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Copyright is not about morality. Nobody has a fundamental human right to prevent others from copying their work. Intellectual property is a legal fiction that w

by kijin 9y ago

Copyright is not about morality. Nobody has a fundamental human right to prevent others from copying their work. Intellectual property is a legal fiction that we maintain as a means to encourage creative activities. Copyright is basically a subsidy to content creators. Just like any other government subsidy, it should be adjusted periodically to balance its benefits against any drawbacks. There is no question of morality here, only a question of effectiveness -- is a subsidy really needed, and if so, how much?

b1daly 9y ago
Don't we have an obligation to follow the laws of the land we live in? I see no more philosophical justification for physical property than for intellectual property. In the same way that we have some folk intuitions about the validity of ownership of property, we have them about intellectual property. Namely, we (the citizen of the western world) have an intuition that creators of intellectual works should have some say in how their work is exploited. When it comes to the abstraction required to create a system of property, the one that strikes me a the most bonkers is the concept that people can "own" a geographic section of the earth.
- gvx 9y ago
  We don't really have those folk intuitions. That is just our cultural baggage. No form of property is universal. No form of intellectual property existed until the 17th century, and it took until the 20th century before it IP worked the way we think about it today and became commonplace in the majority of the world. Guam in the 16th century didn't have a concept of personal property, leading to Magellan to dub it the Island of Thieves. Ownership of land was also a non-existent concept in many societies, famously many Native American ones. Laws and ideas about ownership and property don't exist as some Platonic Ideal, but they change and morph to fit the societies they exist in. IMHO, IP law today, especially but not exclusively in the United States, does not serve content creators but publishers, and it is my belief that it is time to adjust the laws to fit the society we want to live in. With the obligation to follow the law comes the right to demand changes in the law.
- Ace17 9y ago
  > I see no more philosophical justification for physical property than for intellectual property. TL;DR: physical property="who gets to have this", 'intellectual property laws'="who gets to make money from this". Physical property isn't natural, but it's an answer to physical scarcity, which is natural. You and your friend can build identical houses, they can't be both exactly at the same location. Physical property creates a non-volatile answer to the question "Who gets to build his house there?". All working societies must address this problem (even societies in which money doesn't exist), hence "property" (which I don't claim is the only answer). Texts, recordings, etc. are a completely different issue. Original works might be rare, however, there's no scarcity in using them : you and your friend can both listen to your copy of a recording without interfering. So there's need to answer "who gets to listen to this recording?", as there's no scarcity, and thus, no conflict. The conflict lies between distributors, because the only scarcity that remains, when works can be copied for free, is in the exploitation. For distributors, money is scarce, so question becomes: "who gets to make money from this recording?". This is a very different question, which already presupposes the existence of money, and exploitation.
  - b1daly 9y ago
    My point is that both of these problems, who gets to occupy a spot of land, who gets to exploit an intellectual creation, are solved through the abstraction of laws. Arguments that the concept of intellectual property serves no purpose are refuted by the increasing role it plays I our economy.
smallnamespace 9y ago
> Copyright is not about morality That seems like a weirdly narrow definition of morality, maybe due to the long association with the Christianity and the faith's retreat from the public sphere. I prefer the definition of morality as the set of shared rules and norms that we as a society decide are to our mutual benefit. In that case, laws and morality are absolutely closely intertwined.
- kijin 9y ago
  If indeed there was broad consensus that copyright law as it exists in the United States right now is to everyone's benefit, there might be a moral obligation to follow that law. But all I see is a bunch of interest groups trying to pretend that there is a consensus and painting anyone who disagrees as a modern day Jack Sparrow. It's easy to manufacture a consensus if all the opponents are criminals, isn't it? I don't deny that there might be some kind of broad consensus on the issue of copyright. I just don't think that the content of it will be anywhere near what the law of the United States currently says.
  - smallnamespace 9y ago
    I agree, yet to say that 'copyright law is is currently not moral' is a very different claim than 'copyright law and morality are unrelated'. Most of our discussions of whether something should be law or not imply morality at some level (e.g. 'copyright law is wrong because...', 'this law is evil', etc.)
    - kijin 9y ago
      I didn't say "copyright law and morality are unrelated." Everything is related to morality at some level, so I don't think it adds anything interesting to say that copyright is either related or unrelated to morality in that roundabout way. I said "Copyright is not about morality." Copyright is about promoting creativity first and foremost. It has zero moral value apart from whatever starlight it might reflect from the more fundamental value of creativity when it's in the right point along its orbit (when it works effectively). Suppose you're building a startup to help poor people. That's obviously about morality. But how about your choice of javascript framework? You just use whatever floats your MVP without torturing your devs too much. And as soon as it outlives its usefulness, you can throw it away without a second thought and there's nothing morality has to say about it.
dredmorbius 9y ago
That statement is exceedingly difficult to square with a vaast body of law which preciscely and specifically claims that copyright is about moral rights. See: Moral rights were first recognized in France and Germany,[4] before they were included in the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works in 1928.[5]:37 Canada recognizes moral rights (droits moraux) in its Copyright Act (Loi sur le droit d'auteur).[6] The United States became a signatory to the convention in 1989,[7] and incorporated a version of moral rights under its copyright law under Title 17 of the U.S. Code. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights
- kijin 9y ago
  The article you linked to says: > Moral rights are distinct from any economic rights tied to copyrights. I have a moral right to insist that I wrote something, and argue against people who say otherwise, even if I assigned the copyright away, renounced it, or let it expire. It's more about honor than property. A Picasso is a Picasso no matter who owns the painting now. It's an insult to Beethoven to say that he didn't compose his 9th even though all his copyright has long expired. The same would be true even if all copyright law was repealed tomorrow.
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    The claim was "Copyright is not about morality". The fact is that there is an extensive scope of copyright law, dating to the 18th century, which is specifically couched in language of morality. Reegardless of how you feel about that scope of law (and I'm not declaring views one way or the other), the point remains that your initial assertion does not square with the stated foundations of law, in at least part. Regardless of how separable or inseparable those moral rights are from any other. If the HN hivemind wants to declare its support for the counterfactual, so be it.
    - tom_mellior 9y ago
      I think it was you who derailed this particular subthread by confusing the concepts of "moral rights" (being named as the author of something you have written) and "morality" (not being stolen from, or randomly killed). This confusion was no doubt intended by those who coined the term "moral rights". But they are not the same thing. Copyright law is not needed to enforce moral rights, as you can very well see from the fact that we do acknowledge the creators of works that predate copyright by hundreds or thousands of years. We can freely copy Homer's works. And we do. Be we don't remove his name from them.
posterboy 9y ago
well, in a very narrow sense, if you are a creator you are in the unique position at first to copy the the piece - or not. That's not just a fictive right. And indeed, industrial entities often enough choose to refrain from public publishing. And artists may choose to remain underground and cryptic lest they be copied and their ideas diluted.

by kijin 9y ago

b1daly 9y ago

Don't we have an obligation to follow the laws of the land we live in? I see no more philosophical justification for physical property than for intellectual property. In the same way that we have some folk intuitions about the validity of ownership of property, we have them about intellectual property. Namely, we (the citizen of the western world) have an intuition that creators of intellectual works should have some say in how their work is exploited. When it comes to the abstraction required to create a system of property, the one that strikes me a the most bonkers is the concept that people can "own" a geographic section of the earth.

gvx 9y ago
We don't really have those folk intuitions. That is just our cultural baggage. No form of property is universal. No form of intellectual property existed until the 17th century, and it took until the 20th century before it IP worked the way we think about it today and became commonplace in the majority of the world. Guam in the 16th century didn't have a concept of personal property, leading to Magellan to dub it the Island of Thieves. Ownership of land was also a non-existent concept in many societies, famously many Native American ones. Laws and ideas about ownership and property don't exist as some Platonic Ideal, but they change and morph to fit the societies they exist in. IMHO, IP law today, especially but not exclusively in the United States, does not serve content creators but publishers, and it is my belief that it is time to adjust the laws to fit the society we want to live in. With the obligation to follow the law comes the right to demand changes in the law.
Ace17 9y ago
> I see no more philosophical justification for physical property than for intellectual property. TL;DR: physical property="who gets to have this", 'intellectual property laws'="who gets to make money from this". Physical property isn't natural, but it's an answer to physical scarcity, which is natural. You and your friend can build identical houses, they can't be both exactly at the same location. Physical property creates a non-volatile answer to the question "Who gets to build his house there?". All working societies must address this problem (even societies in which money doesn't exist), hence "property" (which I don't claim is the only answer). Texts, recordings, etc. are a completely different issue. Original works might be rare, however, there's no scarcity in using them : you and your friend can both listen to your copy of a recording without interfering. So there's need to answer "who gets to listen to this recording?", as there's no scarcity, and thus, no conflict. The conflict lies between distributors, because the only scarcity that remains, when works can be copied for free, is in the exploitation. For distributors, money is scarce, so question becomes: "who gets to make money from this recording?". This is a very different question, which already presupposes the existence of money, and exploitation.
- b1daly 9y ago
  My point is that both of these problems, who gets to occupy a spot of land, who gets to exploit an intellectual creation, are solved through the abstraction of laws. Arguments that the concept of intellectual property serves no purpose are refuted by the increasing role it plays I our economy.

smallnamespace 9y ago

> Copyright is not about morality That seems like a weirdly narrow definition of morality, maybe due to the long association with the Christianity and the faith's retreat from the public sphere. I prefer the definition of morality as the set of shared rules and norms that we as a society decide are to our mutual benefit. In that case, laws and morality are absolutely closely intertwined.

kijin 9y ago
If indeed there was broad consensus that copyright law as it exists in the United States right now is to everyone's benefit, there might be a moral obligation to follow that law. But all I see is a bunch of interest groups trying to pretend that there is a consensus and painting anyone who disagrees as a modern day Jack Sparrow. It's easy to manufacture a consensus if all the opponents are criminals, isn't it? I don't deny that there might be some kind of broad consensus on the issue of copyright. I just don't think that the content of it will be anywhere near what the law of the United States currently says.
- smallnamespace 9y ago
  I agree, yet to say that 'copyright law is is currently not moral' is a very different claim than 'copyright law and morality are unrelated'. Most of our discussions of whether something should be law or not imply morality at some level (e.g. 'copyright law is wrong because...', 'this law is evil', etc.)
  - kijin 9y ago
    I didn't say "copyright law and morality are unrelated." Everything is related to morality at some level, so I don't think it adds anything interesting to say that copyright is either related or unrelated to morality in that roundabout way. I said "Copyright is not about morality." Copyright is about promoting creativity first and foremost. It has zero moral value apart from whatever starlight it might reflect from the more fundamental value of creativity when it's in the right point along its orbit (when it works effectively). Suppose you're building a startup to help poor people. That's obviously about morality. But how about your choice of javascript framework? You just use whatever floats your MVP without torturing your devs too much. And as soon as it outlives its usefulness, you can throw it away without a second thought and there's nothing morality has to say about it.

dredmorbius 9y ago

That statement is exceedingly difficult to square with a vaast body of law which preciscely and specifically claims that copyright is about moral rights. See: Moral rights were first recognized in France and Germany,[4] before they were included in the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works in 1928.[5]:37 Canada recognizes moral rights (droits moraux) in its Copyright Act (Loi sur le droit d'auteur).[6] The United States became a signatory to the convention in 1989,[7] and incorporated a version of moral rights under its copyright law under Title 17 of the U.S. Code. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights

kijin 9y ago
The article you linked to says: > Moral rights are distinct from any economic rights tied to copyrights. I have a moral right to insist that I wrote something, and argue against people who say otherwise, even if I assigned the copyright away, renounced it, or let it expire. It's more about honor than property. A Picasso is a Picasso no matter who owns the painting now. It's an insult to Beethoven to say that he didn't compose his 9th even though all his copyright has long expired. The same would be true even if all copyright law was repealed tomorrow.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  The claim was "Copyright is not about morality". The fact is that there is an extensive scope of copyright law, dating to the 18th century, which is specifically couched in language of morality. Reegardless of how you feel about that scope of law (and I'm not declaring views one way or the other), the point remains that your initial assertion does not square with the stated foundations of law, in at least part. Regardless of how separable or inseparable those moral rights are from any other. If the HN hivemind wants to declare its support for the counterfactual, so be it.
  - tom_mellior 9y ago
    I think it was you who derailed this particular subthread by confusing the concepts of "moral rights" (being named as the author of something you have written) and "morality" (not being stolen from, or randomly killed). This confusion was no doubt intended by those who coined the term "moral rights". But they are not the same thing. Copyright law is not needed to enforce moral rights, as you can very well see from the fact that we do acknowledge the creators of works that predate copyright by hundreds or thousands of years. We can freely copy Homer's works. And we do. Be we don't remove his name from them.

posterboy 9y ago

well, in a very narrow sense, if you are a creator you are in the unique position at first to copy the the piece - or not. That's not just a fictive right. And indeed, industrial entities often enough choose to refrain from public publishing. And artists may choose to remain underground and cryptic lest they be copied and their ideas diluted.