13 Feb
2013
13 Feb
'13
8:44 a.m.
On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 3:45 PM, Louigi Verona <louigi.verona(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
"Anyway, if his point is that property theory
doesn't
govern intellectual creation, then why does he seem to say that property
theory
should rule out any and all protection for one's intellectual work?"
Because copyright ends up invading actual physical property.
You ask - what is copyright? It is a legislative method to invade other
people's
property without their consent. Just by writing something, I instantly get
a
partial ownership of your body (you cannot perform my writing in public
without my permission), partial ownership of your pen, paper, computer
and printer (you cannot distribute my writing without my permission).
And you did not agree to any of this.
L.V.
_
I'm not sure I buy this argument.
Allow me to play devil's advocate, as I'm not sure I fully agree with the
position I'm about to present.
If I never see your writing, there is no way for me to copy it. In order to
copy it I must first see it. If you were to make your writing available
only under a conditional contract of sale (copyright) that states the
writing is not to be shared with anyone else, and that contract of sale is
made known prior to any exchange of said writing, then the only people that
ever see this writing and will be "forcefully" bound to the contractual
agreement are those that agree with it. No one is forced to not copy it if
they don't buy it, and by buying they enter into a contract of sale. In
other words, copyright does not try to remove things from the public
domain, it tries to prevent them from entering into the public domain in
the first place by restricting the sharing of those things to a community
of people who respect the conditions of it being shared.
The only cases where I feel like your argument could hold is when I am
forced to read or listen to your work due to public broadcasting. However,
except for perhaps some severe fascist states, it rarely happens that
people are forcefully exposed to media in the first place that they are
then denied the right to copy it against their will.