Aardvaarkman said:
Which essentially has nothing to do with communication or copyright. "Communication" is not the same thing as "speech" or "expression."
Care to elaborate? I can't think of any example of speech (in the legal/political sense) that isn't also communication, or communication that isn't also speech.
Aardvaarkman said:
Let's break this down. How is the "ownership of objects" more important or desirable than the ownership of creative or intellectual output?
That seems rather backwards to me. What gives you the right to "own" physical objects? These objects are not created with a specific owner in mind - they are typically atoms and molecules that have been created by natural processes. Any "ownership" of these objects typically comes about due to violence or other dubious actions.
For example: the ownership of land and mineral resources is largely determined by who wins wars. Your ancestors defeated some other tribe, and claimed ownership of the land that they lived on. What makes this "ownership" so sacrosanct, regardless of the lives lost in the process? Physical ownership often result in many other atrocities such as pollution, slave labor, cultural appropriation,exploitation, etc.
Because unless you are able to change human nature on a fundamental level, so that everyone is willing to share all their possessions, SOMEONE is going to exclusively own them, so it might as well be guided by legal property laws to belong to the ones who have the strongest claim on it.
I'm not really saying that property is sacrosanct in an "objective morality" sense, only that this is how people see it, and have seen it for thousands of years, and acknowledging it is the least harmful course.
The same is not true for IP. Even if copyrights, patents and trademarks have existed for over 200 years, as a market regulation "to promote the progress of science and useful arts", It has been only in the past few decades of copyright defense organizations have started to widely use the "intellectual property" argument as a figure of speech.
This leads to even more confused analogies in turn, and a generally low legitimacy, where large amounts of people feel that they ARE entitled to the freedom to use the information that copyright locks away. The amount of people in this thread who feel that LP creators should have a right to freely record games, is an example of that.
Aardvaarkman said:
Now, let's contrast this with "intellectual property" - such as writing a novel based on your life experience. That story is uniquely tied to yourself. It's hard to imagine a more intimate and real form of property than something created by your own brain. Anybody can dig rocks out of the ground. That's why things like oil and gold are called "commodities." But nobody else has your brain or your experiences.
Because your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.
If you own a car, and I own a car, we can both keep possessing our ownn cars, and to stop each other from taking away the other's car.
If you create an idea in your brain, and start expressing that, and I create an idea in my brain, and start expressing that, then with "intellectual property" we aren't just asking for protection to keep possessing our ideas, or protecting the ability to keep expressing what we have in our brain, but an authority to limit the other one's allowed expressions.
Aardvaarkman said:
You can't own ideas, even under current intellectual property laws. You can only own the expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves.
At the beginning of your post, you were wondering what freedom of expression has to do with copyright. Now you are right, that in reality, ideas themselves are not really things that can be owned. Copyright presents itself as protecting "things" that you created, as if your ideas were products, but really only gives you control over other people's expressions.
And this also demonstrates why your previous point is invalid:
Aardvaarkman said:
Now, why exactly is this more valid than people owning or passing on the things that they have created with their brains, rather than digging up from the ground, or killing people over?
You can pass on the ideas that you have. You can tell them to your child, so now they have it too.
But IP laws aren't asking for that, publishers aren't actually aking to pass on "the things that they have created with their brains", but to pass on the monopolistic market regulations that they have gained to control other people's expression in the future.
Aardvaarkman said:
Entitled said:
This leads to cases like this, with publishers attacking derivative works without any clearly defined need to do so, solely out of a sense of desire for controlling "their property".
And of course, that never happens with physical property at all. It's not like there are any land and property disputes that date back hundreds or thousands of years (sarcasm).
Yes, of course it does, hence my entire point that copyright SHOULDN'T be treated like property, to avoid all the connotations that copyright holders deserve a similar level of control.
Just drop the stupid figure of speech, and go back to the more established justification of copyright.
Admit that copyright and patents are limited market monopolies, organized by the government with the specific purpose of securing artists' financial viability, invented in the 18th century to regulate book publishing, and arbitrarily expanded or decreased based on society's practical needs.
Every time there is a debate about publishers wanting more rights, or the public wanting more rights, look at the industry's financial situation, and ask whether or not they NEED such control, then look at the public's freedom of expression, and measure how much it would need to be restricted to secure more publisher control.
Use common sense of a fair balance, instead of tortured analogies about what if having an idea would be like having a car.