No, I have never said anyone should take anything from someone without their permission, whether they created it or not.
There are some who deny the validity of intellectual property, and whilst we may both decry the privileges of copyright and patent, those such as I steadfastly argue the self-evidence of natural intellectual property rights.
Digestibility comes under tangibility. If you can touch it, you can invariably disintegrate it, and thus digest it (people have eaten bicycles).
So, yes, whilst you can eat the paper a music score is printed on, the process of digestion may transform the material property, but it will simply destroy the intellectual property (rather than transforming it). Material works are transformed by our stomachs. Intellectual works are transformed by our brains (our intellect).
We have a natural right to do what we want with our music scores, whether to reproduce more manuscripts for those of us who like eating them or to perform or transform the music upon them as our aesthetic persuades.
Unethically, some of these natural rights are suspended to privilege publishers.
If you fail to see what the difference is between publishing someone's work without making it clear that it is not authored by you, or otherwise, say by crediting the author, then this is failing to see the difference between deceit (even if through negligence) and honesty.
When the unethical privilege of copyright is abolished (given it is plainly an unviable anachronism) and everyone's natural intellectual property rights are restored, these rights still need protecting by the law. Some jurisdictions already recognise the distinction between the proprietary privilege of copyright and natural rights (qv moral rights), e.g. truth in attribution, even if implicit by omission.
The law does not say copying is wrong, it says the natural right for an owner of an intellectual work to make copies of their property has been suspended in order to grant this as a commercial privilege, and that such a privileged 'copyright holder' may seek compensation from those who infringe their privilege.
I don't find the 'scarce vs infinite resources' argument at all appropriate or convincing myself. I'd simply observe that written words and digital bits are more easily reproduced than snowflakes or hand carved furniture. That words may be so easily reproduced does not sanction their theft - no matter the interest of those who value them.
Copyright is already ineffective, so removing it cannot remove any incentive. It only removes the ability to prosecute infringement of an unethical privilege.
At the same time as the communications technology of the Internet renders reproduction monopolies unviable, it renders the ability to sell your book to a large readership viable. You can now communicate, form a relationship, and strike bargains with your audience directly. No commissions to publishers to cover their huge costs of printing, distribution, retail and promotion.
Creative commons is best seen as a way to help people gradually wean themselves away from copyright.
In principle your software system and blog would be fine - as long as no fraud occurred. However, you do appear to exhibit the motive of committing fraud so it's doubtful.
In practice, as soon as people found out you were failing to properly credit the author or original publisher of your articles, they'd think less of you and your system - given you'd removed value by removing attribution without good reason. It is also possible that you may risk being found guilty of misattribution through context or implication.
If you modified another author's words without making it clear you had done so, you may also be found guilty of violating an author's moral right to the integrity of their works. Either you make the nature of modifications clear, or you preserve a work verbatim - even if you don't attribute the author. Of course, even if you obtain an author's permission to modify their work, you still need to clarify when it has occurred.
There's nothing wrong with copying, but there's plenty wrong with plagiarism. It's a pity people mistake one for the other.
We're talking about a webserver that hands out documents to any member of the public who asks for them.
No member of the public is invited on to anyone's private property.
If you're a visitor at an exhibition and an organiser rep has a tray of brochures for each exhibitor and the venue facilities, and you ask them for the brochure of the exhibitors' lounge and they give it to you, this is not a violation of the organiser's privacy (irrespective of the fact you wouldn't get in the lounge, and the availability of the brochure isn't advertised).
Even if you ask to look in the tray to have a rummage around to see if any brochures look interesting, if the rep lets you rummage, then this isn't a privacy violation either.
If the conference organiser later finds out that their reps are allowing punters to browse through the tray or are being allowed to have brochures only intended for exhibitors, that's their carelessness. They can't complain their privacy has been violated. The rep and visitors naturally expected the brochures and the tray in which they were held were available to the public.
I'm also bemused at the idea that a web server's published files can be considered private by dint of a lack of promotion or prominence.
The term 'private' seems to be abused to describe personal information or material that one would wish to be kept private (such a wish often increasing after consequences of public availability have been appreciated). In terms of a right to privacy, the term strictly only applies to material that IS private. Aspiration is not actuality.
It is possible that the private domain gets fuzzy at the edges, e.g. an unclasped briefcase left on a train. Its owner has an expectation that the privacy of their private property will be recognised and respected despite having been lost, except that it may be invaded as far as is necessary to return the lost property. Here we can argue whether expectation or accessibility defines privacy.
In Kozinski's case it's as if he has pinned a scrapbook to a noticeboard, and an index alongside it - an index that omits to mention the contents of some pages. For some people it is quite natural to leaf through the book without consideration of the index. All pages must be considered public. Especially since the webserver's raison d'etre is to publish files to members of the public who ask for them.
I wouldn't agree that it was like dumpster diving. I would argue that trash is private, and garbage collection companies were 'common carriers', i.e. not authorised to permit inspection or publication of what they were conveying.
There is a fair bit of web chat at the mo ( http://www.digitalproductions.co.uk/index.php?id=117 ) that seems to drift into the idea that personal information is the rightful property of the person it describes. This could easily drift into the idea that being found in possession of embarrassing IP is the rightful secret of the person so embarrassed, even though they unwittingly let it slip.
The progenitor of this argument spoke coherently, cogently, and persuasively:
"In order to promote art and productive commerce, we have arbitrarily created rights that do not exist naturally (and have imposed upon freedoms that do so exist), as we once deemed reasonable. Now that those reasons (or at least the weight of their claim over and above what is natural) have been superseded by technological advancement, we have, purely by the construct of social cognitive dissonance, clung to a fabricated reality beyond reason."
I remain unpersuaded by your argument that this speech or the voice or language in which it is spoken is indicative of either pretentiousness or disguised ignorance.
I grant you that if it were phrased more simply it would be more readily digested by a larger audience, but that is not without cost.
Instead of berating the author for not taking this burden upon himself, you can instead digest it yourself, rephrase it, and then impart it to the larger audience that you apparently pursue.
After all, we are trying to encourage the sharing of each other's speech and the building upon it, whether to simplify or to elaborate, to promote or to explain.
It always depends on your intended audience and as you say, your purpose.
I don't argue here to persuade, but to learn and understand. Nor do I seek the largest audience.
It is possible that Wordy Jason is not trying to find a larger audience. It is possible he is not striving to maximise the persuasive force of his argument.
At least consider that these things may be possible. That then removes the persuasive force from your argument that his '"hifalutin" talk' is invariably either disguised ignorance or domineering pretentiousness.
Sarcasm doesn't travel well, certainly not in Mike's quotes. Kid Rock could well have been using sarcasm to highlight the difference between sharing music and stealing gas, but that needs corroboration by more folk who actually heard him speak. So will those who did please pipe up?
* Seek culture, but not at the expense of liberty
* Seek liberty, but not at the expense of truth
* Seek truth, but not at the expense of privacy
* Seek privacy, but not at the expense of life
* Seek life, and enjoy free culture.
Natural rights are defined by natural rights, e.g. the natural right to privacy is 'curtailed' as you put it by the natural right to life.
Laws do not create rights or determine the balance between them, but arbitrate that balance.
Copyright is by no means a self-evident right. This was recognised at the time the privilege was created, however it was given the benefit of the doubt as potentially more valuable to society than the cultural liberty it suspended.
I wholly support a free and fair market in cultural works (exchange of art for money) and the protection of everyone's intellectual property rights.
To fully achieve that protection requires the abolition of privileges that suspend those rights, i.e. copyright and patent.
The constitution makes no claim that copyright or patent is a right, it merely sanctions the securing of author's and inventor's exclusive right to their writings and discoveries.
Copyright and patent exceed this, by extending that exclusive right beyond its natural limit, i.e. beyond the point at which the author or inventor has exclusive possession of their writings and discoveries (because the author or inventor distributed copies or published them and ended their exclusivity).
So the constitution does not make copyright (or patent) a right, nor would it have the power to define it as a right in any case. Rights are self-evident; they are not created by law or constitution, but observed and protected by them.
The public's natural right to copy was suspended to grant publishers the privilege of determining when a work may be copied.
'Copyright' is the name of the privilege and it is predictable that those who created it wouldn't be careful to avoid it being confused as a natural right.
So, I can't agree that 'copyright' is the right of those it is granted to.
The natural 'right to copy' however, is of course a right when applied to one's own creations or property (including someone else's creations that one has purchased or been given).
It's those laws of commercial privilege that interfere with natural rights.
Without copyright, the natural right to free speech cannot be alienated by agreement. It is only people's familiarity with the ability for copyright to suspend free speech that lulls them into the belief that contract can do so if copyright is abolished.
Laws do not create rights, they can only protect them or suspend them (with unethical privileges).
I quite enjoyed your prose (and your arguments). :)
Stick to your own style that lets you write with greatest ease and eloquence, and don't allow yourself to be co-opted by less appreciative members of your audience. :-/
But, yup, a less ambiguous name would be the icing on the cake.
Removing IP from someone's private domain without authorisation is theft.
Ignoring a copyright holder's privilege by making a copy of your own property is not theft, but infringement.
Let's not conflate infringement with theft - this is what the RIAA/MPAA loves to do.
If you are against copyright, similarly, do not conflate the two. Theft of IP remains a crime even if there's no copyright to prohibit copying of purchased IP.
This is the trouble when the cartel continually conflates copyright infringement with property theft.
Those who see nothing wrong in 'stealing' music (also mistermed IP theft), though it is actually natural cultural liberty, then mistake themselves as anarcho-communists, as they start wondering if perhaps theft and property are invalid concepts altogether.
Property is fine.
It's the suspension of the public's liberty to privilege merchants (publishers) that isn't fine.
Copyright isn't a right.
Infringement isn't theft.
Sharing isn't stealing.
Intellectual property is still property.
Stealing and theft are still wrong.
Copyright is a suspension of liberty.
Abolishing copyright destroys privilege not property.
So, Kid Rock, rebel against your publisher's privilege, but do not conflate that with a rejection of natural property rights.
On the post: The Other Future Of Copyright: The Draconian Suffocating One
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
There are some who deny the validity of intellectual property, and whilst we may both decry the privileges of copyright and patent, those such as I steadfastly argue the self-evidence of natural intellectual property rights.
On the post: The Other Future Of Copyright: The Draconian Suffocating One
Re: Re: Re: Re: ?????????
So, yes, whilst you can eat the paper a music score is printed on, the process of digestion may transform the material property, but it will simply destroy the intellectual property (rather than transforming it). Material works are transformed by our stomachs. Intellectual works are transformed by our brains (our intellect).
We have a natural right to do what we want with our music scores, whether to reproduce more manuscripts for those of us who like eating them or to perform or transform the music upon them as our aesthetic persuades.
Unethically, some of these natural rights are suspended to privilege publishers.
On the post: Is That The Best Cato Can Do In Defense Of Copyright?
Re: Re: Re: My Business Model For My New Blog
When the unethical privilege of copyright is abolished (given it is plainly an unviable anachronism) and everyone's natural intellectual property rights are restored, these rights still need protecting by the law. Some jurisdictions already recognise the distinction between the proprietary privilege of copyright and natural rights (qv moral rights), e.g. truth in attribution, even if implicit by omission.
The law does not say copying is wrong, it says the natural right for an owner of an intellectual work to make copies of their property has been suspended in order to grant this as a commercial privilege, and that such a privileged 'copyright holder' may seek compensation from those who infringe their privilege.
I don't find the 'scarce vs infinite resources' argument at all appropriate or convincing myself. I'd simply observe that written words and digital bits are more easily reproduced than snowflakes or hand carved furniture. That words may be so easily reproduced does not sanction their theft - no matter the interest of those who value them.
Copyright is already ineffective, so removing it cannot remove any incentive. It only removes the ability to prosecute infringement of an unethical privilege.
At the same time as the communications technology of the Internet renders reproduction monopolies unviable, it renders the ability to sell your book to a large readership viable. You can now communicate, form a relationship, and strike bargains with your audience directly. No commissions to publishers to cover their huge costs of printing, distribution, retail and promotion.
Creative commons is best seen as a way to help people gradually wean themselves away from copyright.
On the post: Atari Sues Websites Over Pre-Release Reviews Of Games
Embargoes are gentlemen's agreements, not contracts
The publisher should simply not invite them to a another pre-launch.
Whilst they can sue them (as they could for wearing a loud shirt in a built up area), that doesn't make the contract valid.
Reviewers cannot alienate themselves from their freedom of speech.
On the post: Is That The Best Cato Can Do In Defense Of Copyright?
Re: My Business Model For My New Blog
In practice, as soon as people found out you were failing to properly credit the author or original publisher of your articles, they'd think less of you and your system - given you'd removed value by removing attribution without good reason. It is also possible that you may risk being found guilty of misattribution through context or implication.
If you modified another author's words without making it clear you had done so, you may also be found guilty of violating an author's moral right to the integrity of their works. Either you make the nature of modifications clear, or you preserve a work verbatim - even if you don't attribute the author. Of course, even if you obtain an author's permission to modify their work, you still need to clarify when it has occurred.
There's nothing wrong with copying, but there's plenty wrong with plagiarism. It's a pity people mistake one for the other.
On the post: LA Times Embarrasses Itself With Kozinski Coverage
Re: Re: Re:
In actuality this is not what the judge did.
We're talking about a webserver that hands out documents to any member of the public who asks for them.
No member of the public is invited on to anyone's private property.
If you're a visitor at an exhibition and an organiser rep has a tray of brochures for each exhibitor and the venue facilities, and you ask them for the brochure of the exhibitors' lounge and they give it to you, this is not a violation of the organiser's privacy (irrespective of the fact you wouldn't get in the lounge, and the availability of the brochure isn't advertised).
Even if you ask to look in the tray to have a rummage around to see if any brochures look interesting, if the rep lets you rummage, then this isn't a privacy violation either.
If the conference organiser later finds out that their reps are allowing punters to browse through the tray or are being allowed to have brochures only intended for exhibitors, that's their carelessness. They can't complain their privacy has been violated. The rep and visitors naturally expected the brochures and the tray in which they were held were available to the public.
On the post: LA Times Embarrasses Itself With Kozinski Coverage
Re:
A webserver's whole purpose in life is to make information public, to provide anything that people request (if they know its name) on demand.
By no means is it an invitation for members of the public to take a tour around someone's private property.
On the post: LA Times Embarrasses Itself With Kozinski Coverage
Privacy
The term 'private' seems to be abused to describe personal information or material that one would wish to be kept private (such a wish often increasing after consequences of public availability have been appreciated). In terms of a right to privacy, the term strictly only applies to material that IS private. Aspiration is not actuality.
It is possible that the private domain gets fuzzy at the edges, e.g. an unclasped briefcase left on a train. Its owner has an expectation that the privacy of their private property will be recognised and respected despite having been lost, except that it may be invaded as far as is necessary to return the lost property. Here we can argue whether expectation or accessibility defines privacy.
In Kozinski's case it's as if he has pinned a scrapbook to a noticeboard, and an index alongside it - an index that omits to mention the contents of some pages. For some people it is quite natural to leaf through the book without consideration of the index. All pages must be considered public. Especially since the webserver's raison d'etre is to publish files to members of the public who ask for them.
I wouldn't agree that it was like dumpster diving. I would argue that trash is private, and garbage collection companies were 'common carriers', i.e. not authorised to permit inspection or publication of what they were conveying.
There is a fair bit of web chat at the mo ( http://www.digitalproductions.co.uk/index.php?id=117 ) that seems to drift into the idea that personal information is the rightful property of the person it describes. This could easily drift into the idea that being found in possession of embarrassing IP is the rightful secret of the person so embarrassed, even though they unwittingly let it slip.
On the post: The Other Future Of Copyright: The Draconian Suffocating One
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"In order to promote art and productive commerce, we have arbitrarily created rights that do not exist naturally (and have imposed upon freedoms that do so exist), as we once deemed reasonable. Now that those reasons (or at least the weight of their claim over and above what is natural) have been superseded by technological advancement, we have, purely by the construct of social cognitive dissonance, clung to a fabricated reality beyond reason."
I remain unpersuaded by your argument that this speech or the voice or language in which it is spoken is indicative of either pretentiousness or disguised ignorance.
I grant you that if it were phrased more simply it would be more readily digested by a larger audience, but that is not without cost.
Instead of berating the author for not taking this burden upon himself, you can instead digest it yourself, rephrase it, and then impart it to the larger audience that you apparently pursue.
After all, we are trying to encourage the sharing of each other's speech and the building upon it, whether to simplify or to elaborate, to promote or to explain.
On the post: The Other Future Of Copyright: The Draconian Suffocating One
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I don't argue here to persuade, but to learn and understand. Nor do I seek the largest audience.
It is possible that Wordy Jason is not trying to find a larger audience. It is possible he is not striving to maximise the persuasive force of his argument.
At least consider that these things may be possible. That then removes the persuasive force from your argument that his '"hifalutin" talk' is invariably either disguised ignorance or domineering pretentiousness.
I'm sorry, is this a five minute argument or the full half-hour?
On the post: The Other Future Of Copyright: The Draconian Suffocating One
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Either you're a promoter pursuing a large audience, or you're an artist pursuing your art.
Sometimes you wear both hats, each on a different day.
On the post: Warner Tells Kid Rock To Denounce File Sharing; He Denounces Warner Instead
Re:
On the post: Warner Tells Kid Rock To Denounce File Sharing; He Denounces Warner Instead
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Then again maybe he simply no longer wants my abolitionist ideas polluting his blog?
You decide. It's still a mystery to me.
On the post: Warner Tells Kid Rock To Denounce File Sharing; He Denounces Warner Instead
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
* Seek liberty, but not at the expense of truth
* Seek truth, but not at the expense of privacy
* Seek privacy, but not at the expense of life
* Seek life, and enjoy free culture.
Natural rights are defined by natural rights, e.g. the natural right to privacy is 'curtailed' as you put it by the natural right to life.
Laws do not create rights or determine the balance between them, but arbitrate that balance.
Copyright is by no means a self-evident right. This was recognised at the time the privilege was created, however it was given the benefit of the doubt as potentially more valuable to society than the cultural liberty it suspended.
I wholly support a free and fair market in cultural works (exchange of art for money) and the protection of everyone's intellectual property rights.
To fully achieve that protection requires the abolition of privileges that suspend those rights, i.e. copyright and patent.
On the post: Warner Tells Kid Rock To Denounce File Sharing; He Denounces Warner Instead
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Copyright and patent exceed this, by extending that exclusive right beyond its natural limit, i.e. beyond the point at which the author or inventor has exclusive possession of their writings and discoveries (because the author or inventor distributed copies or published them and ended their exclusivity).
See http://www.digitalproductions.co.uk/index.php?id=119
So the constitution does not make copyright (or patent) a right, nor would it have the power to define it as a right in any case. Rights are self-evident; they are not created by law or constitution, but observed and protected by them.
On the post: Warner Tells Kid Rock To Denounce File Sharing; He Denounces Warner Instead
Re: Re: Re:
'Copyright' is the name of the privilege and it is predictable that those who created it wouldn't be careful to avoid it being confused as a natural right.
So, I can't agree that 'copyright' is the right of those it is granted to.
The natural 'right to copy' however, is of course a right when applied to one's own creations or property (including someone else's creations that one has purchased or been given).
On the post: The Other Future Of Copyright: The Draconian Suffocating One
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Without copyright, the natural right to free speech cannot be alienated by agreement. It is only people's familiarity with the ability for copyright to suspend free speech that lulls them into the belief that contract can do so if copyright is abolished.
Laws do not create rights, they can only protect them or suspend them (with unethical privileges).
On the post: The Other Future Of Copyright: The Draconian Suffocating One
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I quite enjoyed your prose (and your arguments). :)
Stick to your own style that lets you write with greatest ease and eloquence, and don't allow yourself to be co-opted by less appreciative members of your audience. :-/
But, yup, a less ambiguous name would be the icing on the cake.
On the post: Is That The Best Cato Can Do In Defense Of Copyright?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Removing IP from someone's private domain without authorisation is theft.
Ignoring a copyright holder's privilege by making a copy of your own property is not theft, but infringement.
Let's not conflate infringement with theft - this is what the RIAA/MPAA loves to do.
If you are against copyright, similarly, do not conflate the two. Theft of IP remains a crime even if there's no copyright to prohibit copying of purchased IP.
See http://www.againstmonopoly.org/index.php?perm=685 for more discussion.
On the post: Warner Tells Kid Rock To Denounce File Sharing; He Denounces Warner Instead
Re:
This is the trouble when the cartel continually conflates copyright infringement with property theft.
Those who see nothing wrong in 'stealing' music (also mistermed IP theft), though it is actually natural cultural liberty, then mistake themselves as anarcho-communists, as they start wondering if perhaps theft and property are invalid concepts altogether.
Property is fine.
It's the suspension of the public's liberty to privilege merchants (publishers) that isn't fine.
Copyright isn't a right.
Infringement isn't theft.
Sharing isn't stealing.
Intellectual property is still property.
Stealing and theft are still wrong.
Copyright is a suspension of liberty.
Abolishing copyright destroys privilege not property.
So, Kid Rock, rebel against your publisher's privilege, but do not conflate that with a rejection of natural property rights.
Need it a tad simpler?
Share my music, but don't steal it.
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