Daniel Conover incisively suggests that the online newspapers’ apparent formulation of a plan to place all their news behind a paywall constitutes a suicide pact rather than salvation.

I’d say it was more like a group of similarly afflicted purchasing a retreat in which they can end their terminal illness away from the public eye.

In the future this history of our present will be understood as obviously as children today understand that the Earth orbits the Sun. That is to say that everyone will know why newspapers were doomed, and why journalists were not. However, if any time traveller ventured to enlighten the minds of his forefathers he would have been burnt as a heretic.

So in an attempt to avoid heresy, here is a simple test that anyone can perform upon themselves to see if they have a mind that is so supple it can quickly make the paradigm shift:

Conceive of a future without copyright, one in which authors exchange their writing for their readers’ money, but one in which printers no longer pay authors for their writing to sell copies of it to readers.

If you can open your mind to the possibility that the market for copies has ended, then your mind is open to the possibility that there remains a market for intellectual work.

Newspapers are doomed. Journalists have a bright and prosperous future. These are not contradictory statements.

So, if you are a journalist, don’t charge your readers for copies, invite them to pay you to write, to pay you for your writing. Your readers are now your customers, no longer the printer’s. That traditional publisher can no longer pay you for your writing, because they can no longer sell copies of it, they can’t sell your readers’ eyeballs, and they can’t charge your readers for reading online copies.

Newspapers are white elephants in a barren desert of their own making, desperately wandering from watering hole to watering hole, but the revenue flowing from each tributary of their 18th century monopoly on the sale of copies is drying up. Neither fencing off the copies nor reinforcing the monopoly will help. Their business model faces absolute drought. So they collect, not to commit suicide, but to assemble their graveyard.

Our own technology reveals the fundamental natural law governing information and intellectual work. The age of commercial privilege is ending. Natural rights must resume.

I’m obliged by Lucas Gonze to reappraise CC0 having read his blog article entitled advocacy for CC 0 over BY-SA which responded to Victor Stone’s article Consider: Zero.

I think we’re seeing the crossover of friction vs constraint between software and other art.

The GPL is a license that restores liberty to the public (otherwise suspended by copyright and patent), albeit at the expense of friction (easily surmountable by coders used to it). CC-SA is somewhat similar.

The CC0 is a license/waiver that unencumbers the art from constraint by the author’s copyright, and friction due to (well intentioned) licensing conditions, albeit at the expense of not being able to liberate anyone apart from the immediate users. It may be that opprobrium will be enough to prevent derivatives of CC0 works from being re-encumbered with copyright.

There is a similar issue (and confusion) between manumission and laissez faire between the GPL and BSD licenses (as between CC-SA and CC0). The GPL is actually freer (in restoring more people’s liberty), whereas the BSD is least encumbered by licensing conditions (the licensee is free to suspend others’ liberty).

There is a FAQ for the CC0.

It is disheartening that in conflating legal rights (privileges) and natural rights (moral rights, etc.) CC is giving ‘rights’ a bad name by suggesting that CC0 is a way of surrendering/unreserving as many rights as possible, as if this was a worthy aspiration. It compounds this insinuation by saying that in some jurisdictions it is difficult or impossible for some rights to be waived or licensed. That’s because they are natural and inalienable rights, not commercial privileges!

As I’ve often said before. Artists should surrender none of their rights. They should divest themselves only of their privileges, and by so doing restore the public’s rights their privileges would otherwise annul. Rights are good (natural rights and derivatives), privileges are bad (copyright and patent).

Copyright (via CC license) may provide a holder with the apparent ability to demand attribution, but there is no natural right to it. What there is a natural right to is truth, and thus a right against misattribution. Lawrence Lessig created this confusion in the first place, and now people who are relinquishing their privilege to demand attribution will assume they are also relinquishing the right not to be misattributed.

Somehow I suspect CC has a hidden agenda in conflating the privilege of copyright (and all the ‘legal rights’ it engenders) with inalienable, natural rights, i.e. that it wishes to cement the popular delusion that copyright is a natural right, in order to facilitate legislation that secures it as if a natural right (making infringement a crime). To thus provide liberal licenses/waivers with one hand whilst reinforcing the privilege as if a right with the other hand is crypto-IP-maximalism.

As a condition of my employment, I retain the copyright arising in my works whether produced in the course of my employment or through my use of employer provided facilities. Any such works that I deliver to my employer, will be provided under one or more non-exclusive licenses of their choice from FSF, OSI or CC. Cases of joint authorship may be negotiated separately, however, I will not be excluded from my intellectual work nor be alienated from my liberty to utilise or communicate it.

That’s not so much safeguarding the liberty of the public so much as that of the employee (though it still doesn’t address its derogation by patent). One could arrive at conditions that would restore the public’s liberty to the employee’s work (the public includes the employee), but that probably reduces the employment prospects somewhat. For such employees able to assert their principles I daresay conditions of employment will be negotiated individually, probably stipulating the use of GPLv3 or CC-SA. But then they’d probably only work for an employer that upheld similar principles already.

I recently did a rough ‘back of the envelope’ calculation that gives 2015 as the year in which all the music ever released on CD can fit on a $100 hard disk drive – The Total Music Vortex as I put it.

Now let’s imagine that in 2015, in some part of the world (where copyright isn’t as respected as some might wish it were) there’s a company that has obtained a copy of all music ever released and is selling copies of it on 120TB hard disk drives (that sell bare at $100).

What I want to know is how much you’d offer for such a drive for your sole personal use? Let’s pretend it has no resale value beyond the $100 of the drive.

Is your price $101? $150? $200? $400? or even $1,000?

Would you get anywhere near the $12,600,100 mark that it would cost were you to pay say $10 per CD?

Let’s say you calculated that over the next 20 years you might buy 20 CDs that had been released in the previous 35 years (and would thus be included on that hard drive) – you’d probably buy ten times as many new releases (but they won’t be on that hard drive). That would make your price $300 ($100+20x$10). Let’s say if the CDs had been priced more cheaply you might have bought twice as many. That makes your price $400 ($100+40x$7.50).

So, being relatively generous about it by a factor of 2, if the average person would value a hard drive with all music ever released at $700, that puts the average value of a CD at $0.000476 ($600/1.26m), or less than a twentieth of a cent.

Note that the CDs you do buy, you do value at around $10 (you may value some at even more than the retail price), but there are over a million that you wouldn’t pay even a penny for.

Now if the average CD is valued at a twentieth of a cent, I suggest the record labels could make 2,000% markups if they started auctioning off their back catalogue at a minimum bid of 1 cent per CD. They’ve only got half a dozen years in which to do this, because after that it’s too late, people will have shared it all for next to nothing already.

How would such a digital art auction work? Well, a label would create a website where for every CD ever published they invite punters to bid how much they’d pay to have a copy of that CD with a copyleft license (their cultural liberty to it restored). Let’s say 1,000,000 people bid at least 5 cents for the copyleft release of the CD album recording of Imagine by John Lennon. The label could make $50,000 if they sold it at 5 cents. It’s possible 60,000 people might bid at least $1, in which case it would be better sold at $1 for $60,000. 4,000 of those might even have bid at least $10, but $40,000 isn’t so good. This form of auction enables the determination of the effective market price of a digital work as if it were sold as equally priced copies. The auction of each CD continues indefinitely until the label decides its market price has been reached (as it soon will as the market price descends to zero).

There are 1.5 billion punters online (not all of whom can afford CDs at $10 a pop). Anyway, the theoretical maximum realisable value of a CD is about $700,000 (on average). Being realistic about it, I’d say a label selling a CD for $60,000 (once and for all) is pretty good going (if it can be sustained as an average). But, more critically, if they don’t start selling their back catalogue now, they’ll never sell it.

So, there’s a swansong business model for record labels (artists will have a different model as they’ll be selling the production of their music to their audiences, not copies of monopoly protected published works). Even if the average album only fetches $10,000 this means the labels can make $120 billion over the next 6 years, i.e. $21 billion per annum ($14 per online user per annum). After that, they’ve sold their assets and can focus on selling the value they can still add (if any). The alternative is to sit on back catalogue and watch its sale value decrease to a few hundred dollars, given everyone else will soon also have a copy of it anyway.

You might think this is an example of the difference I often try to explain between selling music and selling copies. It isn’t, it’s selling the public’s liberty back to it, inviting the public to pay for its own manumission concerning a copyright protected work. Selling music is what musicians do, and in the future they’ll sell it to their audiences instead of to record labels as they have done in the past.

So, ethically, the labels’ back catalogue already belongs to the public and the labels shouldn’t get a penny for it (given they’ve been unethically granted the suspension of the public’s liberty to share and build upon it). So, realising its asset value (while it still has one) would be prudent from an unscrupulous and mercenary perspective (a perspective one infers the industry is familiar with).

The final question is though, can the labels dare to acknowledge even tacitly that their monopoly on the distribution of copies may not last forever (let alone 6 years)? As some of us know only too well, it has already ended, but it’s going to take a few years before everyone else realises it. That’s just enough time for the labels to have a closing down sale – unless of course, they’re hoping for a GM style government bailout in 6 years time – assuming the taxpayer’s credit rating hasn’t already been used up by other bailouts by then.

As per the fifth definition of Pirate: A pirate asserts and defends the natural right to liberty, here is some prose in apparent agreement from one George William Curtis, 1824-1892

The end of all scholarly attainment is to live nobly. If a man read books merely to know books, he is a tree planted only to blossom. If he read books to apply their wisdom to life, then he is a tree planted to bear glorious fruit. He does not think for himself alone, nor hoard a thought as a miser a diamond. He spends for the world. Scholarship is not only the knowledge that makes books, but the wisdom which inspires that knowledge. The scholar is not necessarily a learned man, but he is a wise man.
If he be personally a recluse, his voice and influence are never secluded. If the man be a hermit, his mind is a citizen of the world.

If, then, such be the scholar and the scholar’s office, if he be truly the conscience of the State, the fundamental law of his life is liberty. At every cost, the true scholar asserts and defends liberty of thought and liberty of speech. Of what use to a man is a thought that will help the world, if he cannot tell it to the world?

From Orations and addresses of George William Curtis, VOLUME I. ON THE PRINCIPLES AND CHARACTER OP AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS, AND THE DUTIES OF AMERICAN CITIZENS, 1856-1891

A moral code for those engaged in the PIRACY of intellectual works, in accord with the philosophy of natural rights as expounded by such 18^th century luminaries as Thomas Paine (Father of the American Revolution):

1. Spread mankind’s good works of art and knowledge to the four corners of the world.
2. Create and publish your own work, enjoy and share each other’s, use it, build upon it, thrive and prosper.
3. Pay others to do good work as you would be paid to do yours.
4. Restore everyone’s liberty – accept no surrender, deny privilege.
5. Guard our apprehension of the truth against those who would impair it.
6. Respect each other’s privacy – abet no burglary, remedy theft.
7. Protect life, for all, as equals.

Toward the understanding of this modern pirate code

The seven exhortations of this pirate’s code ascend in precedence.

For example, if burglary is necessary to save life, it deserves warrant, but if considered only to ascertain the truth of a wagered outcome, one may do nought but persuade its possessor to divulge.

Most relevant to this code and the moment of our times is the cultural repression and persecution of the people. This arises from the venal surrender of the people’s liberty through its derogation by 18^th century privileges of monopoly such as copyright and patent. The exploitation of these anachronistic privileges by merchants so favoured by the state, especially publishing and industrial corporations, now have them enforcing and prosecuting them against the public to preclude even individual acts of cultural expression competing with them in their mass production of copies and devices.

Monopolies are and have always been a mistake (see Boldrin & Levine). They favour one merchant at the expense of the many¹ (mercantile privilege at the expense of individual liberty), and so are diametrically in opposition to a fair and free market – a market in which people are free to exchange their labour and property without unnatural constraint.

The misguided apologists for such monopolies claim them to be socially beneficial in encouraging the creation and distribution of art and knowledge (to promote the progress of science and useful arts). So, at least the aspirations are agreed. However, the key difference in principle is whether the people’s liberty should be sacrificed to this end (despite scant evidence it provides the means). The modern pirate agrees that his liberty should not be so sacrificed, that his natural right to liberty is inalienable. It can neither be surrendered by himself as citizen, nor his government he empowers to protect it. There is no contract, nor law that can take it away, and nothing so offensive as the allegation that the people voluntarily and democratically surrendered their liberty in a social contract.

Cultural and technological liberty is the civil rights issue of the 21^st century. It is preceded by 19^th and 20^th century natural rights issues of equality (racial, religious and sexual discrimination), life (genocide, execution, torture) and liberty (slavery, segregation, temperance). Today, in our age of information technology and instantaneous diffusion, individuals are struggling for the liberty to share and build upon our cultural and technological heritage. The public as pirate is struggling against the anachronistic monopolies of copyright and patent, against the yoke of corporations who have amassed these privileges into effective subjugation of the people.

We must therefore restore law to respect and protect the individual’s natural rights. This was the mission and intention of Thomas Paine and other founding fathers of the United States, and directed the writing of the US constitution.

Not being natural rights, and so neither recognised nor sanctioned by the constitution, both copyright and patent should be abolished, to be replaced by law that properly secures authors’ and inventors’ exclusive right to their writings and discoveries. The government should be strictly limited in this and should not use it as an excuse to assume unconstitutional power to grant transferable monopolies such that these may benefit the corporations that covet them (and the legislators who enjoy the latter’s lobbying). Other nations/jurisdictions should also confine their legislation to the protection of natural rights rather than the granting of monopolies.

It should also be noted that the loss of monopoly, whether through being rendered ineffective by piracy or legislation, does not warrant compensation, so there is no justification for any levy or tax to that end, nor even as a separate means of bypassing the marketplace for the government to procure art and knowledge on the people’s behalf. A free market, as should have existed for the last three centuries, is sufficient and proper.

1. Spread mankind’s good works of art and knowledge to the four corners of the world

Our mission as an emancipated collective is to promote the progress of science and useful arts by shedding light on the world around us, and ourselves as human beings.

2. Create and publish your own work, enjoy and share each other’s, use it, build upon it, thrive and prosper

Our individual mission as free men is to contribute our own light, to recast the light of others, and thus to be free to stand upon the shoulders of others who have contributed theirs before us, so that we may cast a brighter light further into the shadows.

3. Pay others to do good work as you would be paid to do yours

There is no taint or stigma in commerce, in exchanging our goods or labour, nor in accepting reward for our art, nor in rewarding others. Indeed, to thrive and prosper through our creative talents is an achievement to be proud of, and just as we should have the liberty to exchange our labour, to seek reward for our creativity and insight, so we should respect that liberty and aspiration in others. Cultural liberty is not about creating a non-commercial ghetto, but about being emancipated to share and build upon all human culture, whether for love or money. It is time to end the so called ‘permission culture’.

So make no mistake concerning commerce, there’s nothing inherently wrong in being a merchant. The wrong is in privileging merchants with our liberty, for then pejoratives of pirates and piracy are the inevitable result as those named as such assert their natural liberty. As Richard Stallman puts it: “Free as in free speech, not as in free beer”.

4. Restore everyone’s liberty – accept no surrender, deny privilege

We are impelled to work toward abolishing the unethical privileges of copyright and patent. In the interim we neutralise the privileges we have through copyleft licenses, or otherwise relinquish them. This is not a mercenary pursuit of cheap promotion, but a philanthropic manumission of our fellows. Similarly, we do not accept even the voluntary surrender of others’ liberty as a reward for the publication of our work. The monopolies of copyright and patent, being properly recognised as unnatural and unethical privileges, must be rejected as intolerable to the members of an egalitarian and emancipated civilisation.

5. Guard our apprehension of the truth against those who would impair it

The natural right to liberty is delimited by the natural right to truth. Cultural liberty does not encompass the freedom to present another’s work as one’s own, nor to modify another’s work and present it as theirs. Consequently, the author’s derivative right is to accuracy in attribution (whether explicit or implicit), not to attribution per se. Credit is a matter of respect, not an obligation to be jealously prosecuted.

6. Respect each other’s privacy – abet no burglary, remedy theft

Privacy is also under threat in this time, as its invasion by the state (and the corporations that lobby it) is considered necessary for the policing of citizens’ communications, to detect infringement of monopolies. Consequently bogeyman excuses are co-opted to obtain sanction for this unethical abrogation of a natural right even more fundamental than liberty.

An individual’s private domain is thus out of bounds to those who would restore and assert their cultural liberty. Invasion (burglary) and violation (theft) of an individual’s privacy remain as acts to be abhorred, whether their material or intellectual work is removed or communicated as a result (irrespective of authorship). However, we may of course invite others into our homes, and confide our secrets to them, even make them privy to our private works, but we can only rely upon their respect for us to constrain them to discretion. We cannot bind them to silence with the law, nor can they alienate themselves from their liberty. Thus they cannot surrender their freedom of speech in a non-disclosure agreement (though they may make silence a condition of continued employment or future reward).

An author’s and inventor’s exclusive right derives from the individual’s natural right to privacy.

7. Protect life, for all, as equals

All men are born free and equal, and have four key, natural and inalienable rights: foremost life, followed by privacy, truth, and liberty. It is to preserve these rights for all as equals that we collectively create, empower, and elect a government to protect them.

Thus we have a duty to protect the life of others, and that includes desisting from speech that incites violence, whether against individuals (Salman Rushdie) or classes (sex, race, religion), or endorses abuse (of suspects and other non-consenting adults, or those unable to give consent such as minors).

It should be recognised that corporations are neither human beings nor equivalent to individuals and consequently have no natural rights, though they may benefit from the collected rights of their constituency, e.g. effective privacy of collectively owned buildings.

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¹ “Monopolies are sacrifices of the many to the few.” James Madison in a letter of October 17, 1788