Before I begin . . .
I’ve been away from my keyboard for several days. I apologize for the
slow response.
On Sat, Mar 24, 2007 at 01:01:31AM +0900, Dave T. wrote:
chosen business model.
I believe you are conflating two separate arguments to try to justify
your point.
No the author is not entitled to a sale.
However, the author is entitled, if they so wish, to ask for
payment when someone takes possession of their book.
No, I’m not conflating two points. I am, instead, making one point and
avoiding another that would just drag the core discussion way off-topic.
The one point:
Copyright infringement is not theft. The author, whether or not he has
a “right” to control over the copying rights (thus the term “copyright”)
of his work, is not “entitled” to a sale – that would suggest that
people should be forced to buy copies of the work whether they want them
or not. If you’re a proponent of strong copyright law, what you’re
actually supporting is orthogonal to whether or not there’s any “right”
to a sale – it’s a “right” to control over copying rights. In other
words, the holder of a copyright is supposedly entitled to prevent
anyone else from transferring his works, but not entitled to any sales
of copies of those works. It’s a fine, but important, distinction in
attempting to draw the line between copyright infringement and theft.
Copyright is the basis of the open source movement: it is the claim
of copyright that allows the owner to insist on a particular license:
“I own the copyright, and I’ll grant you a license under the
following terms.”
Actually, copyright isn’t the basis of “the open source movement”. It’s
the basis of the FSF/GPL style of open source licensing, but there are
several other approaches, some of which are effectively unrelated to
copyright law except that they must in some way be declared as exempt
from the standard applicability of copyright in some way, and some of
which rely on copyright law to create an even stronger exemption from
copyright law.
Examples:
Public domain (in US law) is something that must be declared for a new
work. Copyright law is essentially completely irrelevant to the model
of open source software development that involves declaring everything
public domain.
A license that has strong copyleft characteristics (inheritable by
derivative works, et cetera) but is otherwise about as unrestrictive as
public domain (no distribution requirements, no exerting copyright
privileges over the works except for the obvious persuant to the
license) basically uses copyright law to create a “protected public
domain” where works can enter the public domain but not be taken out
(aka, derivative works cannot be subject to normal copyright
restrictions).
Both of these would effectively be unchanged if copyright law were to
evaporate tomorrow, except that nothing in the former of the two
examples would ever be incorporated into proprietary works (because
“proprietary” would cease to have meaning in that sense).
Respect for copyright is an essential part of what we all do.
While I disagree with that, it’s entirely orthogonal to the point I was
making. That is, I disagree ethically and in principle, though
obviously it is necessary to account for copyright in what I do because
it’s the law.
Similarly, the copyright owner of a book has the right to set the
terms under which you use that work.
So, the correct phrasing of your initial sentence would be “I can’t
be forced to buy something.” But, if the author has made it a
condition that you do buy it before using it, then you really
should buy it before using it.
If the author is entitled to a sale, then I absolutely can be forced
to buy something (ethically), because he’s entitled to that sale.
Assuming the ethical validity of copyright law for argument’s sake, I
absolutely should buy it before I use it if the creator so requires;
you’re right about that. This doesn’t mean he’s entitled to a sale. I
believe you’re using the word “entitled” entirely too loosely to be
strictly accurate.
Earlier, you said you were in favor of free markets. Most economists
believe that property rights is one of the key underpinnings of such
a system: if you have no property rights, you can’t transfer that
capital, and you can’t use it as collateral when raising funds. de
Soto has a great book on the subject, explaining why weak property
rights cause great inefficiencies in developing economies.
I believe that property rights are among the key underpinnings of free
markets. I just don’t believe that thoughts (even if you have them
because you encountered a physical representation thereof) qualify or,
if they do qualify, they belong to whomever currently has them in his or
her head – period. Again, that’s kind of orthogonal to my point,
though.
I’m perfectly willing to discuss the value of copyright and patent law,
as long as you are willing to avoid conflating them with (tangible)
property rights – at least until you actually provide a convincing
argument that copyright and patent law are, in fact, forms of property
protection equivalent to tangible property rights. Keep in mind that
“convincing” implies that I’m convinced. I’m perfectly willing to be
convinced, but I’m also not a pushover on this subject since I haven’t
arrived at my current convictions by chance.
Using copyrighted works and ignoring the terms of use is probably not
theft. But that doesn’t make it morally right.
Agreed. By the same token, your statement doesn’t make it “morally”
wrong.
There’s a matter of conflating morality with ethicality, as well, but
that’s kind of irrelevant to the meat of the discussion at this point.
Again, my point was simply that violation of copyright and patent law is
not “theft”, that nobody is ever “entitled” to a sale of anything
(before a contract is signed at least), and that one should be careful
in how one characterizes copyright violation in discussion.