maxben said:
Just to be clear, I wasn't comparing piracy to jaywalking in a strong sense, just in the sense that they are both low consequence issues. In the strong sense of course they are completely different.
I'm aware of that. I was only pointing out that the reasons to laws against jaywalking, or laws against theft, originate from a categorically fifferent moral principle, than copyright laws.
maxben said:
You also have to separate the minutia of copyright protection from piracy. The wrongdoing of these industries and copyright regimes is very very different from piracy. I do not see how you can argue that mass file sharing such as public torrenting could fall under fair use.
Really? What's hard to see about that? Fair Use is a limitation on a publisher's exclusive copyright. If publishers would be limited from censoring file-sharing, with the justification that it doesn't seriously endanger their functioning, and usually isn't done by commercial interests, that would be closest to our current Fair Use doctrine. We could also give it a new name, such as the Sharing Doctrine, or the Non-Commercial Doctrine, but that's semantics.
maxben said:
1. There are no industry monopolies. Having monopolies on a particular product within a particular sub set of a particular industry NEVER counts as a monopoly. If I own a large piece of land and build houses on it, my control of all that land and houses does not count as a monopoly because there are other houses and land. There are other entertainment products owned by other people, you have no reason to consume that company's products if you don't want to.
That doesn't explain why the first IP law in history, (what we would now call a kind of patent law), was in the Statute of Monopolies [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Monopolies], or why in 1984, on the matter of TV recording, the US. Supreme court repeatedly refferd to [http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=464&invol=417G] a copyright "monopoly".
Particularly: "although every commercial use of copyrighted material is presumptively an unfair exploitation of the monopoly privilege that belongs to the owner of the copyright, noncommercial uses are a different matter."
I'm not alone throwing up some whacky alternate definition of "monopoly" here, this is what copyright laws are actually defined as. Government-granted monopolies.
Monopolies are exclusive abilities to trade in a particular commodity, but there is no word about how widely defined that commodity needs to be. If I'm the only one who can trade with the East Indies, then I have a monopoly on East Indian trading. If I am the only one who can trade pianos with the East Indies, then I have a monopoly on East Indian Piano trading. If I am the only one who can sell Bechstein grand pianos to the East indies, then I have a monopoly on the East Indian Bechstein grand piano market. Exclusive market rights over a commodity won't just stop being a monopoly, because their subject is narrower.
The same applies to intellectual monopolies. If I am the only one who can publish comic books, then I have a monopoly on comic books. If I'm the only one who can commercially use the word "superhero", then I have a monopoly on the word "superhero". If I am the only one who can publish Marvel-created heroes, then I have a monopoly on the Marvel verse.
The reason why land ownership is usually not considered a monopoly, is not because there are other "similar enough" lands to own, but because land ownership is tradtionally defined by property rights, as something that is owned by the Natural Law of possession, and the state merely secures this, while government-granted monopolies are actively created as a legal fiction and bestowed upon individuals.
(Please note that I'm not using that term to make copyright "look bad", but to clarify it's nature, that compared to the Right to Property, or to Freedom of Information, it is more of a government-granted regulation. I believe that some aspects of the copyright monopoly are useful and necessary, but by being aware of it being a monopoly, I also keep asking exactly how wide it NEEDS to be.)
maxben said:
2. Those who produce a product can choose to sell or not sell it as they wish. I have every right to censor a product I produce and companies regularly pull products from market or change it in some way.
You have every legal right. But what makes those rights just? If we could agree that censorship for it's own sake is not a good thing, then what other reason the creators could have to practice it, than securing their livelihood?
maxben said:
3. Artistic expression means nothing if you choose to sell it to a production company. You can make videos on youtube or sell your records independently or find a producer that gives you more power over your work. Once you agree to a contract that limits your control, that is your choice and is legitimate business. Do you see companies complain after selling shares publicly that they've lost "business expression" when major shareholders exert control? Again, they had a choice to go public for the extra funding but they were not coerced to doing that.
I think we are not on the same page here, I brought up "artistic expressions" as another form of copyright being used to control people, beyond banning file-sharing. Artists recieving C&D letters because of their own distinctly separate works use too may ideas from someone else's, remixes taken down from youtube, etc.
maxben said:
5. As entrainment industries don't cause pollution, are incredibly varied (absolutely not monolithic), can be completely avoided by artists and consumers, don't cause human rights issues, etc etc I cannot see how you can say that they are significantly bad for society. I wouldn't even say that they are bad to society, but we'll use significant as in "significant enough that we should allow individuals to pirate at will" because that would require you proving that they are basically the devil.
I would only need to prove that they are the devil, if I would accept your presupposed stance that piracy is an evil in itself, that we should only allow as a "lesser evil" compared to copyright which is even worse.
But what I believe is that while limited copyright can be a good thing (by securing a profitable artistic industry), the Freedom of Information is also a good thing. Me not being restricted in my daily life, in access to knowledge, and unrestricted communications, is a value in and of itself, and copyright should extend only as far as it is an even greater good than that. Once it reaches diminishing returns, for example by granting an already flourishing billion dollar industry somehow better profit margins, at the cost of criminalizing the non-commercial and intuitively comfortable lives of millions of people, then it is a lesser good.
You said that the entertainment industries "don't cause human rights issues".
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, [http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/] Article 19:
Everyone has the right to [...] receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Copyright inherently puts a limit on that. Not necessarily a bad limit, after all, there is another right here on the table:
Article 27:
"(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author."
Securing material interests is a good thing, but free culure is also a good thing, and a subjective line needs to be drawn between the two. Certain aspects of culture need to be free, while others need to be limited. I would say, that if digital file-sharing isn't actually needed to sustain the industry on the order of magnitude that it's size reached, that's good enough reason to push that right to the Free Culture side.
