You haven’t actually thought through what kind of world it would be if there was no copyright law, have you? I don’t know what your political leanings are, but I’ve met some libertarians who are blissfully naive about the extent to which their world and worldview is buttressed by laws and the governments that enforce them, and your comment reminds me of that.
Not to detract from your argument, but most libertarians support either substantially scaling back or entirely eliminating IP law, including copyright law.
Internet piracy in general seems to be culturally quite left-libertarian.
In my view, a copyright system could reach a middle ground between libertarians and the rest of us. Limiting the term of copyrights is such a middle ground.
It might be the time for people to move behind the idea of abolishing copyright. Better start early than too late. Maybe Ron Paul could go with it, if a lot of people suggest it to him?
Copyright is a topic of intense dispute and discussion among libertarians, especially regarding whether it fits the mold of property at all. Your generalization isn't really accurate.
It probably wouldn't. Copyright in this situation isnt bad per se, but we've all seen how much its been abused in practice, so clearly the moral/ethical issues would be astounding.
Then there are the copy-free positions that some people espouses, but ignored because people think such an idea is nuts.
A major libertarian think tank did think it's an alright idea, going as far as giving away free PDF and put their entire content empire under the Creative Common Attribution. Not exactly public domain, but they don't want people to claims copyright over it and prevent the institution from being able to publish it. I heard that they are even asking for bit torrent expert and seeders. In the end, they still managed to sell a healthy amount of books.
The copyfree position is a revolution that is taking place within libertarianism. IP was a controversy, but gradually, the anti-IP position has won out. To that extent, business models are changed, too.
It could be a precursor of things to come in mainstream society.
I don't know that "absolute utilitarianism", if such a thing could even exist, would make a sound moral framework; that sounds too much like a "tyranny of the majority" situation. Tech companies shouldn't make the rules. And they shouldn't be allowed to just do whatever they want. However, this isn't that. This is just a debate over intellectual property and copyright law.
In this case it's the NYT vs OpenAI, last decade it was the RIAA vs Napster.
I'm not much of a libertarian (in fact, I'd prefer a better central government), but I also don't believe IP should have as much protection as it does. I think copyright law is in need of a complete rewrite, and yes, utilitarianism and public use would be part of the consideration. If it were up to me I'd scrap the idea of private intellectual property altogether and publicly fund creative works and release them into the public domain, similar to how we treat creative works of the federal government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_t...
Rather than capitalists competing to own ideas, grant-seekers would seek funding to pursue and further develop their ideas. No one would get rich off such a system, which is a side benefit in my eyes.
Could be a useful talking point for reframing copyright as the government-granted subsidy/monopoly right that it actually is. Do you want your government subsidizing and/or promoting the production of porn (or religous texts?)
If they pulled that off it would mean the government effectively repealed the notion of copyright (I could read any book I wanted to on rapgenius). I'm not sure how likely that is.
That's an odd shifting of the Overton Window. I would generally think that someone who was anti-copyright would start from the position that copyright shouldn't exist at all. And that someone who was very anti-copyright would be actively protesting against the law.
i thought that to be the one obvious position.
the other (imho) equally obvious position seems to be the following:
copyright is protection of intellectual property, and securing property rights is the prime reason for goverment to exist.
according to the second position (and taking opposition to the estate/death tax into account) it seems consistent with a libertarian position to argue for infinite copyright terms.
am i wrong? i am not a libertarian, but i try to understand you folks.
One problem with this would be that copyright holders would expect more from the state in terms of enforcement of their copyright when they pay for it. I don't see how that could reasonably be achieved, so it would be difficult to convince people to this system
Is that your libertarian rationalisation against copyright? Because with that kind of logic we couldn't have contracts either (breaching a contract can be non-violent).
> And where does copying end, and thought begin?
In the same way we decide when a person becomes legally major. We draw whichever arbitrary line seems to make the most sense.
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