Because history appears to collapse from our perspective two or three centuries later it is very easy to submit to the extreme pressure to perceive and conflate discussion concerning the monopolies (of copyright and patent) with discussion of the progress clause.
I'm really just wondering why YOU don't take an interest in supporting the 'copyright was designed to promote the progress' canard. Of course, that is the popularly indoctrinated understanding, and why you don't get challenged on it, but that doesn't actually make it true. If you're so keen to challenge copyright's effects and utility, I'm just curious why you aren't also keen to challenge the myth that it was designed to promote the progress.
I've already demonstrated that it can't have been designed to 'promote the progress' since copyright's design preceded the Constitution by 77 years. And even if you believe it was designed by the Constitution you have to wonder why there were two distinct privileges subsequently granted instead of just one that would seem to be sufficient. Why is one based on provenance, and the other based on similarity? A bit strange that one clause (allegedly a design spec) can design distinctly different privileges.
It is simply self-evident that when you voluntarily part with something in order to give it to another you don't consequently obtain power over the recipient in terms of controlling whether or not they may further communicate it or manufacture copies thereof.
You have a natural right to exclude others from your writings whilst they are in your private possession. You cannot exclude others from the writings you give to others (it is a contradiction).
You certainly are making plenty of references to the "Copyright Clause".
That clause is only termed as such by those would would insinuate it provides constitutional sanction for copyright. 'Copyright' is not mentioned in the US Constitution at all.
You also need to be clear in your allegations as to where you say the Founders were discussing the Constitution and where you say they were discussing the justification for legislating the monopolies of copyright and/or patent. These are quite distinct matters.
That copyright provides some succour for an author's exclusive right does not mean that 'copyright=exclusive right'. Copyright is certainly called an 'exclusive right' today, but then that's because 'right' has been corrupted/contracted from 'legally granted right' as opposed to the natural right the Constitution could only refer to.
Do you think the US copyright of 1790 was designed from scratch? It was simply an import of copyright from England, a descendant of the 1710 Statute of Anne. There is nothing significant that could lead one to conclude a difference in design.
Where people get this idea of 'progress' from is the 1787 US Constitution which is about securing authors' exclusive right to their writings and nothing to do with granting a monopoly in literary works (copyright).
Of course, those who passed copyright in 1790 have to pretend that it's constitutional, but even if you kid yourself it is, that still doesn't make copyright designed by the Constitution if it's simply imported legislation. On that matter, you should at least wonder why, if the design of copyright and patent was instructed by the Constitution, they both ended up so very different from each other (and surprisingly indistinguishable from the legislation of the respective privileges in the old world). Indeed, why have patent, if copyright could just as easily 'protect' against copying designs as well as literary works?
So in answering the question of what copyright and patent were designed to do, you have to refer to England because that's where they were designed. And I put it to you that if you look into their origins in a little more detail, you should realise they weren't designed to promote the progress.
Are you suggesting that anyone who makes a claim need not provide any support for it, whereas those who question its lack of support must find evidence to disprove the claim?
I'm just suggesting that it might be worth Mike's while to double-check the basis for an unsupported claim he regularly repeats. I'd be interested to read his article in support.
Mike, it's good that you're pointing out the categorical difference between passing off/counterfeiting/plagiarism/fraud and infringing a reproduction monopoly.
However, perhaps you could also pay just as much attention to supporting your continued recitation of the myth that copyright was designed to promote progress.
Copyright law is entirely different and is designed to create incentives that "promote the progress of science."
That's certainly a very popular notion, but why don't you double-check that Queen Anne's statute of 1709 really was designed to promote progress? That this is its stated purpose (encouragement of learning) doesn't actually constitute evidence that this is what it was designed to do, and why it was enacted.
Intellectual property is also physical. An intellectual work cannot be property unless it is fixed in a physical medium. So, whether physical property is material or intellectual doesn't affect whether it is property.
I can make a basket whose design represents an intellectual work, or a CD containing the intellectual work of a poem, and sell or lend either to you. If lent, you must give me back the basket and CD (without erasing the poem). However, I cannot naturally prevent you copying either basket or CD, whether I've sold or lent either to you. The only thing that does this is the 18th century grant of a reproduction monopoly to the press. That is the abominable anachronism that has to go in this information age. So, it's nothing to do with getting rid of intellectual property - just monopoly.
Would they preserve the centralised control of the newspaper corporations they know and love, or unleash umpteen zillion uncontrolled loudmouths?
If they can fix it so the indies starve in the gutter unless they go cap in hand to the news corps., then they will happily fix it so the latter remain paymasters.
The problem is, getting away with it.
They managed to steal a trillion from the taxpayer only recently to give to the corrupt bankers, so they aren't exactly amateurs at this sort of thing.
It only took three years after the US Constitution for the individual's natural right to liberty to give way to commercial privilege. So, I daresay the second copyright is abolished, some cartel will be busily drafting a plan of action for their lobbyist campaign to plead for some other monopoly or commercial privilege.
No matter. The important thing is public awareness - that yes, only lasts for a generation until it is again lulled into believing that liberty must once again be surrendered for security/prosperity/progress/learning/etc.
It's not possible to invent something that violates a copyright (unless you mean a device that can make unauthorised copies, e.g. a pencil). Copyright can only be infringed by provenance (the act of copying). If you can prove you created your poem without reference to a previously published but extremely similar poem then it is not copyright infringement (though you need deep pockets even so).
Copyright is not a natural right. It is a privilege that necessarily derogates from a natural right (liberty). It was granted by Queen Anne in 1710 (and copied! by the US in 1790).
Patent is also a privilege, a monopoly based on similarity rather than provenance, so it is indeed a matter of 'the first' gets the prize or being able to prevent all competition.
Privileges are not natural rights, but the lawyers who claim their protection prefer to term them as legally granted rights, or legal rights for short (often just 'rights'). Indeed it is only with the popular terming of privileges as rights that natural rights have to be qualified as natural.
With regard to "understanding of copyright as a source or as a handicap for innovation", I don't think it's ever been UNDERSTOOD as a source of innovation.
It's always been misunderstood - and those in a position to benefit from copyright have always been very happy to perpetuate such a misunderstanding.
Copyright is a source of revenue (due to monopoly enjoyed by the press) and power (through suppression of seditious propaganda by a beholden press).
But innovation? Innovation only in the amount of invalid argument generated to pretend justification for its continuation, extension, and ever harsher enforcement.
One immortal publishing corporation's piracy is a human being's cultural liberty.
"Reminding ourselves, Mike, that copyright was intended to further the arts and sciences"
Why would anyone want to remind themselves of a popular delusion? At best it's a pretext, but to keep on telling yourself a lie isn't going to make copyright rise up one day to shake off its corruption to reveal shining white goodness beneath. Copyright was a privilege granted by the corrupt to the unscrupulous at the outset. From such an instrument of injustice you should not hope for more than a stream of counter-productive litigation. To expect either progress or justice is insane.
We are in this place where copyright holders pretend EULAs may bind recipients of copies because our right to copy has been suspended in order to grant publishers the privilege of a reproduction monopoly.
I would indeed think that Lawrence Lessig is smart enough to know this, but for some reason he remains a staunch advocate of copyright.
The judiciary, being largely sympathetic to publishing corporations, is also willing to err on the side of their copyright vs the individual's natural right to liberty.
1) You've purchased a copy - the purchase 'contract' was 'a copy for money'. That is the end of the matter.
2) The copy may also provide the purchaser with a license (gratis). The purchaser may or may not exploit it as they see fit.
3) The copy may also provide a unilateral contract (which the purchaser can agree to at any time, if ever), and that contract may provide a license subject to the purchaser's agreement. The purchaser's agreement cannot be inferred, e.g. by performing an act they're entitled to perform anyway (removing shrinkwrap), nor by performing an act only permitted upon agreement to the contract.
You have purchased a copy and copyright law does not require any agreement prior to use. Therefore tick any boxes as may be necessary to use the copy you've purchased - holding the user hostage is duress and invalidates any aspect of agreement.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: A few good points
Dave, I've already agreed with you that we have a natural right to control what we create. But we have no right to control others. We have control over our private spaces and possessions, but no control over other people.
So when you give a possession to someone else, it then becomes that person's possession. That you created it doesn't give you any power over what happens to it AFTER YOU'VE GIVEN IT TO SOMEONE ELSE. Of course, everyone would like such power, but they don't have it by nature. It takes an unjust law, a privilege, to confer such power. However, if a wealthy enough cartel lobby hard enough (such as the Stationers' Guild in 1709) they can get such laws enacted and extended, i.e. to grant holders of such privileges power over who can/cannot print copies of particular works. Their modern successors are known by different names.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copyright not supposed to work this way?
Dave, just because you sell something to someone that doesn't make them your slave, or subject to you control.
Similarly, contracts are about exchange of goods, not making other people your slaves or subject to your control.
Having power over others is very seductive, so I'm not at all surprised you're in love with the idea and believe it is your right, but those you would control (or fine millions of dollars for disobeying you) aren't too keen on you having that power over them.
If you don't think it's unethical to sue youngsters millions of dollars for sharing music then you should read up on the Milgram experiment - where people allow authority to blind themselves to any sense of humanity. "This is the law. Infringers should be punished irrespective of whether the law is ethical, its penalties are proportionate, and least of all whether they can withstand the punishment."
Something tells me you still believe an 18th century privilege supersedes people's primordial and natural right to share music with each other.
As to earning a living, artists can earn a living the same way they always have, by selling their intellectual work to those who'll buy it from them. Admittedly, manufacturers of copies are going out of business (their monopoly no longer effective), so artists will soon see those customers disappearing. However, artists do have the more interested members of their audience to look to. If an artist saw only 1% of the revenue from 10,000 copies at $10 each, they may well see 100% of the revenue from 1,000 fans paying $1 each. The artist ends up with the same money. It's just that the copyright exploiting publisher no longer gets a 99% cut. That's the understandably aggrieved party - not the artist - and they will thus claim that artists will end up begging in the gutter unless copyright is fully enforced. No, it's the publisher ending up in the gutter (though corporations get struck off - being immortal).
On the post: Homeland Security Decides If It Just Keeps Interchanging Counterfeiting With Copyright Infringement, Perhaps No One Will Notice
Re: Re: Re: Re: Category errors
Because history appears to collapse from our perspective two or three centuries later it is very easy to submit to the extreme pressure to perceive and conflate discussion concerning the monopolies (of copyright and patent) with discussion of the progress clause.
I'm really just wondering why YOU don't take an interest in supporting the 'copyright was designed to promote the progress' canard. Of course, that is the popularly indoctrinated understanding, and why you don't get challenged on it, but that doesn't actually make it true. If you're so keen to challenge copyright's effects and utility, I'm just curious why you aren't also keen to challenge the myth that it was designed to promote the progress.
I've already demonstrated that it can't have been designed to 'promote the progress' since copyright's design preceded the Constitution by 77 years. And even if you believe it was designed by the Constitution you have to wonder why there were two distinct privileges subsequently granted instead of just one that would seem to be sufficient. Why is one based on provenance, and the other based on similarity? A bit strange that one clause (allegedly a design spec) can design distinctly different privileges.
On the post: Homeland Security Decides If It Just Keeps Interchanging Counterfeiting With Copyright Infringement, Perhaps No One Will Notice
Re: Re: Re: Re: Category errors
It is simply self-evident that when you voluntarily part with something in order to give it to another you don't consequently obtain power over the recipient in terms of controlling whether or not they may further communicate it or manufacture copies thereof.
You have a natural right to exclude others from your writings whilst they are in your private possession. You cannot exclude others from the writings you give to others (it is a contradiction).
On the post: Homeland Security Decides If It Just Keeps Interchanging Counterfeiting With Copyright Infringement, Perhaps No One Will Notice
Re: Re: Re: Re: Category errors
That clause is only termed as such by those would would insinuate it provides constitutional sanction for copyright. 'Copyright' is not mentioned in the US Constitution at all.
You also need to be clear in your allegations as to where you say the Founders were discussing the Constitution and where you say they were discussing the justification for legislating the monopolies of copyright and/or patent. These are quite distinct matters.
That copyright provides some succour for an author's exclusive right does not mean that 'copyright=exclusive right'. Copyright is certainly called an 'exclusive right' today, but then that's because 'right' has been corrupted/contracted from 'legally granted right' as opposed to the natural right the Constitution could only refer to.
On the post: Homeland Security Decides If It Just Keeps Interchanging Counterfeiting With Copyright Infringement, Perhaps No One Will Notice
Re: Re: Category errors
On the post: Homeland Security Decides If It Just Keeps Interchanging Counterfeiting With Copyright Infringement, Perhaps No One Will Notice
Re: Re: Category errors
Do you think the US copyright of 1790 was designed from scratch? It was simply an import of copyright from England, a descendant of the 1710 Statute of Anne. There is nothing significant that could lead one to conclude a difference in design.
Where people get this idea of 'progress' from is the 1787 US Constitution which is about securing authors' exclusive right to their writings and nothing to do with granting a monopoly in literary works (copyright).
Of course, those who passed copyright in 1790 have to pretend that it's constitutional, but even if you kid yourself it is, that still doesn't make copyright designed by the Constitution if it's simply imported legislation. On that matter, you should at least wonder why, if the design of copyright and patent was instructed by the Constitution, they both ended up so very different from each other (and surprisingly indistinguishable from the legislation of the respective privileges in the old world). Indeed, why have patent, if copyright could just as easily 'protect' against copying designs as well as literary works?
So in answering the question of what copyright and patent were designed to do, you have to refer to England because that's where they were designed. And I put it to you that if you look into their origins in a little more detail, you should realise they weren't designed to promote the progress.
On the post: Homeland Security Decides If It Just Keeps Interchanging Counterfeiting With Copyright Infringement, Perhaps No One Will Notice
Re: Re: Category errors
I'm just suggesting that it might be worth Mike's while to double-check the basis for an unsupported claim he regularly repeats. I'd be interested to read his article in support.
For more background see:
http://www.digitalproductions.co.uk/index.php?id=145
On the post: Homeland Security Decides If It Just Keeps Interchanging Counterfeiting With Copyright Infringement, Perhaps No One Will Notice
Category errors
However, perhaps you could also pay just as much attention to supporting your continued recitation of the myth that copyright was designed to promote progress.
That's certainly a very popular notion, but why don't you double-check that Queen Anne's statute of 1709 really was designed to promote progress? That this is its stated purpose (encouragement of learning) doesn't actually constitute evidence that this is what it was designed to do, and why it was enacted.
Pretext is not purpose.
On the post: A Million Dollar Record Deal Is Probably Not What You Think It Is
Sell music - NOT copies
On the post: Google Explains Why Making Special Copyright Laws For Newspapers Is A Mistake
Re: Re: Re: Re: Some quibbles with Google.
I can make a basket whose design represents an intellectual work, or a CD containing the intellectual work of a poem, and sell or lend either to you. If lent, you must give me back the basket and CD (without erasing the poem). However, I cannot naturally prevent you copying either basket or CD, whether I've sold or lent either to you. The only thing that does this is the 18th century grant of a reproduction monopoly to the press. That is the abominable anachronism that has to go in this information age. So, it's nothing to do with getting rid of intellectual property - just monopoly.
On the post: Google Explains Why Making Special Copyright Laws For Newspapers Is A Mistake
What does the state want?
Would they preserve the centralised control of the newspaper corporations they know and love, or unleash umpteen zillion uncontrolled loudmouths?
If they can fix it so the indies starve in the gutter unless they go cap in hand to the news corps., then they will happily fix it so the latter remain paymasters.
The problem is, getting away with it.
They managed to steal a trillion from the taxpayer only recently to give to the corrupt bankers, so they aren't exactly amateurs at this sort of thing.
On the post: Deutsche Bank Report Notes That It's Time To Rethink Copyright
Re: All of this happened before.
No matter. The important thing is public awareness - that yes, only lasts for a generation until it is again lulled into believing that liberty must once again be surrendered for security/prosperity/progress/learning/etc.
On the post: Deutsche Bank Report Notes That It's Time To Rethink Copyright
Re: Re:
Copyright is not a natural right. It is a privilege that necessarily derogates from a natural right (liberty). It was granted by Queen Anne in 1710 (and copied! by the US in 1790).
Patent is also a privilege, a monopoly based on similarity rather than provenance, so it is indeed a matter of 'the first' gets the prize or being able to prevent all competition.
Privileges are not natural rights, but the lawyers who claim their protection prefer to term them as legally granted rights, or legal rights for short (often just 'rights'). Indeed it is only with the popular terming of privileges as rights that natural rights have to be qualified as natural.
On the post: Deutsche Bank Report Notes That It's Time To Rethink Copyright
Understood?
It's always been misunderstood - and those in a position to benefit from copyright have always been very happy to perpetuate such a misunderstanding.
Copyright is a source of revenue (due to monopoly enjoyed by the press) and power (through suppression of seditious propaganda by a beholden press).
But innovation? Innovation only in the amount of invalid argument generated to pretend justification for its continuation, extension, and ever harsher enforcement.
One immortal publishing corporation's piracy is a human being's cultural liberty.
On the post: Appeals Court Reminds Documentary Makers That Facts Are Not Copyrightable
Re: Documentary
Why would anyone want to remind themselves of a popular delusion? At best it's a pretext, but to keep on telling yourself a lie isn't going to make copyright rise up one day to shake off its corruption to reveal shining white goodness beneath. Copyright was a privilege granted by the corrupt to the unscrupulous at the outset. From such an instrument of injustice you should not hope for more than a stream of counter-productive litigation. To expect either progress or justice is insane.
On the post: The EULA Menace
Re: Re: Can a brutha get a link?
On the post: The EULA Menace
Re: Re: Re:
We are in this place where copyright holders pretend EULAs may bind recipients of copies because our right to copy has been suspended in order to grant publishers the privilege of a reproduction monopoly.
I would indeed think that Lawrence Lessig is smart enough to know this, but for some reason he remains a staunch advocate of copyright.
The judiciary, being largely sympathetic to publishing corporations, is also willing to err on the side of their copyright vs the individual's natural right to liberty.
On the post: The EULA Menace
Re: EULA != contract
2) The copy may also provide the purchaser with a license (gratis). The purchaser may or may not exploit it as they see fit.
3) The copy may also provide a unilateral contract (which the purchaser can agree to at any time, if ever), and that contract may provide a license subject to the purchaser's agreement. The purchaser's agreement cannot be inferred, e.g. by performing an act they're entitled to perform anyway (removing shrinkwrap), nor by performing an act only permitted upon agreement to the contract.
On the post: The EULA Menace
Bogus
A copyright protected work may provide a license.
That's it. No agreement required.
You have purchased a copy and copyright law does not require any agreement prior to use. Therefore tick any boxes as may be necessary to use the copy you've purchased - holding the user hostage is duress and invalidates any aspect of agreement.
On the post: UK Hairdresser Fined For Playing Music Even Though He Tried To Be Legal
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: A few good points
So when you give a possession to someone else, it then becomes that person's possession. That you created it doesn't give you any power over what happens to it AFTER YOU'VE GIVEN IT TO SOMEONE ELSE. Of course, everyone would like such power, but they don't have it by nature. It takes an unjust law, a privilege, to confer such power. However, if a wealthy enough cartel lobby hard enough (such as the Stationers' Guild in 1709) they can get such laws enacted and extended, i.e. to grant holders of such privileges power over who can/cannot print copies of particular works. Their modern successors are known by different names.
On the post: UK Hairdresser Fined For Playing Music Even Though He Tried To Be Legal
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copyright not supposed to work this way?
Similarly, contracts are about exchange of goods, not making other people your slaves or subject to your control.
Having power over others is very seductive, so I'm not at all surprised you're in love with the idea and believe it is your right, but those you would control (or fine millions of dollars for disobeying you) aren't too keen on you having that power over them.
If you don't think it's unethical to sue youngsters millions of dollars for sharing music then you should read up on the Milgram experiment - where people allow authority to blind themselves to any sense of humanity. "This is the law. Infringers should be punished irrespective of whether the law is ethical, its penalties are proportionate, and least of all whether they can withstand the punishment."
Something tells me you still believe an 18th century privilege supersedes people's primordial and natural right to share music with each other.
As to earning a living, artists can earn a living the same way they always have, by selling their intellectual work to those who'll buy it from them. Admittedly, manufacturers of copies are going out of business (their monopoly no longer effective), so artists will soon see those customers disappearing. However, artists do have the more interested members of their audience to look to. If an artist saw only 1% of the revenue from 10,000 copies at $10 each, they may well see 100% of the revenue from 1,000 fans paying $1 each. The artist ends up with the same money. It's just that the copyright exploiting publisher no longer gets a 99% cut. That's the understandably aggrieved party - not the artist - and they will thus claim that artists will end up begging in the gutter unless copyright is fully enforced. No, it's the publisher ending up in the gutter (though corporations get struck off - being immortal).
Next >>