Mayfair wrote:solum wrote:copyright is primarily an agent of censorship, unmetered capitalism, and depriving people of art and entertainment.
if copyright exists (as it does) as a right for a publisher to screw everyone else in the ass, then fuck copyright, and fuck its apologists.
I think seeing copyright as a way for some one to screw someone else is such a strange and limited view. Why should you only have to pay for physical things (or am I missing your bigger point that everything should be free to YOU?)? I assume from your argument that if you can not hold things in your hand or clench them between your ass cheeks, the 'item' in question is of no value and therefore 'shareable' at no cost. I am sure you don't put up a fuss at the grocery store when you are buying your dog food. I bet you don't wimper at the shoe store or even at the postoffice when buying stamps (which is funny because the stamp itself is not the value you are purchasing, it is the service you get from it....so maybe you do). A copyright is a document granting exclusive right to publish and sell literary or musical or artistic work, usually by the creator of said item. Are you saying that because he or she can not lock such things in a box, you feel it's just fine to 'share' that person's creation at no cost? I think everyone here should look up the definition of intellectual property. Hopefully it will show you ways of intangible (assets that are saleable though not material or physical) things having value and how that should play out in real life, or at least in the market place.
and once again the point is missed.
back one more step: 'property' and 'law' are ideas invented by people. property is pretty understandable when it is a corporeal, real thing- the idea is that the concepts of ownership and law exist to meter competition for finite resources. this is generally the first utilitarian justification for the existence of property. obviously, it doesn't apply to property which is not subject to competition due to its non-exclusive nature.
the utilitarian justification for IP tends to be the incentive argument i.e. if non-exclusive 'property' is not protected by law, then the creator cannot make money from it. if he cant make money he has no incentive to create: as soon as his product hits the shelves, free loaders will copy it, incurring less costs than the original creator. this way the creator cannot stay competitive and so is eliminated from the market. eventually, there are no creators in the market. this viewpoint is very difficult (if not impossible) to prove. to paraphrase one academic "if copyright disappeared tomorrow, we wouldn't have star wars but we'd still have poetry" (siva vaidhyanathan). in addition, this argument only supports a right which expires once the initial cost have been recouped, after which the free market kicks in.
the next justification, used by publishers on behalf of artists, is the lockean labour theory. this theory is that the way unowned property becomes owned is like so: man mixes his labour with an existing thing, and so the object becomes his. eg. i chop an unowned tree down; so the wood is mine. this argument is extended to IP- i mix my labour with an idea by making it real, by 'fixing' it. i then 'own' my specific form of that idea. however, the word property is misleading: the fundamental need for 'property' arises through competition for finite resources (locke, john stuart mill, hobbes), so if the property is nonexclusive (like all IP
by definition), ie. my copying it doesn't affect how you may enjoy your 'property' then there is no competition, and no need for IP. so, the moral justification falls away into the gap between the creator's claim that they deserve recognition as the creator of the work, and the claim that they therefore are entitled to whatever the market will bear.
now, these are all arguments about
concepts. in real life, people have these rights already, and its always harder to take a right away than it is to give it. however, it doesn't make the right "right".
every piece of IP is a restriction on other people's liberty, in order to allow one person (natural or legal) to make money. where are the ethics in that, all of you who belive there is some sort of moral at stake with IP? we need to dispel the myth about creation being so magical that copyright should be an unlimited, unjustified right to rip people off, and censor other's work. the man whose ideas the US ostensibly based its constitution on (locke) believed that liberty meant that no one should be restricted from doing anything unless it hurt someone else. IP takes this idea through the territory of financial harm (tenuous at best) all the way into the ridiculous super right wing land of hardcore capitalism.
you know that the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act stops fair use of copyrighted work where the work is protected by digital means? a schoolteacher cannot make clips of a film to use in class (always allowed before) if there are 'digital gates' on the work. you know that reverse engineering software breaks the law? you all know that copyright means fuck all to the artists who are forced to sign away their rights in perpetuity to make a dime?
now: i'm sick and tired of uninformed copyright debate, and being told to read webiste definitions of IP, whose authors will not admit to their ideas' shady philospohical origins, if they have even been properly thought through at all. i'm sick of IP being charecterised as something that can be stolen, simply because people are too lazy to properly conceptualise the fundamental aspects of their argument. by all means, carry on the "FUCK THA MAJOR LABELS" and "YOURE A CHEAP THIEF" schtick, but i hope you're fucking embarrassed as you do it.
ps. mayfair, i've studied the law for more hours than you've slept, don't lecture me as to basic definitions of copyright or IP. or at least, if you do, get it right next time. you're showing yourself up.