Copyright Doublethink · Tuesday June 24, 2008 by Crosbie Fitch
Darren said 6057 days ago :
I strongly believe in the need for copyright, but that doesn’t mean that I elevate state and corporation as superior to human beings. In fact, I think copyright is essential for human beings. Namely, the artists, inventors, and other individuals who create the intellectual property through their own work.
Copyright is based on the idea that individuals must be able to own the products of their work. The rights of the individual are held to be superior to all, and the state’s role is to protect that right.
Crosbie Fitch said 6057 days ago :
If you feel that copyright and patent are essential for human beings, then do you not think it strange that such privileges are invariably prosecuted by corporations? Stranger still in recent times, by corporations against human beings.
If copyright and patent were rights of the common man they’d not be transferred to corporations and would instead be prosecuted by the state on behalf of its criminally infringed citizens.
I agree with you that individuals naturally own the fruits of their labour, whether physical or mental, for as some have wisely observed, as early as 1783: “nothing is more strictly a man’s own than the fruit of his study” and “there isn’t property more peculiarly a man’s own than that which is produced by the labor of his mind.”
Consequently, a man keeps his property to himself or he sells it to another. If he sells it, its purchasers enjoy their property as equally as the one who had possessed it before them.
Equality is the factor you’re missing when you state that ‘the rights of the individual are held to be superior to all’. Au contraire, the rights of the individual are held to be equal to those of all other individuals – not superior. Moreover, each right cedes to a greater right, as for example the right to liberty cedes to the right to truth, truth to privacy, and privacy to life.
Of course the state’s role is to protect human rights.
Unfortunately, it has overreached itself in proposing that the granting of the mercantile privileges of copyright and patent can provide greater benefit to the public than the protection of the public’s human right to liberty (aka freedom of speech) and the unencumbered enjoyment of one’s property whether created or purchased.
It is strange that you feel copyright is essential for human beings. We lived without it for millennia until 300 years ago, and we’re going to live without it being effective for millennia from this day forth. Controlling the reproduction and diffusion of digital artworks in the digital domain is plainly inappropriate if not impossible, so all that copyright can achieve is persecution.
Is corporate persecution against the citizen essential for human beings?
Perhaps you believe that self-publishing authors should have the state persecute those who infringe their copyrights?
I think you’ll find very few self-publishing authors who would actually persecute their readers, or have the state do it on their behalf – contrary to the pretensions of misguided authors who vilify infringers at the instruction of their cult leader (aka their corporate publisher).
Darren said 6057 days ago :
Don’t get me wrong, when I say that “the rights of the individual are held to be superior to all,” I didn’t mean the rights of one particular individual over another individual. I mean that all individuals have the same fundamental right, the right to his or her own life, and that right is held above any claim against it. The world’s largest corporation or the world’s biggest mob shouldn’t be allowed to make one individual do something against his or her own will. Otherwise, the concept of “individual rights” would not mean anything.
I don’t think it’s strange that corporations use the state to protect their copyrights and patents, because that’s what the governments are for. Corporations are, when you get down to it, nothing but a group of individuals, each with the same rights as anybody else. It’s not “corporations against humans beings,” it’s human beings versus human beings, and the purpose of government is to work those problems out — when those problems constitute a violation of somebody’s individual rights.
So instead of “persecute,” I think a more appropriate word is “prosecute.” If somebody steals something from another individual, the victim should go to the government for help — that’s what its for.
I don’t think you should use the history of mankind as proof that copyright isn’t necessary. If you look at our history, I think you’ll that the majority of the time it hasn’t been very pretty. It wasn’t until a relatively short time ago that our standard of living jumped to where it is today. I think that many of the advances that we’ve made have been due not just to the fact that many smart people had a lot of great ideas, but that they were free to exercise the reap the rewards from their work.
Crosbie Fitch said 6056 days ago :
Corporations do not have human rights because they are not human. Corporations have however been allowed to hold commercial privileges. And those commercial privileges, such as copyright and patent, are unethical if superceding the rights of human beings (even if those privileges are granted to individuals).
I’m suggesting that it is a big clue that copyright is not a natural right when you consider that it is invariably prosecuted by corporations as opposed to individuals, and that if it was a natural right we’d probably find it mentioned as one of the Ten Commandments, e.g. “Do not make an image or any likeness of your possessions without their creator’s leave”. That it was contrived only a few centuries ago to represent the coincident interests of state and publishing corporations in controlling the press is another big clue that it is by no means a natural right of an individual.
So, just as it is wrong to steal someone’s property, it is also wrong to use a commercial privilege that constrains someone in their use of their property, e.g. prevents them performing it, or making copies or derivatives of it.
This is the strife we are seeing today. People don’t care about publishing or reproduction monopolies if they only affect those corporations that engage in them, but they do care that they can use their property without constraint, interference or litigation – and such use frequently infringes copyright.
I suggest that rather than unethical privileges, you should strongly believe in intellectual property rights, i.e. that artist, inventors, and other individuals who create or purchase intellectual works must be able to completely own those works as their own intellectual property, to use, copy, modify, publish, perform, or exchange, without interference from the state or those privileged by the state.
At least we agree that the state’s role is to protect everyone’s rights, intellectual or otherwise.
The thing is, that includes protecting those rights against privilege.
In all the ongoing copyright debates, what I continually find so astonishing is how easily people hold two contradictory ideas at the same time:
People manage this incredible doublethink though context:
Publishers, logically if dispassionately, say “No. You have no liberty to share or build upon our published works. Tell your agent to get in touch with us and we’ll talk about a license”.
And the public, mere human beings, are left scratching their heads wondering how to reconcile “I know stealing copies is wrong,” with “but why do I see no wrong in sharing or building upon other artists’ work without their permission?”.
To find the fundamental contradiction you have to go back three hundred years:
What’s therefore clear to me is that copyright (and patent), being in fundamental opposition to human nature and human rights, should be abolished.
What’s clear to others, who elevate state and corporation as superior to human beings, is that copyright legislation is in dire need of reinforcement and that citizens are in dire need of re-education.
What’s not at all clear is what will actually happen.
Even so, if you want some clarity in your own mind, I suggest you first ditch the doublethink. Then we can at least argue a little more clearly as to which of citizen, state or corporation should be ascendant.