Quote:
Originally Posted by HamsterRage
I think it's a red flag whenever a society has a significant percentage of its population ignoring the laws, just as we seem to have here. What it probably represents is a shift in how society views intellectual property - eventually the shared morality of such a large number of people who don't view copyright violation as wrong is going to have some effect on society as a whole.
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I would frame it differently. It is not so much that we are ignoring the laws, as it is that we are taking back what we had in the first place, and which has been stolen from us through the very laws that are suppose to protect us.
The "copyright clause" of the Constitution says that the Congress is empowered: "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."
The first thing to notice is that the purpose of this clause is NOT to protect anyone's "intellectual property rights." The purpose of the clause is to increase the amount of intellectual property in existence, because that property belongs to everyone. "Intellectual property" is merely an artifact of the legal mechanism intended to accomplish this purpose. From here on out, I'm going to call it IS, meaning "intellectual stuff."
The second thing to notice is that the rights that are to be granted are supposed to be for a limited period.
Now, I realize that this is just US law, but I suspect that at the time the Constitution was written, this reflected the general understanding about the nature of IS.
And that understanding is that the rights to IS were owned by the community at large, just like our language is. Nobody owns language. New words and usages are invented all the time, and they belong to everyone. It's the same with ideas and stories, or at least, it was.
So "copyright laws" represent the mechanics, in the form of a contract between society and writers, that says to the writer: "you have a monopoly right to the economic benefits you can get out of any IS you come up with, for a limited period, after which the IS belongs to all of us."
But what has actually happened? The duration of copyright has been extended to the point that if I write a book today, NOBODY ALIVE NOW will ever have any rights involving that book. Whatever "limited times" means, it surely does not mean "until everyone alive today is dead."
In effect, the rights of the society in which the IS is created have been legislated out of existence. "Copyright" has morphed into "copywrong." This IS is community property, not to be individually owned and controlled, except for a limited time in order to accomplish the purpose of bringing more IS into existence. Our representatives have sold us out, in this as in so many other ways (tea, anyone?)
So what people are doing now actually reflects what we have thought all along. Our views have not shifted, it's just that the technology has made it supremely easy to put those views into action.
I suspect that most people would agree that the Constitution has it right, and that we need to have some workable copyright laws to increase the production of IS.
In the case of books, it may be that we need to deconstruct the book rights.
For example, perhaps the law should provide that if a printed work is not made availble in electronic form within a certain period of time, the electronic rights - but not the paper rights - are released into the public domain.
We also need a law that says that a book, once sold in any form, must be registered for the copyright to be protectable.
And we need a law that no protectable copyright period can extend for more than 10 years from the date of registration.
Pie in the sky, I'm afraid. But I have no qualms about taking a bite out of the pie if I get a chance...