There are many unethical and ethical things people can do with respect to intellectual works.
Copyright is unethical.
Copyright can be ethically neutralised, e.g. by providing a copyleft license.
Some of the ethical things that you can do with respect to an intellectual work will infringe a holder's privilege of copyright.
So, some copyright infringement is ethical.
Generally all acts that individuals are naturally at liberty to do are ethical irrespective of whether they infringe copyright.
Singing a song you've heard on the radio in public (even in a supermarket) is ethical even if you haven't paid the compulsory license fee.
Selling five million t-shirts with the lyrics to Lennon's song Imagine printed on them is not unethical - despite being a large scale commercial infringement.
Copyright is an instrument of injustice - it prohibits and criminalises ethical acts of cultural engagement and exchange.
I would accept a definition of theft as anyone (I have not given authorised access to my private domain) who violates my privacy to reduce/diminish/destroy/remove/appropriate/access/operate/copy/consume/exploit/borrow/communicate my possessions.
Copyright, in prohibiting my liberty to make copies or derivatives of my own possessions, even in the privacy of my own home, is therefore a violation of my privacy and diminishment of my use of my possessions.
Now even if you can't bring yourself to call this theft (as obtaining possession), perhaps you'll at least see how it is far closer to theft (as act of burglary and impairment of property) than illicit manufacture and sale of goods contrary to grant of monopoly (infringement of copyright).
I respect your argument. When I say 'copyright is theft' I'm certainly not saying "copyright meets the popular definition and understanding of the meaning of the word 'theft'". I'm asserting that it could and should be regarded as theft, at least in some aspect.
Queen Anne diminished our property rights such that we can do less with our own property than we used to be able to.
I can still read my book of folk tales, but I can no longer write out a copy nor embellish or alter it for the benefit of my child. If I do take back my natural liberty to do this, I commit copyright infringement.
Copyright is theft.
Copyright infringement is liberty.
Copyright is an instrument of injustice and should be abolished.
Those who want to keep the privilege will describe detractors as pirates, anarchists, or extremists and their words as hyperbole.
Legislatively granted 'rights' or legal 'rights' (properly termed privileges) are unethical - instruments of injustice.
Natural/human rights used to be simply rights, needing no qualification, until the granted ones displaced them in common parlance as they do today.
Unsurprisingly, because (natural) rights are ethical and privileges (legal rights) aren't, many so called IP lawyers will prefer to use 'right' rather than privilege to describe copyright and its decomposition - obviously, because it sounds FAR better (ethically legitimate).
"I have a right to exclude you from singing my song" sounds far better than "I've been granted the privilege of being able to sue you if you sing my song".
Copyright is so called, because it is the right to copy, annulled in the majority, left by exclusion, in the hands of a few.
So it is a right, naturally yours (and everyone's), but derogated by statute to create a privilege for the exploitation of printers/publishing corporations.
Thus copyright is a privilege - everyone else's right to copy specially suspended and reserved to a certain holder - initially the initial possessor of the original work (the author).
In other words copyright constitutes theft, theft from you of an act you would naturally be able to perform in the privacy of your own home - making copies of your possessions (songs, stories, pictures, etc.). This is why publishing corporations would like to invade your privacy in order to detect any private copies you make or share with your friends.
Now as for natural or human rights such as the author's exclusive right to their writings (as recognised in the US Constitution), this is logically limited to the natural lifespan of the individual. Corpses have no privacy (barring familial considerations).
Re: Re: Natural rights gives a straightforward explanation
It may be time for you to decide whether society grants you your right to life, or whether nature imbues you with it.
Any state that attempts to convince its citizens that their (natural) rights are granted to them and can be rescinded where expeditious soon finds a tadette of disquiet - ultimately ending with insurrection.
You may have noticed this sort of thing happened concerning slavery with respect to a certain class of citizens and their (natural) rights.
Even the privilege of copyright's derogation of people's natural right to liberty (their right to copy) is currently challenging your assertion that the right to liberty or to copy is granted to people at the state's convenience.
Saying that there are no natural rights, that all rights are granted by society (thus making copyright a right rather than a privilege), is a denial of reality (no doubt led by an ulterior aspiration to power).
The nature of Homo Sapiens has been determined through millions of years of evolution, not the whim of social engineers operating under the delusion they can extract a 'social contract' from people to surrender aspects of their natural rights for the 'greater good'.
Ask the millions of file-sharers why they do not continue to respect the social contract they notionally agreed to in 1790 to recognise the exclusive right of copyright holders to manufacture copies of covered works and no-one else. For you this is presumably delinquency to be remedied by 're-education'. For those who recognise natural law it is human nature, natural cultural liberty.
It is copyright that is unnatural, cultural liberty that is natural.
It is not a matter of cultural liberty granted to people or rescinded from them according to the state's need for a wealthy and well behaved press - except in the minds of those with contempt for the natural rights of human beings (such as the boards of publishing corporations).
Natural rights gives a straightforward explanation
An individual has a natural right to exclude others from their private domain (spaces/possessions) - that which a human being is naturally able to occupy, secure and exclude others from.
Theft is the removal or communication of any material or intellectual work from an individual's private domain by someone not privy (given authorised access). It matters not whether the thief has been 'helpful' and left substitutes, copies or originals behind.
If someone has been granted a privilege that enables them to sue anyone who competes with them in the marketplace concerning manufacture and supply of covered works, whether baskets or books, then manufacture & supply contrary to this is purely an INFRINGEMENT of that privilege. It is violation of no-one's privacy, but competing supply contrary to the grant of monopoly. One could infer that there may have been illicit collection of market revenue reserved to the monopoly holder, but this is rather inexact and nebulous.
'Theft' should be reserved for violation of the natural right, not infringement of a state granted privilege.
There's plenty that is stupid with DRM, but there's nothing actually wrong with it.
The only thing that is wrong is the privilege of copyright, and the DMCA that prohibits the circumvention of 'technical protection measures' that make even a weedy effort to impede the efforts of possessors to make copies.
Without copyright or the DMCA, there'd be no problem. DRM would soon be regarded as crazy as a perpetual motion machine.
It's because there are crazy laws on the statute books that say it's possible to legally prevent people copying what they have, that people then assume it's technically possible to prevent it.
We must remember that it's only possible to prevent people copying what they DO NOT HAVE. This is a natural law. You cannot both give someone access to a work AND prevent them communicating it or making a copy of it.
Yup, it's a bit like calling the police to arrest soldiers for killing people on the battlefield.
Copyright is a monopoly.
If you don't want such anti-competitive commercial privileges then abolish them. Don't be so stupid as to quibble between 'fairly anti-competitive' and 'unfairly anti-competitive'.
Unfortunately, when it comes to copyright, and its 'harmonisation' via ACTA, you are subject to US legislation (per lobbied interpretation by Congress of the US Constitution) so are effectively an American in this context (assuming you mean 'citizen of USA').
If you should say 'Thank Goodness' for anything it's that you aren't currently suspected of terrorism...
Well, I'm born with the right to copy as we all are. Unfortunately it has been suspended or derogated from me as from everyone else by the privilege of copyright as per the Statute of Anne (1709) re-enacted in the US (1790).
Let me create an unauthorised copy and derivative of Paine's words: The right to copy is inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters such as the Statute of Anne, by annulling that right, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few . . . It . . . consequently is an instrument of injustice.
I'm no longer permitted my right to copy my own words. Instead I'm simply the initial holder of the privilege to copy them, which I can sell to a publisher. Have you ever thought it strange that musicians can end up unable to sing, perform and make copies of their own songs and recordings? Before copyright everyone could sing each others songs and tell and improve each others' stories. We called this folksong and folktales.
But, thanks to the Stationers' Company of England and a bit of jolly good lobbying of Queen Anne, this all came to an abrupt halt, just so that powerful guild could have their protection racket (their de facto monopolies) established as a statutory monopoly. Obviously this was to be presented with the pretext it would all be a most excellent means of encouraging the learning of England's poor and ignorant peasants.
Today our primordial cultural liberty is a distant memory and regarded as backward - we have Hollywood and the big four record labels now - and youngsters sued for millions for daring to take back even an ounce of their natural liberty.
And I've always agreed with you that privileges such as copyright can be transferred.
All I'm saying is that rights (in the original natural sense) cannot be transferred (neither ethically, nor in most jurisdictions, legally). They're with you from birth to death.
That lawyers describe copyright as a legally granted 'right' or 'right' for short, in order to term copyright as a 'transferable exclusive right' or 'bundle of rights' does not change the nature of human rights.
If we create androids that we call 'artificially created people' that we can command and own as property, that doesn't mean that when we get in the habit of calling them 'people' for short that we can start saying that 'people' can be commanded and owned as property, and so by induction make it into a generalisation applying to human beings.
Copyright is not a right just as much as an android is not a human being. Corrupting the language to pretend otherwise doesn't change anything, though it certainly does help pull the wool over the eyes of people unfamiliar with the terminology.
Liberty is a right (inalienable/non-transferable - or we get back to slavery).
Copyright is a privilege (the suspension of the right to copy).
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.
So, calling copyright a right is a perversion of terms. It's a privilege - or a legally granted 'right' as publishers' lawyers prefer to term it.
There'll only be copyright infringement for as long as there is copyright - a rather anachronistic and ineffective instrument of injustice if you ask me, a privilege that's long overdue for abolition.
If there is no copyright there is no infringement.
If people's natural right to copy is no longer suspended to enrich the press with a reproduction monopoly, then people are once again at liberty to engage with their own culture.
What would you rather have? Your right to copy restored, or publishing corporations able to bankrupt you at will if they think you're infringing on their monopoly?
Your right restored, or their privilege enforced?
It sounds like you're a pro-rights kind of guy, so I guess it's the former.
Privileges (legally granted 'rights') are transferable (except some such as droit de suite for which transfer is disallowed - to lend it the veneer of a natural right).
Rights (in the original, natural sense) are not transferable.
Perhaps you'd like to cite a case in which someone successfully surrendered their right to life, or transferred their right to privacy to a TV company (qv The Truman Show), or sold their right to liberty to the owner of a cotton farm.
The law is sometimes wrong, so you may well find some cases in which the alienation or transfer of a natural right has been upheld. When I say 'rights are not transferable' I mean they are not ethically transferable (and so shouldn't be legally transferable), notwithstanding some jurisdictions in some eras (such as slavery).
Privileges (or 'rights' as you unsurprisingly prefer to call them as a contraction of 'legislatively granted rights' or 'legal rights') can indeed be transferred and similarly enjoyed by the recipient as any other holder, hence the transfer of copyright, etc.
Rights (as in natural rights) cannot be transferred - even by contract.
If you have grown up with the rather modern idea (largely through to indoctrination by copyright) that everyone's rights are granted to them by law and can be reserved, waived, assigned, transferred, or sold, then yes, the idea of a natural right must indeed sound crazy.
You would probably find Thomas Paine as crazy as he would find you.
So called 'holders' are called 'holders' because they hold 'rights' that have been legislatively granted to them (or to others who have handed them over to them). Such granted rights that maybe transferred are properly termed privileges.
Rights in the natural sense (as used to be the only sense before rights were granted by law) are imbued in man by nature and are inalienable. This is why no-one 'holds' their (natural) right to life or their right to privacy, and why no-one can sell it.
If by 'piracy' you mean people enjoying their natural right to liberty, their natural right to engage in cultural exchange to share music, etc. and this enjoyment being contrary to the suspension of their natural right to copy by the 18th century privilege of copyright, then yes, this is natural for Homo Sapiens.
It's only called the 'IP clause' or 'Copyright clause' by those who would insinuate that it gives Congress power to grant copyright - to re-enact The Statute of Anne (of 1709) in 1790.
The clause is actually nothing to do with granting monopolies, but securing the natural right authors and inventors have to exclude others from their intellectual work - which obviously/naturally only applies to those works in their private possession. Plainly, no-one can have a natural right to exclude others from what has been given to them, for such would require super-natural or inhuman power (such as that which may be lent by the state by way of privilege).
I can naturally exclude you from my writings that are in my possession. However, if I later give or sell you a copy and thus naturally include you, I cannot then simultaneously, naturally exclude you (from certain acts you are naturally at liberty to do). For such perverse and unnatural exclusions I need a corrupt state to help me.
If I've written a song or story I can naturally exclude you from it - until, that is, I sing or tell it to you, whereupon I have no natural power (or right) to prevent you singing or telling that story to anyone else.
Obviously, grants of monopoly are fundamentally illegitimate (instruments of injustice), and so it's not surprising that their corrupt proponents will pretend them to be natural rights. It's truly astonishing to see them claim that people have a natural right to prevent anyone re-singing the songs they sing or re-telling the stories they've told.
It's just as egregious to pretend that the legislation of US copyright in 1790 (a slightly edited version of the Statute of Anne) is the securing of an author's natural exclusive right to their writings (as Congress was only empowered to do by the 1787 Constitution).
Notwithstanding any of this, there were Framers such as Madison who were keen for copyright to be granted (to enact the Statute of Anne) for the benefit of the press and state in the US - irrespective of their lip service and pretence of hand-wringing angst with respect to the granting of monopolies. The problem was, the Constitution couldn't empower the granting of privileges such as monopolies. The most it could do was to empower the securing of self-evident natural rights. Hence we have a natural rights based Constitutional clause that copyright supporters pretend sanctions the re-enactment of the Statute of Anne, and the granting of a monopoly. This is further supported by insinuating that 'legislatively granted right to exclude others from making copies' is the (natural) 'exclusive right' referred to by the Constitution (which obviously couldn't refer to a privilege that hadn't yet been granted).
Actually, I'm all for selling one's work, and having the right to sell it in a free market (denied by copyright and such licenses as CC-NC).
If I spend a day weaving a basket I've copied from an expert weaver, I have a right to sell my labour - without that expert having a monopoly that prevents copies being made of his baskets.
If I spend a day remixing a few videos I've found on YouTube, I have a right to sell my labour - without any monopoly having been granted to the producers of my source videos to prevent me.
So, I'm all for selling work, and I've got no problem with people making and selling copies.
The problem is that there's an 18th century privilege called copyright that scuppers all this - a now ineffective monopoly that makes people think they should be able to sell copies that cost next to nothing to make for the price of an hour's labour. A lucrative prospect, but achieved most unethically at the cost of everyone's cultural liberty.
The market for copies at inflated prices is over. The free market in intellectual work resumes.
"the clause empowering Congress to grant patents and copyrights"
There is no such clause.
"That every man is entitled to the fruits of his own labour must be admitted . . . ."
Sounds reasonable to me.
"Authors have a natural property right in their work".
I agree.
"It's natural to expect rewards for your labor."
That you expect reward doesn't make it a right. I expect to be rewarded for weaving baskets, but I recognise that there's a remote possibility no-one will want to reward me for my work. As to the level of such reward, that is of course determined in a free market - not one in which I've been granted a monopoly.
"Common law copyright was based on natural law"
Wash your mouth out with soap!
"Lockean natural rights underpin U.S. constitutional and statutory law."
Aside from the privileges of copyright and patent.
"the reality is that copyright finds its roots in both natural and economic rights."
Saying it's a reality doesn't make it so. (what are 'economic rights'?)
Such wishful assertions underline your contention, but they don't constitute much of an argument.
Where did Locke say that every man should be granted a monopoly over the fruits of his creativity, or that every man is born the natural power to prevent any other from bringing to market a similar or improved product?
On the post: Why It's Important Not To Call Copyright Infringement Theft
Re: Re: I blame kindergarten.
Copyright is unethical.
Copyright can be ethically neutralised, e.g. by providing a copyleft license.
Some of the ethical things that you can do with respect to an intellectual work will infringe a holder's privilege of copyright.
So, some copyright infringement is ethical.
Generally all acts that individuals are naturally at liberty to do are ethical irrespective of whether they infringe copyright.
Singing a song you've heard on the radio in public (even in a supermarket) is ethical even if you haven't paid the compulsory license fee.
Selling five million t-shirts with the lyrics to Lennon's song Imagine printed on them is not unethical - despite being a large scale commercial infringement.
Copyright is an instrument of injustice - it prohibits and criminalises ethical acts of cultural engagement and exchange.
On the post: Why It's Important Not To Call Copyright Infringement Theft
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Copyright, in prohibiting my liberty to make copies or derivatives of my own possessions, even in the privacy of my own home, is therefore a violation of my privacy and diminishment of my use of my possessions.
Now even if you can't bring yourself to call this theft (as obtaining possession), perhaps you'll at least see how it is far closer to theft (as act of burglary and impairment of property) than illicit manufacture and sale of goods contrary to grant of monopoly (infringement of copyright).
I respect your argument. When I say 'copyright is theft' I'm certainly not saying "copyright meets the popular definition and understanding of the meaning of the word 'theft'". I'm asserting that it could and should be regarded as theft, at least in some aspect.
On the post: Why It's Important Not To Call Copyright Infringement Theft
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I can still read my book of folk tales, but I can no longer write out a copy nor embellish or alter it for the benefit of my child. If I do take back my natural liberty to do this, I commit copyright infringement.
Copyright is theft.
Copyright infringement is liberty.
Copyright is an instrument of injustice and should be abolished.
Those who want to keep the privilege will describe detractors as pirates, anarchists, or extremists and their words as hyperbole.
On the post: Why It's Important Not To Call Copyright Infringement Theft
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Natural/human rights used to be simply rights, needing no qualification, until the granted ones displaced them in common parlance as they do today.
Unsurprisingly, because (natural) rights are ethical and privileges (legal rights) aren't, many so called IP lawyers will prefer to use 'right' rather than privilege to describe copyright and its decomposition - obviously, because it sounds FAR better (ethically legitimate).
"I have a right to exclude you from singing my song" sounds far better than "I've been granted the privilege of being able to sue you if you sing my song".
On the post: Why It's Important Not To Call Copyright Infringement Theft
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
So it is a right, naturally yours (and everyone's), but derogated by statute to create a privilege for the exploitation of printers/publishing corporations.
Thus copyright is a privilege - everyone else's right to copy specially suspended and reserved to a certain holder - initially the initial possessor of the original work (the author).
In other words copyright constitutes theft, theft from you of an act you would naturally be able to perform in the privacy of your own home - making copies of your possessions (songs, stories, pictures, etc.). This is why publishing corporations would like to invade your privacy in order to detect any private copies you make or share with your friends.
Now as for natural or human rights such as the author's exclusive right to their writings (as recognised in the US Constitution), this is logically limited to the natural lifespan of the individual. Corpses have no privacy (barring familial considerations).
On the post: Why It's Important Not To Call Copyright Infringement Theft
Re: Re: Natural rights gives a straightforward explanation
Any state that attempts to convince its citizens that their (natural) rights are granted to them and can be rescinded where expeditious soon finds a tadette of disquiet - ultimately ending with insurrection.
You may have noticed this sort of thing happened concerning slavery with respect to a certain class of citizens and their (natural) rights.
Even the privilege of copyright's derogation of people's natural right to liberty (their right to copy) is currently challenging your assertion that the right to liberty or to copy is granted to people at the state's convenience.
Saying that there are no natural rights, that all rights are granted by society (thus making copyright a right rather than a privilege), is a denial of reality (no doubt led by an ulterior aspiration to power).
The nature of Homo Sapiens has been determined through millions of years of evolution, not the whim of social engineers operating under the delusion they can extract a 'social contract' from people to surrender aspects of their natural rights for the 'greater good'.
Ask the millions of file-sharers why they do not continue to respect the social contract they notionally agreed to in 1790 to recognise the exclusive right of copyright holders to manufacture copies of covered works and no-one else. For you this is presumably delinquency to be remedied by 're-education'. For those who recognise natural law it is human nature, natural cultural liberty.
It is copyright that is unnatural, cultural liberty that is natural.
It is not a matter of cultural liberty granted to people or rescinded from them according to the state's need for a wealthy and well behaved press - except in the minds of those with contempt for the natural rights of human beings (such as the boards of publishing corporations).
On the post: Why It's Important Not To Call Copyright Infringement Theft
Natural rights gives a straightforward explanation
Theft is the removal or communication of any material or intellectual work from an individual's private domain by someone not privy (given authorised access). It matters not whether the thief has been 'helpful' and left substitutes, copies or originals behind.
If someone has been granted a privilege that enables them to sue anyone who competes with them in the marketplace concerning manufacture and supply of covered works, whether baskets or books, then manufacture & supply contrary to this is purely an INFRINGEMENT of that privilege. It is violation of no-one's privacy, but competing supply contrary to the grant of monopoly. One could infer that there may have been illicit collection of market revenue reserved to the monopoly holder, but this is rather inexact and nebulous.
'Theft' should be reserved for violation of the natural right, not infringement of a state granted privilege.
On the post: HDCP 'Master Key' Found? Another Form Of DRM Drops Dead
Plenty stupid with DRM, but nothing wrong with it
The only thing that is wrong is the privilege of copyright, and the DMCA that prohibits the circumvention of 'technical protection measures' that make even a weedy effort to impede the efforts of possessors to make copies.
Without copyright or the DMCA, there'd be no problem. DRM would soon be regarded as crazy as a perpetual motion machine.
It's because there are crazy laws on the statute books that say it's possible to legally prevent people copying what they have, that people then assume it's technically possible to prevent it.
We must remember that it's only possible to prevent people copying what they DO NOT HAVE. This is a natural law. You cannot both give someone access to a work AND prevent them communicating it or making a copy of it.
On the post: Can Antitrust Law Stop Abuses Of Intellectual Property And Free Access To Knowledge?
Re: anti-competitive
Copyright is a monopoly.
If you don't want such anti-competitive commercial privileges then abolish them. Don't be so stupid as to quibble between 'fairly anti-competitive' and 'unfairly anti-competitive'.
On the post: John Mellencamp: Takes From Others, But Refuses To Give Back
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
If you should say 'Thank Goodness' for anything it's that you aren't currently suspected of terrorism...
On the post: John Mellencamp: Takes From Others, But Refuses To Give Back
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Let me create an unauthorised copy and derivative of Paine's words:
The right to copy is inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters such as the Statute of Anne, by annulling that right, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few . . . It . . . consequently is an instrument of injustice.
I'm no longer permitted my right to copy my own words. Instead I'm simply the initial holder of the privilege to copy them, which I can sell to a publisher. Have you ever thought it strange that musicians can end up unable to sing, perform and make copies of their own songs and recordings? Before copyright everyone could sing each others songs and tell and improve each others' stories. We called this folksong and folktales.
But, thanks to the Stationers' Company of England and a bit of jolly good lobbying of Queen Anne, this all came to an abrupt halt, just so that powerful guild could have their protection racket (their de facto monopolies) established as a statutory monopoly. Obviously this was to be presented with the pretext it would all be a most excellent means of encouraging the learning of England's poor and ignorant peasants.
Today our primordial cultural liberty is a distant memory and regarded as backward - we have Hollywood and the big four record labels now - and youngsters sued for millions for daring to take back even an ounce of their natural liberty.
On the post: John Mellencamp: Takes From Others, But Refuses To Give Back
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
All I'm saying is that rights (in the original natural sense) cannot be transferred (neither ethically, nor in most jurisdictions, legally). They're with you from birth to death.
That lawyers describe copyright as a legally granted 'right' or 'right' for short, in order to term copyright as a 'transferable exclusive right' or 'bundle of rights' does not change the nature of human rights.
If we create androids that we call 'artificially created people' that we can command and own as property, that doesn't mean that when we get in the habit of calling them 'people' for short that we can start saying that 'people' can be commanded and owned as property, and so by induction make it into a generalisation applying to human beings.
Copyright is not a right just as much as an android is not a human being. Corrupting the language to pretend otherwise doesn't change anything, though it certainly does help pull the wool over the eyes of people unfamiliar with the terminology.
Liberty is a right (inalienable/non-transferable - or we get back to slavery).
Copyright is a privilege (the suspension of the right to copy).
See Wikipedia re Rights of Man:So, calling copyright a right is a perversion of terms. It's a privilege - or a legally granted 'right' as publishers' lawyers prefer to term it.
On the post: John Mellencamp: Takes From Others, But Refuses To Give Back
Re: Re:
If there is no copyright there is no infringement.
If people's natural right to copy is no longer suspended to enrich the press with a reproduction monopoly, then people are once again at liberty to engage with their own culture.
What would you rather have? Your right to copy restored, or publishing corporations able to bankrupt you at will if they think you're infringing on their monopoly?
Your right restored, or their privilege enforced?
It sounds like you're a pro-rights kind of guy, so I guess it's the former.
On the post: John Mellencamp: Takes From Others, But Refuses To Give Back
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Rights (in the original, natural sense) are not transferable.
Perhaps you'd like to cite a case in which someone successfully surrendered their right to life, or transferred their right to privacy to a TV company (qv The Truman Show), or sold their right to liberty to the owner of a cotton farm.
The law is sometimes wrong, so you may well find some cases in which the alienation or transfer of a natural right has been upheld. When I say 'rights are not transferable' I mean they are not ethically transferable (and so shouldn't be legally transferable), notwithstanding some jurisdictions in some eras (such as slavery).
On the post: John Mellencamp: Takes From Others, But Refuses To Give Back
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Rights (as in natural rights) cannot be transferred - even by contract.
If you have grown up with the rather modern idea (largely through to indoctrination by copyright) that everyone's rights are granted to them by law and can be reserved, waived, assigned, transferred, or sold, then yes, the idea of a natural right must indeed sound crazy.
You would probably find Thomas Paine as crazy as he would find you.
On the post: John Mellencamp: Takes From Others, But Refuses To Give Back
Re: Re:
So called 'holders' are called 'holders' because they hold 'rights' that have been legislatively granted to them (or to others who have handed them over to them). Such granted rights that maybe transferred are properly termed privileges.
Rights in the natural sense (as used to be the only sense before rights were granted by law) are imbued in man by nature and are inalienable. This is why no-one 'holds' their (natural) right to life or their right to privacy, and why no-one can sell it.
If by 'piracy' you mean people enjoying their natural right to liberty, their natural right to engage in cultural exchange to share music, etc. and this enjoyment being contrary to the suspension of their natural right to copy by the 18th century privilege of copyright, then yes, this is natural for Homo Sapiens.
On the post: John Mellencamp: Takes From Others, But Refuses To Give Back
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The clause is actually nothing to do with granting monopolies, but securing the natural right authors and inventors have to exclude others from their intellectual work - which obviously/naturally only applies to those works in their private possession. Plainly, no-one can have a natural right to exclude others from what has been given to them, for such would require super-natural or inhuman power (such as that which may be lent by the state by way of privilege).
I can naturally exclude you from my writings that are in my possession. However, if I later give or sell you a copy and thus naturally include you, I cannot then simultaneously, naturally exclude you (from certain acts you are naturally at liberty to do). For such perverse and unnatural exclusions I need a corrupt state to help me.
If I've written a song or story I can naturally exclude you from it - until, that is, I sing or tell it to you, whereupon I have no natural power (or right) to prevent you singing or telling that story to anyone else.
Obviously, grants of monopoly are fundamentally illegitimate (instruments of injustice), and so it's not surprising that their corrupt proponents will pretend them to be natural rights. It's truly astonishing to see them claim that people have a natural right to prevent anyone re-singing the songs they sing or re-telling the stories they've told.
It's just as egregious to pretend that the legislation of US copyright in 1790 (a slightly edited version of the Statute of Anne) is the securing of an author's natural exclusive right to their writings (as Congress was only empowered to do by the 1787 Constitution).
Notwithstanding any of this, there were Framers such as Madison who were keen for copyright to be granted (to enact the Statute of Anne) for the benefit of the press and state in the US - irrespective of their lip service and pretence of hand-wringing angst with respect to the granting of monopolies. The problem was, the Constitution couldn't empower the granting of privileges such as monopolies. The most it could do was to empower the securing of self-evident natural rights. Hence we have a natural rights based Constitutional clause that copyright supporters pretend sanctions the re-enactment of the Statute of Anne, and the granting of a monopoly. This is further supported by insinuating that 'legislatively granted right to exclude others from making copies' is the (natural) 'exclusive right' referred to by the Constitution (which obviously couldn't refer to a privilege that hadn't yet been granted).
On the post: Are Non-Commercial Creative Commons Licenses A Bad Idea? Nina Paley & Cory Doctorow Debate...
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If I spend a day weaving a basket I've copied from an expert weaver, I have a right to sell my labour - without that expert having a monopoly that prevents copies being made of his baskets.
If I spend a day remixing a few videos I've found on YouTube, I have a right to sell my labour - without any monopoly having been granted to the producers of my source videos to prevent me.
So, I'm all for selling work, and I've got no problem with people making and selling copies.
The problem is that there's an 18th century privilege called copyright that scuppers all this - a now ineffective monopoly that makes people think they should be able to sell copies that cost next to nothing to make for the price of an hour's labour. A lucrative prospect, but achieved most unethically at the cost of everyone's cultural liberty.
The market for copies at inflated prices is over. The free market in intellectual work resumes.
On the post: John Mellencamp: Takes From Others, But Refuses To Give Back
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There is no such clause.
"That every man is entitled to the fruits of his own labour must be admitted . . . ."
Sounds reasonable to me.
"Authors have a natural property right in their work".
I agree.
"It's natural to expect rewards for your labor."
That you expect reward doesn't make it a right. I expect to be rewarded for weaving baskets, but I recognise that there's a remote possibility no-one will want to reward me for my work. As to the level of such reward, that is of course determined in a free market - not one in which I've been granted a monopoly.
"Common law copyright was based on natural law"
Wash your mouth out with soap!
"Lockean natural rights underpin U.S. constitutional and statutory law."
Aside from the privileges of copyright and patent.
"the reality is that copyright finds its roots in both natural and economic rights."
Saying it's a reality doesn't make it so. (what are 'economic rights'?)
Such wishful assertions underline your contention, but they don't constitute much of an argument.
Where did Locke say that every man should be granted a monopoly over the fruits of his creativity, or that every man is born the natural power to prevent any other from bringing to market a similar or improved product?
On the post: John Mellencamp: Takes From Others, But Refuses To Give Back
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You're the first I've come across to dare say that.
Perhaps you'd like to explain further?
How did copyright exist in nature before Queen Anne granted it in 1710?
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