The Madness of Copyright · Wednesday August 27, 2008 by Crosbie Fitch
Ray Beckerman said 5721 days ago :
No offense intended, crosbie. The RIAA lawyers are constantly seeking to disparage me and frequently cite my blog to the Judges.
I have nothing against ‘radicalism’ or ‘extremism’ in defense of what is right, nor against ‘conservatism’, for that matter, which seeks to preserve what is right.
I am for right and against wrong. And I am not ‘moderate’ about standing up for what I believe in.
If you really believe all copyright law (as opposed to abuse of copyright law, or as opposed to poorly drafted copyright law), is wrong, then go ahead and make your case for that, although I’ve yet to see such a case made by anybody.
I’m in the present struggle not because of passionate feelings about copyright law, but because I am a strong believer in the rule of law itself, and because I detest bullies, extortionists, and collusionists.
I am a practicing lawyer; these are real cases with real people suffering in them; and if the law as it exists were actually being applied, these people would not be suffering and the lawsuits would not exist. And so my mission is to see the law applied.
If it is your mission to abolish the law, that is your case to make, but it is not mine, and not one that will help any living breathing person I know, since it would never happen in our lifetimes.
And I feel no confidence at all that if it were to happen, it would be such a good thing to enable anyone to just rip off the creations of anyone else, without compensation, and without even acknowledgment.
Crosbie Fitch said 5715 days ago :
Ray, it is not my mission to abolish copyright, however its abolition does appear to be an inevitability – given the current alternative of prosecuting the people for enjoying their cultural liberty.
The fact is, the populace at large are engaged in wholesale copyright infringement.
If copyright’s privileging of publishers is to supersede natural law then the likes of RIAA and MPAA are indeed legally entitled to prosecute the people for enjoying liberties that their government had long ago ceded to create copyright. Consequently, if you support copyright law then you should not attempt to frustrate or thwart the RIAA/MPAA in their pursuit of its enforcement.
Either people should be free to share and build upon published works, or they should surrender this liberty to permit the monopoly of copyright to remain viable, and thus permit publishers’ traditional business models to remain viable.
In other words, either copyright is an unethical mercantile privilege, or the people are simply incorrigible pirates.
I can only conclude that copyright, being in opposition to natural law (that people are naturally free to copy, perform, exchange, and build upon published works), and consequently being bad law, is socially harmful, counter-productive, and is ultimately detrimental to innovation and cultural enrichment.
Law is supposed to arise from the people. It is not supposed to represent the interests of publishing corporations in facilitating their commerce with the people.
Whilst I clearly see no benefit in protecting anachronistic monopolies at the expense of a persecuted public, I think we both agree that producers of intellectual works should have their exclusive rights secured, and that owners of such intellectual property should have remedies against theft. Moreover, without the monopoly of copyright, producers of intellectual works should at last be able to exchange their labour in a free and fair market. As for acknowledgement, the respectful crediting of artists whose work one has built upon should be even more forthcoming once the threat of litigation for doing so has been removed. Even with less incentive to falsely claim originality, any wilful misattribution that does occur should be recognised as a misdemeanour.
Rather than subjugate the people to mercantile privilege, let’s improve the law such that it better expresses the natural law of the people.
Stephan Kinsella said 5715 days ago :
Beckerman: “If you really believe all copyright law (as opposed to abuse of copyright law, or as opposed to poorly drafted copyright law), is wrong, then go ahead and make your case for that, although I’ve yet to see such a case made by anybody.”
Two comments. First, the burden of proof is on someone advocating a bureaucratic, legislated, artificial-rights system that facially infringes property rights. Second, of course principled cases have been made, e.g. by me (I’m a practicing IP attorney), in my Against Intellectual Property.
On the Recording Industry vs The People blog Ray Beckerman asks Have copyright owners gone mad?. He further inquires “Have the content owners gone completely mad? Are they actually trying to destroy our love of music?”.
I respond:
Ray then replies:
I then answer the aspersion of radicalism:
Unfortunately, Ray rejected this comment, finding it a tad off topic.
This blog, on the other hand, is about real solutions to real problems going on in the real world, namely the real problem that is copyright, the interim solution of its licensed neutralisation (aka copyleft), and the real solution of its abolition – not least, the research and development of revenue mechanisms that operate without copyright’s suspension of the public’s cultural liberty.