[p2p-research] Fwd: [fcforum] Fw: iPad DRM is a dangerous step backward. Sign the petition!

[Kevin Carson]

On 2/3/10, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

> IP doesn't block free and open.  It blocks theft.  You say it isn't theft.
> The world disagrees with you. So do I.

Actually even most defenders of copyright law don't consider it
"theft" in the same sense of actual theft of tangible property.  It's
a limited monopoly conferred for a limited period of time for a
utilitarian purpose, so--most copyright defenders say--it's a
violation of legal rights in some sense, and a bad thing, but not
"theft."  It's mainly industry polemicists like Mark Helprin, the
people who design "anti-songlifting" curricula, etc., that casually
toss around the term "stealing."

"Artificial scarcity" is as absurd
> as communal property.  I always think of the wonderful scene in Dr. Zhivago
> where he walks into his own house after the war to find the more "just"
> solution of everyone living in it.

There's a very large body of literature pointing out the fundamental
difference between tangible property, and "property" in the right to
reproduce patterns and ideas (which are called "property" mainly by
way of analogy).  Tangible property follows naturally from the finite
nature of physical goods.  Two objects cannot occupy the same space at
the same time, and the only thing necessary for me to enforce my
ownership claim of a plot of land is to maintain physical possession
and repel attempts to dispossess me.  On the other hand an idea can be
reproduced an infinite number of times without its original iteration
in a physical medium ever ceasing to be in the possession of its
creator.  The claimant to copyright "property" can only enforce it by
invading my genuine, physical property and interfering with my use of
it.

> People have rights.  One of those rights
> is the right to own their own ideas.

Of course people "own their ideas," in the sense that nobody has a
right to remove them from their memories, to steal the paper or floppy
disks they're written on, or to erase them from their hard drives.

But nobody has the right to own an idea in the sense of controlling or
preventing the reproduction of it.

Preferably, some turn will move IP into public
> domains (which it always has...) at a reasonable length of time...in most of
> the world it is 75 years after a death...not unreasonable.  People should be
> encouraged by the commons to add to it.  It is antithetical to the commons
> to be compelled to participate in it.

Even many people who recognize copyright in principle think its
present duration 75 years after the death of the creator, or the fact
that it automatically exists without any requirement to register it or
publicly embed ownership claims in it, is  an abomination.  The result
is that we're awash in a sea of "orphan" content that nobody even
knows who claims copyright on it, and can't use for fear they'll be
trolled the next day with a DMCA notice.

I also think you're using "compelled" in a really perverse sense.
Nobody compels me to state an idea publicly.  When I state an idea
publicly, I choose to add it to the commons because by its very nature
the circulation of ideas adds them to the commons.   On the contrary,
it requires compulsion to keep an idea out of the commons.


-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html