William Stepp brings our attention to a typical pro-copyright treatise, “The Misunderstood Idea of Copyright” by Karl-Erik Tallmo.
While it seems that Karl-Erik understands copyright quite well, he offers no argument in favour of it except the traditional commercial benefit to authors/publishers, albeit at the expense of public liberty (and persecution by corporations).
He does recognise the goodness of moral rights and the right to privacy, along with the inescapable logic that the fruits of an author’s intellect are their intellectual property. However, these things lend no support to copyright.
What still remains unexplained is the peculiar illogic that one should continue to own one’s property even after one has sold it.
Justifying slavery by rote arguments of its commercial benefits to slave owners may well be unassailable on economic grounds (even if so assailable upon hindsight). However, what we have today, to extend the allegory, is a situation where all slaves have become expert escape artists to rival Houdini. Whilst it’s possible for a slave owner to visit the nearest towns to see if they can find any of their slaves still in the vicinity and obtain the services of the law to assist them reclaim their property, even the stubborn should soon see that despite the economic advantages previously enjoyed, the modern reality can no longer sustain them.
It seems that in the case of slavery, the ethical argument against it surpassed the economic argument in favour. As for copyright, ethical arguments against it are not new, but they have always been impotent against commercial priorities.
It is a mistake to believe that copyright’s contemporary problems and the appearance of arguments against it arise from its misunderstanding.
What we have today is not so much a misunderstanding of copyright, but a misapplication. It could, perhaps a decade or so ago, be effectively applied to a thousand commercial publishers with real commercial benefits to the monopoly holders (notwithstanding the probably greater hidden costs), however it can no longer be effectively applied to a billion online publishers.
It doesn’t matter how well you understand copyright, it is unethical, ineffective, uneconomic, irrelevant, and redundant.
What matters is how well you understand reality.
“One aspect is that intellectual property is needed for a person to be able to sell his or her work. Otherwise, one can only sell one’s time.”
I love how he starts off, bolding that text. What is so horrible about only being paid for time? That’s how I was paid as a software engineer.
Comment #000125 at
2007-08-24 12:41
by
Yes, many people charge for time, irrespective of how much work is involved, but then that’s what the market can often bear (though commensurately valuable work necessarily still tends to occur).
However, I do actually agree that intellectual property is needed for a person to be able to sell his or her work, specifically their uncommissioned work.
And a lot of us will start off without commissions. An author has a right to sell their intellectual property in a free market just as much as a craftsman has a right to sell their material property.
Where disagreement occurs is in whether the author, unlike a craftsman, deserves a monopoly on their work. Similarly, whether an inventor, unlike an engineer, deserves a monopoly on their work too.
Everyone has a natural right to the property they produce or purchase, whether intellectual or material.
Unnatural privileges such as copyright and patent may well constitute commercially valuable monopolies for those who can obtain them, but they have no place in a fair and free market, nor in a society that upholds rights to privacy and artistic liberty. Why should one artist be denied the liberty to share or build upon the published expression of another artist (IP that they have legitimately purchased)? Why should one engineer be denied the use of a particular mechanism (that they arrived at through their own intellectual labour) simply because another engineer won the favour of royal assent to a monopoly?
Monopolies that only apply to corporations may tend to be ignored by the public at large, despite their incompatibility with a free market. However, when corporations attempt to apply their monopolies even to the citzenry, then we have corporate persecution and an exponentially growing population of very unhappy bunnies…
Comment #000126 at
2007-08-24 13:58
by
Crosbie Fitch
William Stepp brings our attention to a typical pro-copyright treatise, “The Misunderstood Idea of Copyright” by Karl-Erik Tallmo.
While it seems that Karl-Erik understands copyright quite well, he offers no argument in favour of it except the traditional commercial benefit to authors/publishers, albeit at the expense of public liberty (and persecution by corporations).
He does recognise the goodness of moral rights and the right to privacy, along with the inescapable logic that the fruits of an author’s intellect are their intellectual property. However, these things lend no support to copyright.
What still remains unexplained is the peculiar illogic that one should continue to own one’s property even after one has sold it.
Justifying slavery by rote arguments of its commercial benefits to slave owners may well be unassailable on economic grounds (even if so assailable upon hindsight). However, what we have today, to extend the allegory, is a situation where all slaves have become expert escape artists to rival Houdini. Whilst it’s possible for a slave owner to visit the nearest towns to see if they can find any of their slaves still in the vicinity and obtain the services of the law to assist them reclaim their property, even the stubborn should soon see that despite the economic advantages previously enjoyed, the modern reality can no longer sustain them.
It seems that in the case of slavery, the ethical argument against it surpassed the economic argument in favour. As for copyright, ethical arguments against it are not new, but they have always been impotent against commercial priorities.
It is a mistake to believe that copyright’s contemporary problems and the appearance of arguments against it arise from its misunderstanding.
What we have today is not so much a misunderstanding of copyright, but a misapplication. It could, perhaps a decade or so ago, be effectively applied to a thousand commercial publishers with real commercial benefits to the monopoly holders (notwithstanding the probably greater hidden costs), however it can no longer be effectively applied to a billion online publishers.
It doesn’t matter how well you understand copyright, it is unethical, ineffective, uneconomic, irrelevant, and redundant.
What matters is how well you understand reality.