"directors and officers of a company are bound by fiduciary duties to act in the best interest of the shareholders"
"When a fiduciary duty is imposed, equity requires a stricter standard of behavior than the comparable tortious duty of care at common law. It is said the fiduciary has a duty not to be in a situation where personal interests and fiduciary duty conflict, a duty not to be in a situation where his fiduciary duty conflicts with another fiduciary duty, and a duty not to profit from his fiduciary position without express knowledge and consent. A fiduciary cannot have a conflict of interest."
YJMV
This pretty much makes corporations sociopaths. The law says 'Ignore your petty ethical considerations, the ends of maximising the share price justify any means of achieving it'. Even emptying oil wells into the ocean to bring about stricter regulations to impede upcoming competition is fine, irrespective of incurring trivial pollution penalties (and forget any environmental conscientiousness).
You cannot both have an interest in protecting the environment AND protecting the share price.
The PR benefit of expressing a damn about people's cultural liberty is a speck of dust compared with exploiting state granted reproduction monopolies - and lobbying for ever greater enforcement until there are so many kids in jail there are none left with any money. But, then considering the example set by fishing industries, they WILL extract revenue until there's none left and no-one left to earn it. Hence why transitioning to the taxation of the Internet is seen as a more sustainable revenue model (by the state in its favour for publishing corporations).
Similar 'over-fishing' issues apply to use of monopolies in drugs (patents) and crops (GM patents).
What mankind fails to learn from history is that he is doomed to repeat it. Check out the history concerning previous cases of monopoly blighted societies. It's the sort of thing to foment civil war.
I wouldn't say I agreed "that the Constitution can empower Congress to grant a right/privilege" in the general sense.
As per Paine, privileges are instruments of injustice and a Constitution would invalidate itself if it empowered their granting.
That the Constitution specifically empowered the granting of powers of seizure against an enemy in time of war does not essentially contradict this (even if they meet the definition of privilege).
But if anything, the GRANTing of 'Letters of Marque' should help you recognise that the Framers had a grasp of language necessary to empower the granting of privileges as opposed to the securing of (natural) rights. What they didn't have a grasp of was how the language would evolve over the coming decades until 'right' was used in place of 'privilege', and people would interpret the Constitution as if it had been written for the 21st century reader (indoctrinated to believe that copyright was as much a right as a right against burglary).
Be careful not to confuse clauses and amendments with legislation that people claim had their sanction.
Copyright was created in 1709. It was enacted by the US in 1790. It is probably the 'not invented here' syndrome that makes people assume copyright was carefully drafted as a means of securing an author's exclusive right to their writings in order to 'promote the progress'.
Suggesting that copyright enhances free speech is a contortion resulting from the corrupting imperative that 'Copyright's constitutionality must not be questioned!'.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The "balance" delusion
It should be blindingly obvious that an author's (natural) exclusive right (and its securing) does not abridge another's freedom of speech.
It is the monopoly in the Statute of Anne that annuls the right to copy (and so abridges the freedom of speech to communicate a 'protected' work) in the majority of inhabitants to leave it by exclusion in the hands of a few.
However, a law that is strictly limited to securing an author's (natural) exclusive right to their writings (that does not deny people the liberty to copy or communicate that which is in their legitimate possession - to grant the privilege of a monopoly) is a law that does not abridge the freedom of speech.
Natural rights do not abridge natural rights. Privileges do. Law that secures rights is good. Law that grants privileges is bad.
If people persist in deluding themselves that the Progress clause grants copyright they will persist in failing to resolve inherent contradictions in Constitutional protections of the individual's natural rights and the privilege of copyright that derogates from them.
Devout faith that the Constitution empowered Congress to grant copyright is tantamount to hypnosis or brain damage in affecting people's mental capacity to resolve Constitutionally recognised right vs the fait accompli of legislated privilege.
So I'll add that not only do you need to grok natural rights and its respective 18th century terminology in order to understand the Constitution, you also need to be willing to countenance the terrifying possibility that the Statute of Anne is unconstitutional. No matter how many coveted the monopoly it legislated, it did not secure the author's exclusive right, but instead abridged the people's cultural liberty (by annulling the individual's right to copy).
Congress can be empowered to secure a natural right because it already exists. This is the uncontroversial interpretation of the clause from a natural rights perspective.
Let us imagine Congress could be empowered to secure a privilege that is to be later granted.
You'll be needing another clause that empowers Congress to grant that privilege. Where does the Constitution empower Congress to derogate the right to copy from the individual's liberty?
Letters of marque are military instruments for use against an enemy in time of war, and explicitly sanctioned - "Congress shall have power ... to grant Letters of Marque".
Where's the clause that says "Congress shall have power ... to grant monopolies in literary works"?
If there was such a clause then perhaps Congress could also be empowered to secure that monopoly on behalf of the holder - though privileges aren't supposed to be secured by the government as policed and prosecuted by their holders.
All arguments that the Constitution empowers Congress to grant monopolies are based on wishful thinking - arising from ingrained dogma - deep indoctrination.
Why else call a clause that doesn't mention copyright the 'copyright clause'?
Thomas Paine knew well that a Constitution could not empower a government to grant privileges (except when such instruments of injustice might be warranted such as against an enemy in wartime).
Most people believe 'exclusive right' refers to 'legally granted right to exclude others', i.e. 'copyright'. And yet, copyright hadn't been granted, so how could the Constitution refer to a right that didn't exist until years later?
Unlike material property, intellectual works (writings/designs) are subject to different facilities in terms of being able to be communicated and reproduced. They therefore need special consideration in terms of natural rights. I can naturally exclude you from the intellectual works in my private possession in terms of preventing you copying them as well as in terms of preventing you removing the material in which they are fixed. It's the aspect of excluding others from copying that needs recognition in the Constitution.
Where did the Constitution empower ('authorise'?) Congress to grant a privilege?
Should we suffer copyright because Madison wanted it legislated or should the literal reading of the Constitution strictly limit power delivered to Congress to do no more than protect its citizens' (natural) rights?
If the literal reading does not empower the granting of monopolies such as copyright, who's to know what other Framers only ratified it because of that literal reading?
If it had said "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by granting to authors and inventors transferable monopolies in their respective literary works and mechanical designs" it would have been rejected.
Human rights originate in Nature, thus, rights cannot be granted via political charter, because that implies that rights are legally revocable, hence, would be privileges:
It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect — that of taking rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few . . . They . . . consequently are instruments of injustice.
The fact, therefore, must be that the individuals, themselves, each, in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.
Government's sole purpose is safeguarding the individual and his/her inherent, inalienable rights
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Constitution is nevertheless consistent
I wasn't trying to suggest interpretation of heavenly bodies was comparable to interpretation of a nation's constitution, only that entrenched dogma can prove extremely resistant to anything that challenges it (however superior an explanation).
All I can do is introduce people to the explanation - withstanding any vitriolic denigration.
The most plausible explanation is that Madison knew he couldn't write a clause that explicitly empowered Congress to enact the Statute of Anne or grant monopolies in literary works, so in expecting that he could later rely upon tacit agreement that copyright was an individual's (natural) right, he simply empowered Congress to secure the individual's (natural) exclusive right to their writings.
The clause in this form obviously passed by anyone who would have challenged an explicit empowerment to grant privileges/monopolies - because giving power to secure a (natural, pre-existing) right was within the remit of the Constitution.
So the clause is a fuck-up. It didn't ring any alarm bells because it didn't empower Congress to grant monopolies (such as in literary works). And yet copyright was still able to be legislated (with inferred Constitutional sanction). Even England had arguments as to whether copyright was a natural right (eventually recognising it wasn't).
So, however much some assumed copyright was constitutional in 1790 and however much nearly everyone assumes it is constitutional in 2010, it isn't.
I will agree that Madison probably intended/expected the clause to sanction the granting of copyright, but it didn't. It's possible he recognised this, and even recognised that it would therefore be more readily approved by others. I suspect Jefferson recognised it was insufficient, hence why he suggested adding 'monopolies in literary works' to the Bill of Rights (which Madison declined, no doubt realising it would only draw others' attention to the issue).
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Constitution is nevertheless consistent
From researching the natural rights/libertarian philosophy that informed The Founding Fathers and Framers of the US Constitution.
This bio http://www.thomaspaine.org/bio/edison.html helps explain why so few are able to similarly recognise why the 'progress clause' could not empower the granting of privileges* (even if people believe Madison wanted it to).
It requires interpreting the Constitution from a natural rights perspective, which permeated the Framers' minds as copyright permeates ours. Unfortunately, it's exceedingly difficult to divest our indoctrination of copyright and corruption of terms such as 'right' as in 'legally granted right', in order to recognise the meaning of right vs privilege in the Constitution.
So you'll need to be amenable to the natural rights philosophy and a bit of philology.
Re: Re: The Constitution is nevertheless consistent
Mike, no worries.
Very few people agreed with the heretics that claimed the Earth orbited the Sun.
The interpretation that remains when the impossible has been eliminated, no matter how incredible (or unpalatable to the faithful) must be the truth.
I think there's probably about the same level of entrenched support for copyright and devout faith that its legislation was Constitutional as there was for Earth being central.
I'll let you know when any legal scholars start agreeing with me. There probably are some who would agree with me already, but neither of us has yet become aware of them.
I think most copyright supporters have a safety shield that prevents them reading abolitionists' comments - as if by hypnosis, such writing collapses into white space.
No, copyright is not authorised within the Constitution.
Congress is empowered to secure an author's (natural) exclusive right to their writings.
The 'progress clause' does not empower Congress to grant privileges.
The Statute of Anne was simply copied, tweaked and legislated in 1790 without Constitutional sanction.
It is revisionism to interpret power to secure a natural right as power to derogate from the individual's liberty (the whole fricking point of the Constitution being to protect such liberty) in order to grant a monopoly for the benefit of the press.
Some such as Madison no doubt wanted copyright enacted, but that doesn't mean The Constitution empowered Congress to enact it.
The argument for 'balance' is also known as the logical fallacy of 'appeal to moderation', i.e. that extremism is by nature invalid and justice always to be found as a happy medium.
No doubt those who called for abolition of slavery could be rejected on the same basis, that the correct approach to growing disquiet in the cotton fields would have been most appropriately addressed by finding balance between the farmers' labour needs and their slaves' need for better living conditions.
At the end of the day individuals have a natural liberty to share and build upon mankind's culture. The question is whether the state should place the demands of its wealthy publishing corporations over and above the natural rights of its citizens. It's not a balance. It's copyright or abolition. Like pregnancy (no such thing as 'slightly pregnant'), either people are at liberty to make copies of what they have or they are not.
Copyright (the re-enactment of the Statute of Anne in the US in 1790) does indeed conflict with the right to free speech.
However, as I've tried to explain to you before, Mike, the 'progress' clause does not conflict.
People are naturally at liberty to copy or communicate any speech or intellectual work that they are in legitimate possession of.
Authors have a natural right to exclude others from their writings (in their possession) - because others are NOT in possession of them (must commit burglary in order to obtain them).
This is why the author's exclusive right to their writings does not conflict with any other individual's freedom of speech.
Copyright, on the other hand, says that even if an individual is in rightful possession or receipt of a covered work they still cannot copy or communicate it (even within the privacy of their own home). That's why the privilege of copyright is fundamentally unethical, an anachronistic instrument of injustice that should have been abolished along with slavery.
If a corporation can lobby the government to let it continue to legally extract money from all participants in mankind's cultural exchange and yet provide ever diminishing levels of service in return, then it's increasing its profits and share price - something it's legally constrained to do.
So, really it all comes down to corrupt law: The creation of legal entities we call corporations. The creation of legalised extortion rackets (monopolies of copyright & patent). The creation of further laws to force others to police/enforce their rackets and laws to punish any disobedience on the part of the citizenry.
To assume corporations have an entitlement mentality is to buy in to the idea that corporations are human beings who might have a brain into which a feeling of entitlement might manifest. Corporations are best considered immortal alien robots whose predatory Asimov-like 'laws' direct them to maximise the extraction of revenue from the human workforce.
The solution is obvious:
1. Dissolve corporations into associations of culpable individuals (with no legal constraint to maximise share price)
2. Abolish all privileges, such as copyright & patent
3. Reform trademark, e.g. change to law against passing off
4. Reform libel laws - end legal concept of defamation
Implementing that solution is of course a bigger problem, with a less than obvious solution.
This predicament was created through an accretion of corruption (lobbied legislation).
Well, of course, everything we talk about is a concept or idea.
The argument it seems you would have is whether the concept of natural rights does have a basis in nature. Whether people's need/ability to preserve their lives, need/ability to exclude others from the spaces they inhabit and objects they possess, need/ability to pursue and apprehend the truth, and need/ability to evade capture or control by others are powers they have by nature or because a state thinks it would be useful to grant them.
Natural rights are recognitions of the individual's self-evident needs and abilities and their power to fulfil and protect them - and that individuals come together to empower a government to protect these rights (equally).
If you don't recognise any truth in that, you may prefer to consider the corporation primary, and the state as subordinate marshal of a secondary human workforce, with 'rights' being privileges granted/rescinded to citizens for good/bad behaviour.
The thing is, the word 'right' and its meaning precedes the invention of the corporation (and the elevation of the corporation above the individual).
Thomas Paine was by no means the first to recognise the existence of (natural) rights and explain them, but he wrote some good stuff in the 18th century. See Wikipedia (Rights of Man):
Human rights originate in Nature, thus, rights cannot be granted via political charter, because that implies that rights are legally revocable, hence, would be privileges:
It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect - that of taking rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few . . . They . . . consequently are instruments of injustice.
The fact, therefore, must be that the individuals, themselves, each, in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.
I really don't think it's wise to persist in claiming that individuals don't have any (natural) rights, that all we have are privileges (legally granted rights) that a paternalistic state considers conducive to a well behaved populace.
There is an incentive of course, to denigrate natural rights, because if individual liberty is a natural right that ethically supersedes the monopoly that derogates the right to copy from it, then supporters of copyright will be keen to deny any distinction between rights individuals have by nature and transferable privileges granted by law (that lucratively end up amassed and enjoyed by legal entities we call corporations).
On the post: Why Must ISPs Pay To Be The Mandatory Copyright Cops Of The Entertainment Industry?
Re: Re: Money for nothing
"When a fiduciary duty is imposed, equity requires a stricter standard of behavior than the comparable tortious duty of care at common law. It is said the fiduciary has a duty not to be in a situation where personal interests and fiduciary duty conflict, a duty not to be in a situation where his fiduciary duty conflicts with another fiduciary duty, and a duty not to profit from his fiduciary position without express knowledge and consent. A fiduciary cannot have a conflict of interest."
YJMV
This pretty much makes corporations sociopaths. The law says 'Ignore your petty ethical considerations, the ends of maximising the share price justify any means of achieving it'. Even emptying oil wells into the ocean to bring about stricter regulations to impede upcoming competition is fine, irrespective of incurring trivial pollution penalties (and forget any environmental conscientiousness).
You cannot both have an interest in protecting the environment AND protecting the share price.
The PR benefit of expressing a damn about people's cultural liberty is a speck of dust compared with exploiting state granted reproduction monopolies - and lobbying for ever greater enforcement until there are so many kids in jail there are none left with any money. But, then considering the example set by fishing industries, they WILL extract revenue until there's none left and no-one left to earn it. Hence why transitioning to the taxation of the Internet is seen as a more sustainable revenue model (by the state in its favour for publishing corporations).
Similar 'over-fishing' issues apply to use of monopolies in drugs (patents) and crops (GM patents).
What mankind fails to learn from history is that he is doomed to repeat it. Check out the history concerning previous cases of monopoly blighted societies. It's the sort of thing to foment civil war.
On the post: When You Realize That Copyright Law Violates Free Speech Rights, You Begin To Recognize The Problems...
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copyright vs.1st Amendment
As per Paine, privileges are instruments of injustice and a Constitution would invalidate itself if it empowered their granting.
That the Constitution specifically empowered the granting of powers of seizure against an enemy in time of war does not essentially contradict this (even if they meet the definition of privilege).
But if anything, the GRANTing of 'Letters of Marque' should help you recognise that the Framers had a grasp of language necessary to empower the granting of privileges as opposed to the securing of (natural) rights. What they didn't have a grasp of was how the language would evolve over the coming decades until 'right' was used in place of 'privilege', and people would interpret the Constitution as if it had been written for the 21st century reader (indoctrinated to believe that copyright was as much a right as a right against burglary).
On the post: When You Realize That Copyright Law Violates Free Speech Rights, You Begin To Recognize The Problems...
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Copyright was created in 1709. It was enacted by the US in 1790. It is probably the 'not invented here' syndrome that makes people assume copyright was carefully drafted as a means of securing an author's exclusive right to their writings in order to 'promote the progress'.
Suggesting that copyright enhances free speech is a contortion resulting from the corrupting imperative that 'Copyright's constitutionality must not be questioned!'.
On the post: When You Realize That Copyright Law Violates Free Speech Rights, You Begin To Recognize The Problems...
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The "balance" delusion
It is the monopoly in the Statute of Anne that annuls the right to copy (and so abridges the freedom of speech to communicate a 'protected' work) in the majority of inhabitants to leave it by exclusion in the hands of a few.
However, a law that is strictly limited to securing an author's (natural) exclusive right to their writings (that does not deny people the liberty to copy or communicate that which is in their legitimate possession - to grant the privilege of a monopoly) is a law that does not abridge the freedom of speech.
Natural rights do not abridge natural rights. Privileges do. Law that secures rights is good. Law that grants privileges is bad.
If people persist in deluding themselves that the Progress clause grants copyright they will persist in failing to resolve inherent contradictions in Constitutional protections of the individual's natural rights and the privilege of copyright that derogates from them.
Devout faith that the Constitution empowered Congress to grant copyright is tantamount to hypnosis or brain damage in affecting people's mental capacity to resolve Constitutionally recognised right vs the fait accompli of legislated privilege.
So I'll add that not only do you need to grok natural rights and its respective 18th century terminology in order to understand the Constitution, you also need to be willing to countenance the terrifying possibility that the Statute of Anne is unconstitutional. No matter how many coveted the monopoly it legislated, it did not secure the author's exclusive right, but instead abridged the people's cultural liberty (by annulling the individual's right to copy).
On the post: When You Realize That Copyright Law Violates Free Speech Rights, You Begin To Recognize The Problems...
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copyright vs.1st Amendment
Let us imagine Congress could be empowered to secure a privilege that is to be later granted.
You'll be needing another clause that empowers Congress to grant that privilege. Where does the Constitution empower Congress to derogate the right to copy from the individual's liberty?
Letters of marque are military instruments for use against an enemy in time of war, and explicitly sanctioned - "Congress shall have power ... to grant Letters of Marque".
Where's the clause that says "Congress shall have power ... to grant monopolies in literary works"?
If there was such a clause then perhaps Congress could also be empowered to secure that monopoly on behalf of the holder - though privileges aren't supposed to be secured by the government as policed and prosecuted by their holders.
All arguments that the Constitution empowers Congress to grant monopolies are based on wishful thinking - arising from ingrained dogma - deep indoctrination.
Why else call a clause that doesn't mention copyright the 'copyright clause'?
Thomas Paine knew well that a Constitution could not empower a government to grant privileges (except when such instruments of injustice might be warranted such as against an enemy in wartime).
On the post: When You Realize That Copyright Law Violates Free Speech Rights, You Begin To Recognize The Problems...
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copyright vs.1st Amendment
Unlike material property, intellectual works (writings/designs) are subject to different facilities in terms of being able to be communicated and reproduced. They therefore need special consideration in terms of natural rights. I can naturally exclude you from the intellectual works in my private possession in terms of preventing you copying them as well as in terms of preventing you removing the material in which they are fixed. It's the aspect of excluding others from copying that needs recognition in the Constitution.
Where did the Constitution empower ('authorise'?) Congress to grant a privilege?
On the post: When You Realize That Copyright Law Violates Free Speech Rights, You Begin To Recognize The Problems...
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copyright vs.1st Amendment
If the literal reading does not empower the granting of monopolies such as copyright, who's to know what other Framers only ratified it because of that literal reading?
If it had said "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by granting to authors and inventors transferable monopolies in their respective literary works and mechanical designs" it would have been rejected.
See Wikipedia:
On the post: When You Realize That Copyright Law Violates Free Speech Rights, You Begin To Recognize The Problems...
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Constitution is nevertheless consistent
All I can do is introduce people to the explanation - withstanding any vitriolic denigration.
On the post: When You Realize That Copyright Law Violates Free Speech Rights, You Begin To Recognize The Problems...
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Constitution is nevertheless consistent
If it quacks it doesn't mean it's a canard.
On the post: When You Realize That Copyright Law Violates Free Speech Rights, You Begin To Recognize The Problems...
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copyright vs.1st Amendment
The clause in this form obviously passed by anyone who would have challenged an explicit empowerment to grant privileges/monopolies - because giving power to secure a (natural, pre-existing) right was within the remit of the Constitution.
So the clause is a fuck-up. It didn't ring any alarm bells because it didn't empower Congress to grant monopolies (such as in literary works). And yet copyright was still able to be legislated (with inferred Constitutional sanction). Even England had arguments as to whether copyright was a natural right (eventually recognising it wasn't).
So, however much some assumed copyright was constitutional in 1790 and however much nearly everyone assumes it is constitutional in 2010, it isn't.
I will agree that Madison probably intended/expected the clause to sanction the granting of copyright, but it didn't. It's possible he recognised this, and even recognised that it would therefore be more readily approved by others. I suspect Jefferson recognised it was insufficient, hence why he suggested adding 'monopolies in literary works' to the Bill of Rights (which Madison declined, no doubt realising it would only draw others' attention to the issue).
On the post: When You Realize That Copyright Law Violates Free Speech Rights, You Begin To Recognize The Problems...
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Constitution is nevertheless consistent
This bio http://www.thomaspaine.org/bio/edison.html helps explain why so few are able to similarly recognise why the 'progress clause' could not empower the granting of privileges* (even if people believe Madison wanted it to).
* Necessarily rights derogating.
On the post: When You Realize That Copyright Law Violates Free Speech Rights, You Begin To Recognize The Problems...
Re: Re: Re: Copyright vs.1st Amendment
It requires interpreting the Constitution from a natural rights perspective, which permeated the Framers' minds as copyright permeates ours. Unfortunately, it's exceedingly difficult to divest our indoctrination of copyright and corruption of terms such as 'right' as in 'legally granted right', in order to recognise the meaning of right vs privilege in the Constitution.
So you'll need to be amenable to the natural rights philosophy and a bit of philology.
On the post: When You Realize That Copyright Law Violates Free Speech Rights, You Begin To Recognize The Problems...
Re: Re: The Constitution is nevertheless consistent
Very few people agreed with the heretics that claimed the Earth orbited the Sun.
The interpretation that remains when the impossible has been eliminated, no matter how incredible (or unpalatable to the faithful) must be the truth.
I think there's probably about the same level of entrenched support for copyright and devout faith that its legislation was Constitutional as there was for Earth being central.
I'll let you know when any legal scholars start agreeing with me. There probably are some who would agree with me already, but neither of us has yet become aware of them.
On the post: Why It's Important Not To Call Copyright Infringement Theft
I am
On the post: When You Realize That Copyright Law Violates Free Speech Rights, You Begin To Recognize The Problems...
Re: Copyright vs.1st Amendment
Congress is empowered to secure an author's (natural) exclusive right to their writings.
The 'progress clause' does not empower Congress to grant privileges.
The Statute of Anne was simply copied, tweaked and legislated in 1790 without Constitutional sanction.
It is revisionism to interpret power to secure a natural right as power to derogate from the individual's liberty (the whole fricking point of the Constitution being to protect such liberty) in order to grant a monopoly for the benefit of the press.
Some such as Madison no doubt wanted copyright enacted, but that doesn't mean The Constitution empowered Congress to enact it.
On the post: When You Realize That Copyright Law Violates Free Speech Rights, You Begin To Recognize The Problems...
Re: Re: Re: The "balance" delusion
Excellent.
On the post: When You Realize That Copyright Law Violates Free Speech Rights, You Begin To Recognize The Problems...
Re: The "balance" delusion
No doubt those who called for abolition of slavery could be rejected on the same basis, that the correct approach to growing disquiet in the cotton fields would have been most appropriately addressed by finding balance between the farmers' labour needs and their slaves' need for better living conditions.
At the end of the day individuals have a natural liberty to share and build upon mankind's culture. The question is whether the state should place the demands of its wealthy publishing corporations over and above the natural rights of its citizens. It's not a balance. It's copyright or abolition. Like pregnancy (no such thing as 'slightly pregnant'), either people are at liberty to make copies of what they have or they are not.
On the post: When You Realize That Copyright Law Violates Free Speech Rights, You Begin To Recognize The Problems...
The Constitution is nevertheless consistent
However, as I've tried to explain to you before, Mike, the 'progress' clause does not conflict.
People are naturally at liberty to copy or communicate any speech or intellectual work that they are in legitimate possession of.
Authors have a natural right to exclude others from their writings (in their possession) - because others are NOT in possession of them (must commit burglary in order to obtain them).
This is why the author's exclusive right to their writings does not conflict with any other individual's freedom of speech.
Copyright, on the other hand, says that even if an individual is in rightful possession or receipt of a covered work they still cannot copy or communicate it (even within the privacy of their own home). That's why the privilege of copyright is fundamentally unethical, an anachronistic instrument of injustice that should have been abolished along with slavery.
On the post: Why Must ISPs Pay To Be The Mandatory Copyright Cops Of The Entertainment Industry?
Money for nothing
So, really it all comes down to corrupt law: The creation of legal entities we call corporations. The creation of legalised extortion rackets (monopolies of copyright & patent). The creation of further laws to force others to police/enforce their rackets and laws to punish any disobedience on the part of the citizenry.
To assume corporations have an entitlement mentality is to buy in to the idea that corporations are human beings who might have a brain into which a feeling of entitlement might manifest. Corporations are best considered immortal alien robots whose predatory Asimov-like 'laws' direct them to maximise the extraction of revenue from the human workforce.
The solution is obvious:
1. Dissolve corporations into associations of culpable individuals (with no legal constraint to maximise share price)
2. Abolish all privileges, such as copyright & patent
3. Reform trademark, e.g. change to law against passing off
4. Reform libel laws - end legal concept of defamation
Implementing that solution is of course a bigger problem, with a less than obvious solution.
This predicament was created through an accretion of corruption (lobbied legislation).
On the post: Why It's Important Not To Call Copyright Infringement Theft
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The argument it seems you would have is whether the concept of natural rights does have a basis in nature. Whether people's need/ability to preserve their lives, need/ability to exclude others from the spaces they inhabit and objects they possess, need/ability to pursue and apprehend the truth, and need/ability to evade capture or control by others are powers they have by nature or because a state thinks it would be useful to grant them.
Natural rights are recognitions of the individual's self-evident needs and abilities and their power to fulfil and protect them - and that individuals come together to empower a government to protect these rights (equally).
If you don't recognise any truth in that, you may prefer to consider the corporation primary, and the state as subordinate marshal of a secondary human workforce, with 'rights' being privileges granted/rescinded to citizens for good/bad behaviour.
The thing is, the word 'right' and its meaning precedes the invention of the corporation (and the elevation of the corporation above the individual).
Thomas Paine was by no means the first to recognise the existence of (natural) rights and explain them, but he wrote some good stuff in the 18th century. See Wikipedia (Rights of Man):
I really don't think it's wise to persist in claiming that individuals don't have any (natural) rights, that all we have are privileges (legally granted rights) that a paternalistic state considers conducive to a well behaved populace.
There is an incentive of course, to denigrate natural rights, because if individual liberty is a natural right that ethically supersedes the monopoly that derogates the right to copy from it, then supporters of copyright will be keen to deny any distinction between rights individuals have by nature and transferable privileges granted by law (that lucratively end up amassed and enjoyed by legal entities we call corporations).
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