[msundman]

Originally Posted by Alan

At the supermarket? No, perhaps not. But in a shop where they sell cell phone plans? Yes, there I am being told what I can do or not do with my phone. Likewise a car dealer, who sells me a car lease will tell me, what I am allowed to do with my car (how many miles I can drive per year, how I have to service my car and so on). When I buy software, I am being specifically told how and how long I can use the software.

In each of those cases a special contract is drawn up and usually signed. When it comes to software the validity of the "by clicking on this button you agree to..."-licenses are widely disputed.

Originally Posted by Alan

You made an verbal contract (or a written if mail ordered) with the book seller. Furthermore you were told on the first pages of that book, what you are allowed to do with the text in the book.

The contract I made with the book seller was "you give me the book and I give you the money". That's it. (Actually I didn't know that this kind of agreement was called a "contract" in legalese, so maybe this fact has led to some confusion on my behalf in this discussion.)

Originally Posted by Alan

I hope you excuse the incorrect term I used.

Yes, of course. A debate should never be about who is right and who is wrong, but a way to get closer to the truth. (As a consequence I'm always happy of the fact when I'm proven wrong.)

Originally Posted by Alan

If there would be no default law, every book would be preceded by 100 pages of EULA.

Not every book. The fact that some books would is acceptable. People would find them annoying and I'm sure many such EULAs would be unenforcable or voidable. I suspect paranoid authors would realize that the less paranoid authors' books (without EULAs) sell equally well and became a little bit saner.

Originally Posted by Alan

But there is a default law.

Yes, and it's one that is unfair in our current society. (It was a lot more fair when individuals couldn't very easily duplicate things, and is becoming ever more unfair as it gets easier to duplicate more.)
And AFAIK if you violate that default law then you aren't breaching a contract but instead breaking that particular law (e.g. copyright infringement).

Originally Posted by Alan

The publisher or author will notify you about the rights he deserves to his work at the beginning of each book.

The rights he deserves? Hardly any author deserves any of my natural rights. Maybe you mean "reserve". However, he obviously can't reserve anything he doesn't have. If he reserves all "rights"* it just means that he doesn't place any additional restrictions (in addition to the law) on the buyer. In fact, I'm quite sure he couldn't place any additional restrictions in the beginning of the book, and therefore the whole copyright-mumbo-jumbo page is unnecessary if he reserves all his "rights"*. E.g., if I made a book and put on the first page that the buyer would have to send me a cucumber after one year then I'm quite sure it wouldn't hold in the court of law.

(* these are the very rights that were naturally mine, if the government hadn't taken them without my consent)

Originally Posted by Alan

The authors can indeed decide for themselves. Only if they chose to not offer specific terms on the front pages of their books, the default law will apply. In not giving other terms on the front pages, the author has already decided for the default rules - the law.

You're not even trying to understand what I'm saying. I'm saying that if the government didn't take away some of my natural rights and give them to the authors then the authors would need me to agree on some special contract in addition to the law if they want what they now get without any such contract. Please re-read the previous sentence until you understand it. (It's quite simple. You really should be able to understand it. I don't think I can make it any more clear or easier to understand.)

The end result (i.e., me being with a book but without copying-rights) might be the same, but without copyright it would be much more annoying to get stuff and having to give up one's copying-rights than to get stuff without having to give up those rights.

Originally Posted by Alan

That and: Do not lock cars, for they can be stolen anyway and it will only bother me as the owner of the car if I have to use a key.

No, I did not. I never said that anything would be given away for free with that system, or even that there shouldn't be copyright in it. In fact, I expect there to be a lot less copyright infringement with it.

Maybe you are confusing the book/music/software/etc.-market system I outlined with the discussion about whether governments steal people's natural copying-rights or not.

Originally Posted by Alan

Authors don't have a monopoly.

They most certainly do have a monopoly on copying their works. Copyright is a government-granted monopoly, and authors have it.

Originally Posted by Alan

If you don't like the prices or rules or whatever that one author is offering, go to another.

Except that there are extremely few authors who grant* the buyers copying-rights. I'm 100% sure this number would get many, many orders of magnitude greater if the default law was that people are not stripped of their natural copying-rights when they become citizens.

(* it sounds a bit absurd that an author could grant a right to the one who's right it would be naturally)

Originally Posted by Alan

That might be true for certain markets (energy, water, and very few more) but certainly not for the music or book branch. If you don't like one author or musician, you can buy from another. Eventually the others have to adopt in order to stay in business.

OK. Just point me to the hordes of good sci-fi authors who don't keep my copying-rights for themselves when I buy a book from them. I'd love to buy from them, or even donate money to them, to help them stay in business.

I've been at places/situations that have been like: "This is how much what you're getting costs us. If you can't afford it then you may give what you can afford. If you can afford more then please give more because some can't afford as much." In fact, I have never seen this kind of system fail. That might be because I've seen so few of them, but still, all of them have been about actual physical goods, each of which costs real money. I'm confident it would work even better for goods that cost pretty much nothing per copy, but only have some initial cost.