohibiting any form of copy that is not meant for personal use. In Publishing Considered anew, Reimarus considered on the contrary copyright in its patrimonial aspects as a limitation to free trade: “What would not happen were a universal protection against pirate publishing guaranteed? Monopoly and safer sales certainly do not procure convenient price; on the contrary, they are at the origin of great abuses. The only condition for convenient price is free-trade, and one cannot help noticing that upon the appearance of a private edition, publishers are forced to substantially lower the price of a book” (Reimarus, 1791a, pp.402-3). Reimarus admitted of being unable to argue in terms of justice. Justice was of no bearing, he said, for whom, like himself, considered undemonstrated the author’s permanent property of his work (herein supported by the legislative vacuum of those years). What mattered, he said, was equity. In sum, Reimarus anticipated today’s stance on free use by referring to the principle that public interest on knowledge ought to prevail on the author’s interest and to balance the copyright. Moreover, Reimarus extended his argument beyond the realm of literary production to embrace, among others, the today vital issue of pharmaceutical production on patented receipts. “Let us suppose that at some place a detailed description for the preparation of a good medicine or of any other useful thing be published, why may not somebody who lives in places that are far away from that one copy it to use it for his own profit and but must instead ask the original publisher for the issue of each exemplar?” (Reimarus, 1791b, t.2, pp.584). To sum up, Reimarus’s stance does not seem respondent to rule of law. For in all dubious case the general rule ought to prevail, fighting intellectual property with anti-monopolistic arguments in favor of free trade brings with itself consequences that are not tranquilizing also for the ones that are expected to apply the law. By resetting literary texts, one could obviously expurgate some errors. More frequently, however, some were added, given the exclusively commercial objectives of the reprints. The valid principle was, thus, that reprints were less precise than original editions, but they were much cheaper for the simple reason that the pirate publisher had a merely moral obligation against the author and the original publisher. In fact, he was not held to pay any honorarium to the author upon handling over the manuscript, nor to paying him royalties, nor to pay anything to the original publisher. The only expense in charge of the pirate publisher was buying the exemplar of the original edition out of which he was to make, as we say today, a free use.
3 Negs get Contention Choice- It’s key to robust philosophy debates rather than arbitrary contention debates which o/w since phil is unique to LD. It also prevents splitting the debate allowing for in depth clash and 2ar judge psychology spins on the contention level.