Courts, especially corporatized courts, can get much wrong. Slavery was upheld in the courts, for instance. So here’s what I wrote to clarify it for my own self.

And then it was struck down.

Fundamentals of Rational Copyright Somewhat redundant to clarify related aspects.

) Creators inherently have SOLE RIGHT TO COPY their work.

How? What mystic power stops anyone else from doing it? When Og the Caveman invented fire, did Zeus ‘zot’ Ug when he copied it? Did Og bash Ug? What did Og do about Ig, Eg and Ag? Anyone can copy anything, and has as much right to as anyone has to create anything. What copyright does is restricts the rights of the copyers for a limited time to provide some incentive to people to create things that promote the science and useful arts.

) Creating is and has always been more difficult than copying.

So what? Creating is harder than destroying, too. Should there be a statutory control over breaking and destroying things? Sweat-of-the-brow arguments have been debunked. If you wish not only to create something but to monetise it, it’s you responsibility to find a market that wants it and to charge a price that the market will bear. No-one is obligated to give you money just because you spent time and effort on something.

Also, the vast numbers of unpaid and ‘unrewarded’ content creators show the lie that only guaranteed money makes things get created.

) The special provisions in law for copyright stem from the above 2 facts. It’s specific setting out of “intellectual property” rights for creating works given the relative ease of copying.

‘Intellectual property’ is a modern fiction that totally fails to distinguish how non-tangibles differ from actual tangibles, i.e. how non-scarcity compares to scarcity. Rights become necessary when the copiers have as much ability to copy as the creator does. Also, note how it was the publishing companies who pushed for the copyright statutes, not the content creators.

) Copyright specifies WHO can gain money from the works, AND that no one else is to gain money from them. (For a limited time, but after in public domain, it’s still unethical to grift on the work of others; ONLY the cost of reproduction should be charged.)

Not a lot to argue about here, other than what is considered a ‘limited time’. If retroactive term extensions, additions to items not originally covered, and ‘limited times’ longer than entire life-times are the norm, then why should the public uphold their side of the bargain.

I will point out that a) creators ‘grift’ on the work of others constantly, and b) a lot of other infrastructure ‘grifts’ on the work of creators. So at least some ‘grifting’ is ok. (i.e. book companies ‘grift’ on local taxpayers by using the roads to deliver books, and yet a tollbooth ‘grifts’ off those books being delivered.)

) Copyright law is indeed exactly to prevent copiers and the general public from copying works (during the limited time). The societal agreement is that only creators can attempt to gain from it during that (limited) period.

If it were only creators, how come those rights can be stolen, gifted or sold to others? How come there are ‘work-for-hire’ exceptions? Once corporations hold these ‘creator’ rights, what’s to stop financial abuse? (Especially given their relative immortality.)

Again, my earlier point – ‘limited’ does not mean ‘short compared to the age of the Earth’.

) There are NO rights whatsoever granted to or held by copiers. No one’s “right to copy” is at any time removed or diminished because it never exists prior to the creation of a work.

Tell that to a book’s publishers. And yes, everyone has a right to copy because they can. Ideas are ‘free’. If Ug sees Og rubbing flint and tinder, he can copy it any time he likes. Only threat of force or being given a better offer (“if you stop making your own fire I’ll make you a new spearhead”) can stop Ug. Copyright is backed up by ‘threat of force’ – and look how well it’s doing. It’s certainly struggling to win any moral arguments, and it’s totally failed on technological or legal control.

) Machines doing the labor of copying doesn’t confer any new right to do so.

Humans doing the labour of creating doesn’t entitle them to anything either. Bit of a straw man, (or rather obvious) this one. However, if machines exist to do something easily (and it could easily be sufficient manpower too) then you’re going to have to find some way to stop people who have the incentive to copy anyway.

And where there is a risk of cultural heritage being lost, I would argue there is not only a moral right but a moral imperative to save it, even if it’s not then used for ‘profit’. (Oh noes, the library that copied that out-of-print audio recording is ‘grifting’ (making money) from the creator’s hard work by selling coffee and making other audio material available!)

) Copyright has a worthwhile societal purpose to encourage the creation of various works, even if only for trivial entertainment.

No argument here, but then don’t argue that your ‘trivial entertainment’ has some special ‘moral existence/protection’ or should be ‘protected’ for a gajillion years.

Also, protection ought to rely on active registration, so that truly monetised works can be protected, but unimportant stuff can enter the public domain. Even having a limited automatic protection with specific registration might improve things. Also, extended protection should cost more so that copyright limits are not ‘age of Steamboat Willie + 1 year’.

) Even indirect income from in any way providing “for free” the protected work of others is clearly illegal, immoral, and unethical.

So radio makers are immoral? TV makers who sell their products to people who watch FTA material are breaking the law? PR departments who send out free CDs/MP3s are unethical?

‘For free’ is a relative term. Offering something for free to get something else is a time-honoured marketing method. Free samples, free-to-listen-to-get-your-valuable-attention, and so on.

In the end, obscurity kills products just as badly as rabid mispricing. Better that 10 people sample your product for free and like it (and thence telling others) than 10 people not giving a damn and ignoring it.

) Putting an entire digital movie / music files online for anyone to download is NOT sharing, not fair use, nor fair to its creators; it does remove some degree of potential profit and some degree of actual profit.

That is sharing, the same as buying it from iTunes. Whether it’s ‘nice’ sharing is another matter.

Plenty of companies put stuff up for free, either to the world at large or to selected people. If your PR department sends an MP3 from your album to a music critic or posts it on a fan forum, has that really hurt you?

The loss of ‘actual’ profit could be debated and is certainly not simple. Potential profit is just that – you could as easily complain that Hurricane Sandy cost you ‘potential profit’. It’s up to you to turn potential profit to actual profit – and that relies on your product being worthwhile and well-known.

) Copying rights are granted by the public for the public good (or was until unilaterally changed by moneyed interests) and we all have a general duty to respect the special provisions made for creators.

This is quite reasonable. However, the balance on the conversation is too far towards the providers of the creations, and too far away from both the consuming public and the actual creators. When you have companies refusing to pay their own artists of what has already been sold, the whole system is out of whack. A ‘pirate’ may or may not have paid for a product or may or may not pay for it in the future – but if your label has sold your album but refuses you your cut, that is outright theft and/or fraud.

) Possession of authorized physical media is license to access the content any number of times (which can be one-at-a-time library use, yet not “public” display). In the absence of physical media, there’s no clear right to access content, only perhaps an authorized temporary permission. But at no time does possession of digital data confer a right to reproduce it outside of the terms and conditions as for physical media, no matter how easy it is to do so.

Physical media supplies information – it shouldn’t matter the format or even the physicality. And even then, digital media is ‘physical’, even if it’s atoms in a particular magnetic state. Nowhere is there a distinction made that the public have less rights with ‘non-physical’ products than physical ones – and if anything, the original laws gave creators less rights for ‘non-fixed’ formats!

Also, if stuff is sold as a licence not a physical sale, then that needs to be made more clear, and artists should be renumerated accordingly and consistently.

Once I have digital (or even analogue) data, I can do what I like within my own environment. Unless you want a police state, if someone wants to ‘copy’ something they own for personal use, it’s daft to try stopping them, and only leads to lack of respect for other copywrong restrictions.

Additionally, sharing is a basic building block of human society. If you want your product to bomb, please feel free to massively hinder people’s ability to use, share or even discuss it.

If you wish to play the ‘”it’s licensed, not owned” game, then I’ll happily accept replacements for lost/broken product. Also in different formats, as I’ve bought the right to listen to that song/read that book. I’m happy to pay for actual format replacements or changes, but not for the whole thing again. So when my Queen cassette dies, I’ll pay a pound for the CD replacement (since that’s a fair price). When my VHS copy of Aliens is lost, I’ll pay a pound for the DVD/Blu-ray. If Zune stops making my copy of ‘Thriller’ available on its servers, I expect to be able to get it from iTunes, Amazon or Google Play.

) Emphasizing an aspect of the just above point: digital data is even less “owned” by the purchaser than with physical media, not more.

Not only is that unfounded, but it’s so stupidly impractical that I don’t know where to start. Saying that I ‘own’ an iTune MP3 less than I own a song on an old cassette given the ease of copying one compared to the other is just ludicrous. Carry on Canute! If you must make assertions, then please give some actual basis for them.

Oh, and I therefore expect these ‘more limited ownership’ items to cost significantly less, especially when there is no physical item to have to produce/store/transport/print.

) When independently rendered, fashion “ideas”, “art” in general, “look and feel”, jokes, bits of wit, and musical “riffs” are not copyright-able because not significant effort. Don’t throw those in to confuse the topic. (Specific clarification for music: you may play “stolen” riffs to parody or add spice, but not use actual “sampled” audio as basis for your main theme.)

Once again with the ‘sweat-of-the-brow’ crap, and in direct contradiction to your previous ‘trivial entertainment’ statement. Come on, try to be consistent, you were making a few good points for once!

Also, again with the artifical distictions (“stolen” riffs vs “sampled” audio – how are these distinct?). At what point does a sequence of musical notes (of which there are seven) or digital bits (of which there are two) become infringing or non-infringing?

Fair use exists for a reason. Otherwise by your logic someone could copyright the dictionary and stop anyone else from using any of the ‘owned’ words!

It also reads like you are implying that only corporation-sponsored creators are legitimate, or else why are the “independently rendered” compositions not ‘copy-rightable’? Either everything needs to be registered or everything is automatically copyrighted. (Unless there are specifically delineated parameters for each.)

) Many persist in using the canard of “copyright can’t guarantee income”. — Misleading. The older body of copyright (beginning in the US Constitution) was to guarantee creators a monopoly on the ATTEMPT at income from a given work for a limited time period. No one else has the right to even MAKE such attempt.

Copyright may guarantee income for some, but it does not and should not guarantee it for all. I agree with the latter part, again subject to a realistic limited time (with no evergreening or retroactive changes) and subject to ridiculous limits on others not being imposed (Edison invents a lightbulb, which means no-one else can make or improve even a differently designed lightbulb).

Bear in mind that ideas cannot be copyrighted, so it’s only that specific iteration of the idea – Shakespeare cannot ‘copyright’ love tragedies during the copyright period of “Romeo and Juliet” (even if he could have).

) Nothing above is invalidated or weakened by results being imperfect, nor by attempts to indefinitely extend time and scope of copyright: the latter are driven by greed and should of course be resisted, but by more general means.

Actually, one-sided attempts to change the social deal that is copyright totally have a bearing on whether such rights are invalidated. If the public grant you the sole right to produce and/or sell your product and at the end of that time you manage to get the time not only extended, but that control applied to things that the public already could freely distribute, then the public should and would be perfectly at liberty to question or ignore your ‘rights’. Sauce for the goose… because if the public attempt to vote away your rights, or even curb them in the slightest fashion, content controllers scream bloody murder. (Treaties for the blind, anyone?)

So all in all, I’ll score you well for relative coherence and lack of name-calling, but poorly for general content and thinking ability. That’s a C+, and I’m afraid there’s no way you’re the ‘real’ Blue.