Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase
Let it be noted - all property rights are a social construct. And across societies and time have been treated quite differently.
The qualities of IP are no more or less intrinsic than any other type of property.
|
Pretty much all laws are social constructs. A successful law is a law that most people are going to obey. An unsuccessful law is one that people tend to ignore unless a cop is standing right there (and sometimes they ignore it then). Laws about jay walking and speeding are examples in the US about laws that get ignored quite a bit.
For the most part, physical property laws are obeyed by most people. You can leave your car unlocked in the driveway and odds are pretty good that unless you live in a high crime area, no one is going to bother it.
Copyright on the other hand, isn't treated the same way by the general public. Until fairly recently, copyright was protected as much because of the cost of equipment to print books, or make records as anything else. In the music industry, the advent of the cassette tape and tape recorder started wide spread trading of music, especially among teenagers. As long as people didn't try to sale the music, it is almost impossible to stop and the music industry pretty much stopped trying after the fiasco of suing grandma because the 10 year old grand daughter was downloading music. The whole idea that music is copyrighted and that copyright must be respected has had very little traction with the general public. That's a big reason why music is now DRM free and why the music industry has moved to a different business model. With all the streaming options, people use that rather than make cd's or playlist.