To answer a question put to me earlier: copyright infringement is not theft, it's copyright infringement. As I said, copyright infringes on already existing rights accepted in most developed western democracies and therefore at least used to have some pretty strong limitations on it. Aggressive lobbying by large media companies have salami-sliced these limitations almost into oblivion, such as the so-called 'Mickey Mouse clause' which means a copyright can be extended to almost a century after the original author's death.
The idea that copyright infringement is theft is a modern one; you will find little reference to it before the 1980s when record companies got together to declare that 'home-taping is killing music'. There's also that very successful and annoying advert that appeared on DVDs arguing the ABC fallacy: copyright infringement = theft = crime. Copyright infringement in most countries is a civil offence, not a criminal one but the intention of the advert is to make an equivalence that just isn't accurate.
Verlander; there is no place in the US constitution that guarantees or implies the right of copyrights. It does however explicitly in the very first clause place the restriction on government that no law shall be passed that abridges the right of a person to free expression. The constitution holds 'negative rights' like this to be primary and superior to 'positive rights' like copyrights. Copyright law only exists because its originators promised it was intended for and would lead to only one outcome; the one I described in line with the principles set in the first amendment. Their successors today are breaking those promises.
The issue of whether the first amendment is universal to all forms of expression is being argued in the supreme court right now as we all know. The court is probably going to rule against Schwarzenegger on the basis that if the first amendment doesn't apply to games, then anything it does apply to is meaningless. The same argument can be said for the sharing of anything in the public domain; if the first amendment doesn't apply, then there has to be a magnificently good case detailing it. This case was never made; it was avoided by the original advocates of copyrights who promised it would never be necessary to. But now it is and people have short memories.
The idea that copyright infringement is theft is a modern one; you will find little reference to it before the 1980s when record companies got together to declare that 'home-taping is killing music'. There's also that very successful and annoying advert that appeared on DVDs arguing the ABC fallacy: copyright infringement = theft = crime. Copyright infringement in most countries is a civil offence, not a criminal one but the intention of the advert is to make an equivalence that just isn't accurate.
Verlander; there is no place in the US constitution that guarantees or implies the right of copyrights. It does however explicitly in the very first clause place the restriction on government that no law shall be passed that abridges the right of a person to free expression. The constitution holds 'negative rights' like this to be primary and superior to 'positive rights' like copyrights. Copyright law only exists because its originators promised it was intended for and would lead to only one outcome; the one I described in line with the principles set in the first amendment. Their successors today are breaking those promises.
The issue of whether the first amendment is universal to all forms of expression is being argued in the supreme court right now as we all know. The court is probably going to rule against Schwarzenegger on the basis that if the first amendment doesn't apply to games, then anything it does apply to is meaningless. The same argument can be said for the sharing of anything in the public domain; if the first amendment doesn't apply, then there has to be a magnificently good case detailing it. This case was never made; it was avoided by the original advocates of copyrights who promised it would never be necessary to. But now it is and people have short memories.
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