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You're missing that I'm trying to figure out how this actually works. Not saying how it should work. I'm not a sovereign citizen here, merely a confused citizen
by anonymouskimmer 3y ago
You're missing that I'm trying to figure out how this actually works. Not saying how it should work. I'm not a sovereign citizen here, merely a confused citizen.
> Can you point to anything to support that understanding of "secure"?
I'm a regular person who is trying to interpret the law. I'm failing. This is probably because I'm getting too lost in thought. But the law should be clear enough that regular people can understand it without citation or legal knowledge. It should not be a specialized field except that specialists have broad facility in application. It's a definite improvement that modern laws abandoned parsimony for as precise as possible definition of terms.
That's all.
And the plain meaning of "secure" at the time was: "The sense of "get possession of, make oneself master of" is from 1743." https://www.etymonline.com/word/secure https://www.etymonline.com/word/secure With "no one can serve two masters" a biblical phrase that Jefferson would have been well familiar with.
> This is all besides that if an owner can license, then transferring the IP itself is trivial, as one can grant a license that covers all aspects of the exclusive rights.
Exactly. I did eventually figure this out. I still think that it's a sophistic end-run around the plain text of the clause, unless said license includes a clawback provision that the author/inventor can unilaterally initiate.
But I also believe that the founders knew about the Sophists, Shakespear's Merchant of Venice, and the like, as well as some of the arguments at the time over what to include in the Constitution. And that if they wrote ambiguity into Constitutional provisions, they likely did so on purpose. Definitional changes accounted for. Which puts me at odds with most jurisprudence.
- freejazz 3y agoThis conversation is becoming absurd. I do not understand how you read that definition of secure to mean that the master cannot sell their own shop. I’ve repeatedly asked you for your support on what is a very esoteric reading of the word secure, as opposed to the plain reading I keep providing to you. It’s one thing for you to speculate, but to insist that your forced reading is the plain one is a bit ridiculous IMO. I’m well aware that the law needs to be written clearly for plain understanding, it is. You are the one advancing a meaning that says by giving something to someone, they can’t also then sell it? That doesn’t mesh with the founder’s understandings of property rights at all or the definitions themselves. It’s a bit of a joke, and I guess you don’t realize it. But the point about academic references is that you are making an academic argument. You’d think that if your point was true, that it is SO OBVIOUSLY beyond the plain meaning of the word, SOMEONE else would have said something in the ensuing 200 years. Yet here we are, you telling me you know what the founders meant, despite all the evidence and common sense running against you. Okay buddy - good luck with that.
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoIt's not just "secure". It is "exclusive". "Exclusive" has always meant "exclusive". The Constitution only allows congress to "exclusively secure" IP rights to the originators of the material. It does not allow congress to "exclusively secure" rights to anyone else. The only way I can make this work is through an originator licensing a work to a single other entity, and in said license guaranteeing that other entity that the originator will not otherwise use any rights they own except to the extent of the exclusive license to the other entity. This works. I still think it only really works if the originator has the unilateral power to break the agreement. But I can understand someone legitimately making a counter-argument. In an originalist sense, the founders were very much against royal grants of monopoly, so limited the power of the government to grant monopolies solely to the originators of ideas. I'm no longer confused, so yes we can drop this line of discussion. I hope you understand that I wasn't talking about just one word, but the word in the context of the rest of the clause.
- freejazz 3y agoIt doesn't work and the only historical evidence you can point to is the merchant of venice, not the actual theories of property rights the drafters had in mind. This is an asinine argument. Exclusive here doesn't mean the owner can't sell, it means he's the only person who can decide to sell. That's why it's their exclusive right.
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoIt's asinine to expect citizens in a democratic republic to have to accept the word of experts as to the rights that they enjoy.
- freejazz 3y agoYou don't, use the damn dictionary as I insisted to you several times. Nothing I've pointed out relies upon some expert meaning of those words.
- 3y ago