Actually, not all libertarians. Ayn Rand, for example, considered them an extension of natural rights: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/patents_and_copyrights.htm...

EDIT: Anyone care to point out where is the post wrong? I'm not a Rand follower, but as far as I know she's considered a libertarian and the quotes make her position very obvious.

Ayn Rand was quite vocal about her contempt for libertarianism, though the actual distinctions she made are not entirely clear to me.

One of the numerous errors Rand made was condemning the libertarian movement, but this is pretty hilarious because she was good friends with Rothbard. I believe her use of the word "libertarian" predates the libertarian movement and she's referring to the socialist/communist/"anarchists" of years before.

Part of Rand's philosophy is the Non-Aggression Principle. Some "Objectivists" criticize libertarians for not adopting the whole philosophy and focusing on the NAP.

But every follower of Rand is a Libertarian-- BY DEFINTION-- since both groups subscribe to the NAP.

Your point about Rand's support of IP is correct, and you corrected an over broad statement I made. I didn't think that it needed further illumination because you were correct, but now that I see you're getting down voted, I wanted to assure you that you were right.

If so, how will those rights be enforced? If those rights are enforced by voluntary collective policing, in what way can I defend myself against their declarations of more implicit rights? Basically, if I draw a picture of Mohammed, have I initiated force? What about if you leave your door unlocked, I walk into your house, then drink your milk straight out of the carton? Is this an initiation of force, and if it is, what if you lack the size to prevent me from doing it?

Lastly, if I walk down skid row with a private bodyguard and a wad of $100 bills, offering to buy people as slaves? If they sign, are they my slaves? If they escape, have they initiated force? Is there an involuntary limit to what can be signed away?

tl;dr I'm not getting a clear idea of who defines initiation of force, who enforces violations, and how are the weak protected from the strong. I realize the last one may be a bit of a straw man, because libertarians may not feel that protecting the weak from the strong is moral, but I'm not sure about this.

The answer to these questions depends on information you're not giving in your hypotheticals. For instance:

>"Am I violating a contract by getting in your car and driving it away? ... Have I initiated force in any of these cases? Are there rights that are granted when I haven't explicitly signed a contract?"

I don't know. Did you just sign a rental agreement with me where I give you the right to use the car in exchange for the payment you just gave me? Or are you someone I've never met whose stealing my car?

If we had a society that was just when it comes to the really obvious issues-- like, rape, murder, theft, etc, then we could debate the morality of you singing a son (I'm assuming your hypothetical is singing a song that is copyrighted by someone else, but in my society there would be no implicit copyright.)

I'm not trying to evade. IF you steal my car, it is an initiation of force. If you walk into my house when you don't have permission, its an initiation, whether the door was unlocked or not.

>"and if it is, what if you lack the size to prevent me from doing it?"

I'm addressing the moral question of whether its an imitation or not. The practical question of how to defend against such initiations is a broader topic.

"Is there an involuntary limit to what can be signed away?"

That's also a good topic for debate.

I'd like to start, though, by focusing on the obvious initiations of force-- groups of people using violence to take from others, and groups of people waging wars on the innocent, or incarcerating people for doing drugs, etc.

The NAP doesn't imply there are no grey areas at all-- there are grey areas.

But the NAP does let you see that a lot of areas that people think are white are actually black. That the war on drugs is not only ill advised, but a criminal enterprise.

Virtually every modern society claims to support freedom of association, expression, and contract, until it violates the public order, when it transforms into a initiation of force by terrorists. It all depends on how you define the public order.

edit: to directly answer your question, I'm a guy who you've never met who breaks your car window, gets into your car, and drives away. If you happen to run into me later, I make no attempt to physically prevent you from getting in your car and driving away, although I have fixed the window and changed the locks.

The problem as I see it is not adhering to some principle or another it's that everything is too big and too centralised. I like a lot of what people like Ron Paul are saying, but if we were to give them a free run for a few decades we'd need a new reactionary movement to undo all the problems resulting from their own excesses. People need to let go of the idea that a person can "crack the code" of society and figure out the right ethics for all time.

I don't think anyone who calls themselves libertarian (edit: should have been 'anyone who is libertarian') could approve of any kind of government. Your argument about collectives taking a vote to justify actions applies just as readily to theft and extortion as it does to rape. That is essentially what every government does to its citizens by taxing them — a sufficient number of people have voted by proxy to take a certain amount of your property gains and use force in order to ensure that you comply.

There is a bigger problem with enforcing intellectual property rights by contract. It is easy to illustrate with a book. Let's say that a book has as its first page, the terms and conditions of sale which are, basically, standard copyright provisions. If the first buyer of the book loses the book, is the person who finds the abandoned property still bound by the terms and conditions of the sale? Perhaps, perhaps not. If the book becomes old and worn and some pages fall out, including the terms and conditions of sale, whoever finds the book can't be aware of the rights protected by this contract. Similarly, an unscrupulous person can violate the terms and conditions of sale, and all violations of the contract thereafter can only be attributed to that one unscrupulous person. Enforcing a copyright contract is simply untenable with physical objects. And with digital objects, assuming the absence of Digital Restrictions Management. It seems that free market forces would make most copyright-via-contract schemes unpopular.

But some obviously do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minarchism