Assignment: Property

David Hume (18th century, Scotland)

“Our property is nothing but those goods, whose constant possession is established by the laws of society; that is, by the laws of justice...A man's property is some object related to him. This relation is not natural, but moral, and founded on justice. ‘Tis very preposterous, therefore, to imagine, that we can have any idea of property, without fully comprehending the nature of justice, and showing its origin in the artifice and contrivance of man. The origin of justice explains that of property. The same artifice gives rise to both.”

Property ownership is derived from laws of justice that are based on morals. The relation between law and property is not natural but instead conventional. Humes asserts that property is an object related to that person. The idea of property could not exist without justice. Justice defines what property is.

http://www.gottabemobile.com/is-jailbreaking-illegal/

I want to talk about jail breaking in the context of property. When a device is purchased what exactly do we own? We don't own the rights to the software because the company owns that. We purchase the physical device itself but we cannot re-make the same exact product for distribution. What the consumer owns in terms of property is access to the physical hardware and the rights to modify their software because the modification itself is a property of the owner. The software is a service that is owned by another entity but the jailbreaking process and resulting software is the property of the user.

David Hume would agree that in the eyes of the law the companies have rights to their patent in regards to product. Its their property. Same goes for the software. No arguments there. Because the product is sold, that becomes the property of consumer which they should be free to do whatever they want with it in terms of modifications. "A man's property is some object related to him" which means the the device in question is now more-so related to the consumer than the company. Jailbreaking infringes on no ones property but the consumers and their product.