2019 Spring, Second Writing Assignment

In this assignment, you are to write arguments both for and against the concept of intellectual property based on ethical considerations.

Your presentation should have five sections:

For your arguments and your conclusion, you can mix whatever systems you like, but please be careful to name a system whenever you reference one.

In particular, it is more challenging to make strong non-consequentialist arguments for the creation of the idea of intellectual property. If you are looking for a challenge with this assignment, I believe that this would be an interesting area to explore — look closely at the von Gunten piece (source 4) and the Harvard Bridge group piece (source 5) in the source list. Both list traditional non-consequentialist arguments for intellectual property, and also give refutations to some of these arguments.

Please read and refer to the following works:

  1. Intellectual Property (background article from Stanford's Plato site)
  2. Ideas Are Free: The Case Against Intellectual Property, by Kinsell
  3. The Case Against Intellectual Property, Boldrin and Levine (note that this link is to JSTOR, and you will likely need to use a campus network address to access this)
  4. Intellectual Property is Common Property, von Gunten
  5. Philosophic Perspectives on Intellectual Property, Harvard's Bridge group

This list is not exclusive, and you are welcome to use whatever additional resources that you would like, but please be careful to cite other people's work and delineate it from your own thoughts.

Please make sure that you put your name, class section, and email address in your paper. Your first draft is due at the beginning of class on April 5, 2019. It is being returned on April 17, and your final paper is due on April 24.