Same goes for building a house. Anyone can build their own house, but I’d like to see anyone get away with building a Frank Gehry design EXACT in detail, size and scale and do it freely. Would Gehry be trying to shut down every tool manufacturer out there?

I can buy a book. I can sell that same book and even profit off the sale of that same book. What I cannot do legally – is use my printing press to make copies of the same book and sell those copies. Nor can I offer my printing press to others to come and make exact copies of someone else’s book. That shouldn’t make my printing press illegal; only my business that employs my press for illegal activity.

Since it is copyright that makes such use illegal, this is a circular argument.

Possibly you mean immoral, but then that would not be an economic argument.

And we’ve established that copyright is a property right? Strange property right. When I buy a house I don’t buy the right to prevent other people building houses.

and here’s the rub. the claim that copyright “harms” innovation or technology is at it’s core an absurdity.

It would certainly harm commerce. Imagine if Sony had lost Betamax. No multi-billion-dollar video sales industry…

it is the behaviour of technology users – and NOTHING else – that is to blame.

Yes. The people who use technology to make overpriced goods and to try to lock them down.

Have you seen the MGM documents? DVDs have a much higher profit margin than the older technology of video tape. That is clearly blameworthy use of technology.

Why are property rights used? Well the labour theory (which evolved from the writings of john locke) states that real property rights should be granted its to prevent the tragedy of the commons – if others are allowed to take the fruits of my labour it is impossible for me to recieve a return for the time and effort I put into, for example, growing some turnips.

Someone taking my turnips is a ‘negative externality’ because if you take my goods I can’t have them and this will discourage observers from investing their time growing vegetables. To prevent these ‘negative externalities’ I am granted proprietary rights over my turnips and consequently can recover on my investment and perhaps even make a small profit.

The difference between real property and intellectual property is that when someone downloads a song I have written I am not similarly discouraged from making music in the future. I can recover on my investment through live performances, cd sales or even selling t-shirts to those lucky enough to have heard the songs I have written!

Once I have regained the costs I incurred whilst creating my album anyone who hears my music through whatever means can recieve a benefit without it having any negative effect on me! This is a positive externality and rarely occurs with real property.

This is why we don’t need to use property rights to prevent free riding in the case of intellectual property and why the new york times piece is ‘insanely poor’ to hint that we do!

In my opinion therefore intellectual property rights are only justified to the extent that artists are able to recoup their costs of expression and are encouraged to invest in producing new music and not to the extent that our short sighted rodent friends recommend in granting full property rights over intellectual property!

It would be unjustified to restrict filesharing therefore because the artists affected by file sharing are still covering their costs through record sales, touring and the like.

The definition of property is greatly determined
by the context that it is used in. Within in
your context, property can be defined as a bundle
of rights (google on “property is a bundle of
rights”). These rights could not have existed
without a government formed by people. So, I
disagree with your statement that the property
rights even remain when there is no government.

One good evidence that supports my position is
that the concept of property is not universal.
Not all societies through history have the concept
of property. It is only the rise of individualism
that the concept of individual property becomes
more important.

The only thing that remains the same when a government
disappears is the physical matter itself. A rock
remains a rock in spite of governments. But the
concept of ownership (that property is based on) over
the rock is greatly determined by the government or
society that happens to cover the area where the
rock is.

I don’t have problem with the concept of intellectual
property rights. It is a good antidote against the
mythical natural and moral rights that many authors
and artists claim to have. But, the problem is that
some people like Three Blind Mice try to make
intellectual property rights equivalent to
real property rights.

There are many kinds of rights we have. We have
non-property rights and property rights. Under
the category of property rights, we have real property
rights, personal property rights, and intellectual
property rights. People who do not know the
distinction between categories of rights are doomed
to confuse them and make some wild or unrealistic
assertions about their rights just like Three
Blind Mice who asserts that authors and artists
have perpetual intellectual property rights just
like perpetual real property rights (of course,
being blind and selective they are, they do not want
to say that intellectual property rights should be
taxed every year just like the real property rights).

It takes a lot of effort to remain vigilant against
authors and artists and people who try to transform
intellectual property rights into natural or moral
rights. A good example is the right of attribution.
It is interesting to note that those who support
minimal exclusive rights as granted in copyright
actually believe that right of attribution is an
exception and that it is a moral right and it should
be perpetual, beyond the end of copyright term.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<[email protected]>

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this
comment in the public domain.

To get a good handle on it – simply look at what would happen in an absense of government. Property rights remain unchanged – people have property because they secure physical things by one means or another.

What about copyright? There is no such thing. Copyrights and Patents are created by governments to stimulate the creation of ideas. Although they can masquerade as property – copyrights and patents can be sold, qualify as “work for hire”, etc. – they are not a “natural right”.

Since “intellectual property” is actually a set of rights granted by society in exchange for a benefit – increased creativity as well as access to that creativity, society should be able to get the greatest return on its concession. The change in profit that a content creator makes is irrelevant to the discussion as said profit is not based on a natural right, but on a consession by society.

Fortunately, music is a welcome retreat. The Rodent Innovation Advancement Association holds the patents on most of the commonly imitated chords, such as the tonic and the dominant, but they are perfectly willing to licence their usage for a reasonable fee. For instance, an artist, whose music contains an instance of the cliched I-IV-V-I pattern need only pay $20000 in advance plus 10% of gross revenue. Those so unoriginal as to use more common chords pay more, so as to encourage more innovation.

As Western music only contains a relatively small number of chord forms, all of them were quickly patented. Owners of resonant chords, such as the Augmented Seventh Chord Association for Progress tend to do better than those who own dissonate chords, but this is all for the good of encouraging innovation, especially innovation in the field of somehow obtaining the existing patents on resonate chords.

Obviously, all this serves to encourage innovation. Artists not hand-picked by the cross-licenced chord cartel are generally unable to afford traditional music scales, and so are forced to create their own microtonic systems in which to innovate their own chords. Since a mere change in notation is not enough to circumvent a chord patent, and the properties of chords being based solidly in easily understood and exploited physical and psychological properties, the music produced by these entrepenuers is less costly but truly vomitous; still it would be impossible to say that such excrible cacophy is not innovative. It is important to realize that scourge of derivative chords must be carefully controlled.

Inexplicably, the most popular song amoung the mice’s citizens is “I’m So Thirsty,” accompanied entirely by drums.

Huh? I don’t understand what you are talking
about.

I was commenting on three actions that Eric D W
listed: downloading music, making back-up copies,
and playing music on MP3 player. It seems that
Eric made a wrong assumption that just because
you have CD that you lawfully purchased, you can
download any music from anywhere on the network
as long as it is identical to the music on CD.

Three Blind Mice are very inept in using analogy.
They continue to confuse tangible things with
intangible things because they are blind to the
subtle differences between them. It is very old
argument.

Three Blind Mice made a false assumption that
there will be infinite supply of new water which
is not true. Also, they made a false assumption
that two physically separate tangible things
(i.e., two separate dams) can’t have same intangible
things (i.e. both dams can be identical in shape,
color, and other architectural features).

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<[email protected]>

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this
comment in the public domain.

FREE != PRICE

The actions that you listed are permissible only
if the original music is lawfully placed on network.

I am not on Three Blind Mice’s side but copyright
is about control over copies. Even though the music
that is unlawfully placed on network is totally
identical to the music on CD that you lawfully
purchased, it is still illegal to make a copy of
the first music. The proper way it so copy directly
from the CD that you lawfully purchased as long as
the copy is permitted by copyright law and court
rulings.

Just because an illegal copy is totally identical
to legal copy does not make the illegal copy legal.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<[email protected]>

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this
comment in the public domain.

That might prevent companies from developing P2P filesharing software, but it would still be able to be developed by not-for-profit individuals and released as FOSS. It would turn into whack-a-mole for the content industry (which arguably is what they are facing anyway) just like it was before these companies existed.

mice:

There’s no point in me building a new dam downriver if yours blocks all the water.