Topic: Politics
On Copyright Law
In response to the recent article ?On the Morality of Copying Copyrighted Material,? I raise several objections.
It does seem odd to talk about the morality of taking what rightfully belongs to another, but that is not the act in question. The act in question is not the theft of CDs, DVDs, etc. Instead, we are talking about the copying of an object. Theft is obviously wrong, but as the saying goes ?Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.? When I copy a song, I have not deprived the owner of anything that he had before. A new object of subjective valuation has come from what was virtually worthless with very little work involved.
As for contracts, the ?contracts? attached to copyrighted material are illegitimate for several reasons. First, standard common law contracts layout the penalties for breach of contract, and those penalties are arbitrated in civil courts or by an agreed upon arbiter. Copyright contracts on the other hand resort to criminal law, making them contracts between the seller and the government rather than between the buyer and seller. Second, legitimate contracts are written by the contracting parties. Copyright law is written by the government. Third, a contract is a made in an act separate from the production of another good. Under copyright law, a copyright is (frequently) automatic upon the production of intellectual property. Since the contract attached to a copyright fails to conform to the basic structure of private law contracts, it cannot be a valid contract. Far from promoting prosperity, copyrights are a form of State imposed monopoly. The success of the Coca Cola company in protecting its Coke formula for decades clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of private solutions to information protection.
The primary problem with the whole idea of copyrights is a misunderstanding of intellectual property. Intellectual property cannot be treated like physical property because the source of value in each is different. Physical property has value because it is useful and scarce. Intellectual property, on the other hand, can be reproduced at virtually no cost. The storage medium may have a cost, but that is not at issue here. If someone has a house, and I take his house, he is worse off. If I copy his house with my own materials on my own land, he is not harmed. There would be a problem if I said that I originated the design, but lying is already immoral and illegal inasmuch as it relates to advertising, contracts, etc. The same holds for other intellectual property. I cannot misrepresent the author of some set of data, but I can replicate it all I want. The exception being a case of a valid contract to not reproduce the data. However, my contract cannot bind a third party who comes upon the data without a contract attached, even if this happened because of my breach of contract. As an aside, valid contracts always have escape clauses and or strict time limits, unlike copyright contracts.
In conclusion, go out and copy whatever you want. People think in terms of universals, and universal ideas ought to proliferate rather than being constricted by the claws of the leviathan.