I don't think see any important similarity between patent and copyright.
I think that if I write something down, I should be able to say, "If you want to consume this content, you have to agree to certain conditions." I see copyright as the legal mechanism to enforce this. That's all there is to it.
I wouldn't mind if there is an exception for orphaned works.
People want to argue that what I'm suggesting would result in horrible consequences, but it just wouldn't. Take your story example. So what if I forevermore have control over a story I wrote? It just doesn't matter. So what if my decendants get rich selling it? Again, it just doesn't matter. But, hell, it's my story, I and the people I share it with should be able to institute any rules around its distribution that we mutually agree on.
You talk about the government staying out of the interaction between content creators and consumers, but that is exactly my position, whereas you are arguing that the government can force content creators to cede their works to consumers after a certain time has elapsed.
I don't think copyright can/should cover "an idea," only specific content.
>> ...you are arguing that the government can force content creators to cede their works to consumers after a certain time has elapsed.
That's like saying I force you to fall to the ground by not holding you up.
Works are inherently copyable. Copyright is an artificial monopoly which society spends money to create and enforce. It does so in order to get the benefit of encouraging creation of works. The whole goal is to have more works available as a public good.
This is exactly what the Constitution says:
>> To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
If those works are made less useful to society by remaining locked up forever, there is less benefit to society, and less reason to spend money and effort creating artificial monopolies.
If it were shown that monopoly incentives were actually not very helpful in encouraging the creation of new works, copyright should be abolished.
It would be a cost to society without a benefit to society.
Notice that the creator never enters as a concern here. Society shouldn't make rules to protect the income of specific groups, be they bricklayers, nuclear physicists, or writers. We should work together only for the common good. If you want to work exclusively for your own good, that's fine, but do it by yourself and stop trying to get the laws to serve you.
I disagree with practically everything you say, but I'm only going to address part of it.
Society shouldn't make rules to protect the income of specific groups, be they bricklayers, nuclear physicists, or writers. We should work together only for the common good. If you want to work exclusively for your own good, that's fine, but do it by yourself and stop trying to get the laws to serve you.
I think that the proper purpose of government is to secure my individual rights, particularly property rights, so that I can pursue my happiness. Laws should serve me, and everyone, in that sense. (I also believe this brings the best overall outcome for society, but that's beside the point.)
I do not have any duty to "serve the common good." If we keep going towards that model, to the point that my own productive work is no longer productive for me, I will literally "go on strike" and just do manual labor to survive. (Or go to a more free country, if there is one.) That's not out of dedication to ideology, it's out of a need for psychological survival. I can't make myself work hard to benefit a society that is mainly just extractive of my production (i.e., bad for me).
As an aside, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" != promoting the "public good". This is a distinction the Founders would have been aware of. But the Constitution isn't perfect, anyway, so it hardly matters.
>I think that the proper purpose of government is to secure my individual rights, particularly property rights, so that I can pursue my happiness. Laws should serve me, and everyone, in that sense. (I also believe this brings the best overall outcome for society, but that's beside the point.)
You can define anything equivalently as a right or an obligation. "The government should protect my right to own land" ~ "The government should provide soldiers (presumably funded through taxation) to evict other people from my land"; there's no qualitative distinction between property rights and e.g. a right to healthcare.
Copyright law does not make individuals more free, quite the opposite. It gives a small number of powerful organizations the power to control the much larger number of individuals who would want to create derivative works. There seems to be this weird blind spot on the political right where they're perfectly happy for people to be oppressed as long as it's not by the government. (Of course, the left has the opposite problem).
>I do not have any duty to "serve the common good." If we keep going towards that model, to the point that my own productive work is no longer productive for me, I will literally "go on strike" and just do manual labor to survive.
I hope this bluff gets called. Every aspect of modern life is made possible by others serving the common good. And frankly, society would be better off without the "creativity" of those who are producing works just for the paycheck.
there's no qualitative distinction between property rights and e.g. a right to healthcare.
There is. A rational person pursuing his own good simply wants to be protected from the initiation of force, whence arises "negative rights," such as property rights, and any other legitimate right (this was the original meaning of the word "right" in this context).
Any "positive right" (a right requiring the initiation of force) is not only qualitatively different (in that it requires the initiation of force instead of arising because the initiaition of force is barred), it is not a legitimate right.
Copyright law does not make individuals more free, quite the opposite.
Disagree.
It gives a small number of powerful organizations the power to control the much larger number of individuals who would want to create derivative works.
That's quite obviously untrue, unless you think that Time Warner owning Harry Potter counts as "control" or "oppression", or if you have a too-expansive view of copyright (e.g., conflating it with patents).
Every aspect of modern life is made possible by others serving the common good.
Most good aspect of modern life comes from people serving themselves; benefitng the common good is a nice side-effect.
And frankly, society would be better off without the "creativity" of those who are producing works just for the paycheck.
Really? That's an incredibly destructive and anti-life point of view.
>There is. A rational person pursuing his own good simply wants to be protected from the initiation of force, whence arises "negative rights," such as property rights, and any other legitimate right (this was the original meaning of the word "right" in this context).
It takes a perverse definition of force to say that when person B is living on land that person A claims ownership of, and person A has him forcibly thrown off it, that person B was the one who initiated force.
>That's quite obviously untrue, unless you think that Time Warner owning Harry Potter counts as "control" or "oppression
They have the power to prevent me, privately, behind closed doors, from writing my own stories with Harry Potter in and giving them to my friends.
>> I do not have any duty to "serve the common good."
Maybe I miscommunicated. I'm certainly not pushing for socialism or anything like it. I'm closer to libertarianism than anything. To me, the default answer for "should the government be involved in X?" is "no." To answer "yes," I want something pointing to either an "inalienable right", like "freedom from murder," or a clear public good, like "we all benefit if you aren't allowed to dump nuclear sludge in the storm drains."
I think the key thing we disagree on that I don't see copyright ownership as one of those inalienable rights, and you do. And I don't see indefinite copyright as a clear public good, either.
>> "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" != promoting the "public good". This is a distinction the Founders would have been aware of.
I don't understand the distinction you're making. I quote again:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Whose good is intended by said progress, if not society's as a whole?
If you said, "that of the creators," I think that's unwarranted. They could easily have said, "To protect the Inherent Rights of Authors and Inventors, by securing for All Time the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." But they didn't. And they specifically said "limited Times".
As to whether it matters, it's the only existing legal rationale for copyright in the U.S. You may argue that IP is an inherent right, but only a constitutional amendment could properly make that into law.
I'm certainly not pushing for socialism or anything like it. I'm closer to libertarianism than anything. To me, the default answer for "should the government be involved in X?" is "no." To answer "yes," I want something pointing to either an "inalienable right", like "freedom from murder," or a clear public good, like "we all benefit if you aren't allowed to dump nuclear sludge in the storm drains."
Sounds like I'm in good company. That makes me happy.
I think the key thing we disagree on that I don't see copyright ownership as one of those inalienable rights, and you do. And I don't see indefinite copyright as a clear public good, either.
First, I think that people should be free to make a contract that states, "I will let you read this thing I've written, if you agree to certain conditions" (and those conditions could be anything - don't write fanfic, don't distribute, you have to do 50 pushups, whatever).
Then, copyright is just the government saying, "For the sake of convenience, here is the default contract. If you want something different, you can always explicitly opt out of this, and optionally specify something different."
I'm really interested to see if you buy this rationale for copyright.
Whose good is intended by said progress, if not society's as a whole?
I think the intention is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts," which does benefit society, but indirectly. I think if the intention had been to promote the public good, they would have said "to promote the Good of the Public" :P
If you still think this is unclear, you're trying too hard (but let me know and I'll explain it differently.) Of course, you may disagree, but I want to make sure you understand what I'm saying.
As to whether it matters, it's the only existing legal rationale for copyright in the U.S.
True, I guess, but I'm not interested in how the current law can be interpreted ("legal rationale"); I'm interested in how things ought to be.
How do you account for the fact that every story is derived from some other story? Why should Disney get to exploit Grimm's stories, but nobody can exploit Disney's?
Sir, the odiousness of your arguments is exceeded only by their selfishness.
But, at the very least, please elaborate on how your notion of property rights encompasses ideas. Please do explain how an idea, which can be copied at no cost and used to enrich the receiver, should be held in same esteem as a physical good which must be wrenched from your clinging little fingers.
Sir, the odiousness of your arguments is exceeded only by their selfishness.
Thank you. I consider selfishness a virtue. (However, contrary to what society has taught you, my selfishness does not hurt anybody else as long as I go about it in a rational way.)
Please do explain how an idea, which can be copied at no cost and used to enrich the receiver, should be held in same esteem as a physical good
I specifically said in an ancestor comment to this one that I don't believe the position I've taken on copyright would apply to "ideas."
On the bright side of javert's arguments, if we allowed for perpetual copyright, Greece would no longer have a debt problem, since it could be argued that every modern western story is derived from a Greek epic (not to mention all the royalties for the Greek language used in the New Testament).
The most important avenue of creative work is derivative works.
Copyrights essentially ban almost all forms of derivative works -- thereby depriving society of the most important form of creativity.
Also, old works are mostly lost to society -- whereas if they were easily distributed they could compete as free works with contemporary copyrighted works, thereby driving the competition and thus quality up.
Whether or not you get to control distribution of the story you wrote, in fact, whether it is your story at all -- is subject to debate.
A world with short copyright terms (or perhaps even no copyright terms at all) might make some authors less rich -- and it might make the world of content available to everyone much richer, too.
I think that if I write something down, I should be able to say, "If you want to consume this content, you have to agree to certain conditions." I see copyright as the legal mechanism to enforce this. That's all there is to it.
I wouldn't mind if there is an exception for orphaned works.
People want to argue that what I'm suggesting would result in horrible consequences, but it just wouldn't. Take your story example. So what if I forevermore have control over a story I wrote? It just doesn't matter. So what if my decendants get rich selling it? Again, it just doesn't matter. But, hell, it's my story, I and the people I share it with should be able to institute any rules around its distribution that we mutually agree on.
You talk about the government staying out of the interaction between content creators and consumers, but that is exactly my position, whereas you are arguing that the government can force content creators to cede their works to consumers after a certain time has elapsed.
I don't think copyright can/should cover "an idea," only specific content.