I think I need to briefly summarize my position, and to put together a series of links to the bases of my viewpoint. Those are all interesting to read (at least they were for me), though they're usually much less radical than what I presently think
I certainly don't have all the answers, and I don't have the imagination to believably put together a world where people wouldn't consider ideas their property, though I have a glimpse of such a world when looking at open source society, in which people write useful source code and then publish it, free to use for everyone, provided their name is remembered as the creators. I'm a programmer, not a writer. But just because I can't well defend my point in words, it doesn't mean it's invalid.
I see two fundamentally different classes of things though:
1. Those made of physical atoms, which are always a finite resource, which can be stolen, and when they are, the original owner doesn't have them anymore - those we all consider sensinble to be property, with all property and market laws applicable.
2. Those which are ideas, and a person's sharing the idea with another person doesn't deprive the first one of anything. For those, I don't believe the property analogy makes sense, and using it tends to make the infinite resource of knowledge artificially scarce, and thus has a negative effect on economy, and on welfare of society as a whole.
Thomas Jefferson once wrote:
Quote:
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It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
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Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, Monticello, August 13, 1813
That tells me he didn't have today's viewpoint on an idea as someone's property, and I'm happy to know that.
There's also a series of articles Eric Flint put together some 4 years ago, while working for Baen:
http://www.ericflint.net/index.php/2...and-copyright/
He doesn't argue for abandoning copyright, but he summarizes real benefits and problems with copyright for authors, and he points to various things that work differently than one would suppose.
His series of articles is based on two beautifully worded speeches Thomas Macaulay made before the British Parliament in 1841, when he argued against extending copyright term length. One excerpt from those speeches seems to me prophetic today:
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I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot . . .
Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living.
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You might think he thinks of an idea as a property, by the way, but since I know in which circumstances and to whom he spoke, it looks to me like he keeps an open mind. He never says what is good or bad, only how people look at things.
Here's the link to speeches in their entirety:
http://www.baen.com/library/palaver4.htm
From economical side of things, here's two short series of articles by an economist, Mike Masnick:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/200...20252302.shtml ( "On The Constitutional Reasons Behind Copyright And Patents" )
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070503/012939.shtml ( "The Grand Unified Theory On The Economics Of Free" )
He's arguing that the patents seem to bring loss, not gain to society, and that treating infinitely copyable resource like ebooks as scarce good doesn't work, and points to the ways in which money can nevertheless be made on ebooks.
Finally, there's a whole book summarizing the losses patent and copyright law brought to society, and trying to find the evidence of gains:
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/genera...ainstfinal.htm ( "Against Intellectual Monopoly" )
I tried to find resources that would convince me society does gain from copyright, but I could find none - many articles seem to say "yes, the society as a whole loses, but the authors gain, so let's support the authors and it doesn't matter if the society loses even more". If you know of any resource that would show that the society (and not just some individuals) does gain from copyright law, I'd be happy if you pointed me to it. I'm not comfortable with a thought that currently the world works based on civil disobedience to the copyright law, and only thanks to fair use that makes it possible to make copyight law ineffective where it matters, so I'd prefer to believe that copyright law is good, or to see it abandoned. Otherwise it's living a lie...