[LAU] Changed: Copyright laws and such

[James Harkins]

Louigi Verona <louigi.verona at ...> writes:

> James, Michael,I understand what you are saying, however, by asking someone 
about permission, you are basically giving him the power to say "No".It would be 
a matter of decency or courtesy only if it would be notifying: "Dear sir, I've 
used your tune in my play. Sincerely..."If we are in a position when such 
"courtesy" means saying "Can I please use your tune in my play?", we are 
philosophically saying that the author has the right to decide how you should 
employ your body and your property in a certain way.

Incidentally, my comments to Louigi (quoted here) were off-list, because I don't 
wish to clutter the list with my thoughts on copyright any further. So this will 
be my last public post in this thread.

I can't escape the feeling that there is some wishful thinking here. 
"Intellectual works are not property. You don't own them and you shouldn't be 
able to object to anyone's use of them under any circumstances" -- to me this is 
simply wishing away the problem. All the problems of unfair appropriation 
remain, but... a-ha! If intellectual property isn't property, then *we don't 
have to imagine solutions*. How convenient.

Actually, I could go along with the "not-property" approach in a perfect world, 
where everyone shares their ideas freely. I would rather live in that world, but 
I don't... and I don't want what happened to Jonathan Coulton to happen to me. 
Well, it won't happen to me because the GLEE producers don't care about my 
styles of music, but in theory, it could, and I object to that. Does that 
curtail Louigi's freedom to make something out of my audio and copyright it (if 
he wanted to)? Yes. Do I regret that? I guess I regret it only as much as Louigi 
would regret using the work under terms I wouldn't agree to (and I guess that 
wouldn't be much of a regret).

In an imperfect world, nobody is ever free to do every possible thing she wants 
to do with her possessions. If people want to retain freedoms, they need to act 
responsibly. When people act irresponsibly, society's response is law. We 
wouldn't need speed limits if people drove at sane speeds of their own free 
will... so we instate speed limits, and now you don't have the freedom to drive 
as you like. Society felt it was unfair in the past that A could profit from B's 
work without paying a debt to A, resulting in the ghastly mess that is copyright 
law. *If people had not taken liberties with others' work in the first place, 
there would have been no need for a law.* So now it's rather late in the day to 
say simply that somehow creative workers will always be treated fairly, when the 
very existence of copyright law is proof that fair treatment was never reliable 
to begin with.

I look at libertarianism as a kind of radical manifesto. A manifesto usually 
fails in practice, but it opens up room for communities to consider new ideas. 
It's valuable in that respect, but in this case, too much pie-in-the-sky for my 
taste.

hjh