What are the key arguments against copyright?
Copyright is not a right
Copyright is not a right, but a commercial privilege for the benefit of publishers (it’s simply initially assigned to the author – only a tiny minority of authors such as JK Rowling have sufficient funds to hire their own legal team to enforce it). Publishers are naturally keen to portray copyright as an author’s right, and the only source of income for an author (which is only true if the author only approaches publishers – rather than their audience directly).
An artist’s rights are human rights
Rights are inalienable and to be enjoyed by everyone. It is these rights that form the fundamental constraints against natural, lawless freedom.
Everyone has a right to life, privacy, truth, and liberty (in that order).
As constraints:
- An artist should not produce art that directly endangers or impairs another’s life.
- An artist should not invade or violate another’s privacy in order to produce art.
- An artist should not impair truth in their art, e.g. misattribution, plagiarism, misrepresentation, libel, etc.
- An artist should not otherwise constrain the liberty of anyone.
Copyright is unethical
It is not ethical to suspend the public’s freedom to enjoy, share, or build upon human culture, nor to grievously punish members of the public when they do assert their right to freedom.
A few commercial printers/publishers may have once willingly embraced copyright, but this cannot be extended to the public at large – even if everyone has now become a self-publisher.
Copyright unethically suspends artists’ rights in order to create a privilege for publishers
- Copyright impairs people’s lives by fines or imprisonment simply for the act of sharing/promoting published works of art.
- Copyright violates artists’ privacy by prohibiting them making copies or preparing derivative works of art in the privacy of their own homes.
- Copyright impairs truth by dissuading artists from crediting their influences for fear of being accused of copyright infringement.
- Copyright constrains the liberty of artists by preventing them publishing works that incorporate or build upon others (unless authorised).
Copyright is not necessary to artists or their audiences
Copyright may have been useful to publishers, but then publishers are no longer necessary.
GPL software is a thriving industry, and yet the GPL is effectively a nullification of copyright.
It is possible for an artist to sell their work directly to their audience – without needing to prohibit their audience against making copies or derivatives.
Copyright is no longer effective
Copyright only worked among a few publishers. When all people are also publishers, any attempt at enforcement is simply shooting fish – unlucky for the fish that get shot, but the fish population remains unaffected.
The Internet is an instantaneous diffusion device. You cannot control distribution, and yet copyright is supposed to enable exclusive distribution privileges.
To attempt to police the duplication of binary digits in the the digital domain is ridiculous.
Any more?
I’m bound to have missed some. Please let me know.
Good statement:“Copyright is not a right, but a commercial privilege for the benefit of publishers”
Comment #000074 at
2007-02-26 19:09
by
You’re high.
Sincerely,
Amanda Chapel
Managing Editor
Strumpette
Comment #000075 at
2007-03-22 01:07
by
Amanda Chapel
Keep em coming. I own a linux-box, and I know exactly where you’re coming from.
Comment #000138 at
2007-09-24 23:33
by
David
So let me get this straight, if I have gotten this Anti-Copyright thing down, what it basically comes down to, is that you want to be able to take other peoples creations, and give it out, without any compensation to the creators, because you are either too cheap to pay for what they have made, or because you’re on some moral high horse that let’s you justificate stealing?
Comment #000193 at
2008-06-16 00:41
by
Henrik Magnusson
Not at all. There is absolutely no justification for stealing someone else’s intellectual property.
The whole ‘anti-copyright thing’ is about emancipating those people who have purchased someone else’s IP to use it without constraint. Just as those people who have purchased someone else’s material property can use it without constraint.
If you purchase someone else’s chair, you are not constrained as to whether you use it to prop a door open, burn it for heating, turn it into a cricket bat and stumps, or use it as a model for producing five more dining chairs to make a set. Even with no constraint applying to chairs, there’s still no justification for stealing them.
Digital Productions is dedicated to the research and development of revenue mechanisms that operate without effective copyright. These provide compensation to creators of digital artworks who do not wish to use copyright to sue members of their audience. It is also worth exploring whether there is any ethical basis that should impel one artist to sue another for sharing or building upon their published work.
Comment #000194 at
2008-06-16 09:57
by
Crosbie Fitch
I agree with the following statement:
“To attempt to police the duplication of binary digits in the the digital domain is ridiculous.”
I don’t need to download music. I demonstrated in the past (ca.1980,2000)that Champernowne’s Constant was a simple obvious source of all data, though not most useful and efficient. I can easily arrange millions of bits to create any sound, compress any song into 64 kilobytes, and even write small programs that fit on one screen to generate any “raw” data file which I have yet desired to do. Obviously the whole set of binary integers from all zeroes to all ones is public domain. My programs evolved to the point where they can even output data without even storing (a copy of) it, instead by serially calculating output to a speaker or line printer.
Comment #000299 at
2009-06-30 17:59
by
Project Champernowne
What are the key arguments against copyright?
Copyright is not a right
Copyright is not a right, but a commercial privilege for the benefit of publishers (it’s simply initially assigned to the author – only a tiny minority of authors such as JK Rowling have sufficient funds to hire their own legal team to enforce it). Publishers are naturally keen to portray copyright as an author’s right, and the only source of income for an author (which is only true if the author only approaches publishers – rather than their audience directly).
An artist’s rights are human rights
Rights are inalienable and to be enjoyed by everyone. It is these rights that form the fundamental constraints against natural, lawless freedom.
Everyone has a right to life, privacy, truth, and liberty (in that order).
As constraints:
Copyright is unethical
It is not ethical to suspend the public’s freedom to enjoy, share, or build upon human culture, nor to grievously punish members of the public when they do assert their right to freedom.
A few commercial printers/publishers may have once willingly embraced copyright, but this cannot be extended to the public at large – even if everyone has now become a self-publisher.
Copyright unethically suspends artists’ rights in order to create a privilege for publishers
Copyright is not necessary to artists or their audiences
Copyright may have been useful to publishers, but then publishers are no longer necessary.
GPL software is a thriving industry, and yet the GPL is effectively a nullification of copyright.
It is possible for an artist to sell their work directly to their audience – without needing to prohibit their audience against making copies or derivatives.
Copyright is no longer effective
Copyright only worked among a few publishers. When all people are also publishers, any attempt at enforcement is simply shooting fish – unlucky for the fish that get shot, but the fish population remains unaffected.
The Internet is an instantaneous diffusion device. You cannot control distribution, and yet copyright is supposed to enable exclusive distribution privileges.
To attempt to police the duplication of binary digits in the the digital domain is ridiculous.
Any more?
I’m bound to have missed some. Please let me know.