Under the current system, any artistic creation which will likely pay for itself (including opportunity costs) within the duration of the copyright is profitable. If the window of profitability is reduced to a single year, [i]very[/i] little would be worth making from a profit standpoint. That is especially true once people figure out they can get any music, art, movie, video game, etc for free if they’re willing to wait a year for it.

The validity of copyright is certainly debatable. But it is ridiculous to assert that we would see an [i]increase[/i] in for-profit original artistic creation when merely making copies of someone else’s work brings in just as much money for a tiny fraction of the cost of creating something new.

I think you miss the point of abolishing copyright. What would no longer be profitable is popular trash (“bestsellers”). What would be published in greater profusion are thoughtful original work and classics. Network television would die, which seems to me a worthy end in itself.

In the very first paragraph of the linked article:

Aside from the question as to whether it ever actually functioned as such – most artists never made a penny from the copyright system

Full stop. While maybe artists never actually enforce copyrights, they are paid because the publisher can sell the work, and that in turn, is because they can enforce a copyright. Saying that most artists never “made a penny from the copyright system” is extremely misleading, if not outright false. Do I really have to explain to people on an Austrian site, of all places, that demand for a good creates demand for the inputs involved in creating that good?

PR – You’re wrong, copyright doesn’t care about ideas. It’s not quite the same thing to think about a good book or to write it. Have you ever written a good book? It takes time, sweat and talent.
So go ahead, write your own version of “Catch 22″, make it happen in Italy during WW2: the idea is just “the madness of government conducting a war…”. I swear I’ll buy a copy when you’re finished.

Copyright is the guardian of originality, i.e. individuality. Why, it’s a right of individual property. It prevents someone to copy a book word for word, and then to print it and take all the profit (credit) for himself, for instance. Seems logical to me. You can’t open a Mc Donald either, without paying the company some franchise. Is that so hard to understand? And yet, McDonald isn’t art… ( Some cooking is art though… while I don’t think it is given protection from copyright laws, except for published recipe books.)

Artists have the reputation to produce an “original” work. Their research may show itself of interest to a small number of people only, or to a massive public much later, as it involves an active quest from the side of that public, to appreciate originality (while some will never care at all). How come time should limit property though? Is it suddenly another value that government owns? It’s like saying “Sorry, you kept your savings too long on your deposit, those shares belong to the public now!”. It seems to me that the right being on trial here, is more the right inheritance than copyright…

The genius painter Van Gogh died poor. His succession owned the rights of reproduction of his work subsequently. This allowed them to build the very successful museum in Amsterdam… Why would an editor reproducing the “Sun Flowers” in a magazine that sells, not deserve to pay a tribute to the creator (or his lineage)?

So what should be abolished is definitely, the idea of art ever sliding into the “public domain” don’t you think, as libertarians? I say 70 years is a step in the right direction!

By the way, the article seems everything else than libertarian to me in the first place, developing such communist/materialist point of view (so I’m curious where are the „real” arguments for copyright abolition please?)

I think the limited period is a good idea, but maybe more than one year, but I doubt more than 5.

“Bestsellers” generally are only on for a few weeks when they sell most copies. And you don’t have to wait if you are anywhere near a library – but most people still buy books.

There is also the current problem of orphan works – the copyright might have a half-century left (thanks to the mouse), but there might never be any interest for the author or copyright holder or whomever to republish something. There have been attempts at “abandoned property” style laws, but the industry shoots them down.

One other strict problem is artistic integrity. I can take any Mark Twain novel, rewrite it in some obnoxious way, and republish it including his name, defaming him and his work. The creative commons idea is probably a good one to address these things, and that maybe ought to last a longer time, maybe even in perpetuity (you would merely need to cite or note alterations to the work so any differences from the original would be visible – but otherwise you could publish, quote, or do anything else royalty free).

That would also solve the problem of “remix”. Most of the even trivial works written have some composition of other works – quotations, structure, etc. Take a sound from one song and sample it and use it as an instrument in another. Well you can’t do that if copyright is too restrictive.

For the AnCappers here, also note you could have a severe digitally rights managed system with private contract so you would have to buy a tyrantsoft e-book reader and show your fingerprint every time you tried to read it, and it would attempt to detect cameras, or even using pen and ink or other transcription methods to prevent copying (violating the private contract). This might end up worse than the current system. The EULAs on most software and UTICA proposals are.

The EFF and GNU organizations are already exploring this in depth.

Its ultimate result is to violate my property rights: it dictates to me what I cannot write with my own pen and paper; what music and culture I cannot share with my peers; what knowledge I may not pass on to my students; what medicines I may not produce for the sick; what stories I may not read to my children; what software I may not run on my computer; and so on.

Of course it makes those dictates. So does a rule saying that you cannot use your pen to stab someone in the throat. Saying that IP laws constrain the disposal of property is no argument against IP. All property laws constrain the use of property. You need an independent argument that IP laws are unjust.

Or, to restate your first paragraph, from a Geoist perspective:

The case against real property is simple and clear. Real property is an artificial monopoly on land, designed to create a scarcity where none occurs, and to enforce rent-seeking when the free market would prefer to allocate resources elsewhere.

- Josh

Artisan:

I held a very similar perspective to you and your point that the argument that “an artificial scarcity should not be created… seems somewhat obscure to me…” is something i might have said. But the more i studied that single argument, the less relevant all other arguments seemed to become.

I know i’m not making an original point here, even on this thread, but i’ll make it anyways: if there was no such thing as scarcity, the concept of property would not exist. With no concept of property, there would be no property rights violations. So what makes property a real and useful concept is scarcity and nothing else.

So an original painting is scarce and can be stolen. You actually can’t copy an original and now have two originals. But the question is can the owner of the original, own all un-authorized copies? Can he own the image i may have of it on my pc? From a “root of property” perspective, this image is not scarce and cannot be property. Since i own all the scarce resources that are connected with printing that image on my pc, i therefore also own the print that i create with my property.

Arguments about the viability of the music or art industry without the artificial invocation of copyright cannot trump the original ethical considerations behind the concept of property in the first place. Or that’s how I see it these days.

Any time Artisan. If there’s one topic i don’t mind being at odds with a libertarian on, this is it. Two of my all-time favorite thinkers, Rothbard and Spooner were with you all the way on this one, although i don’t recall any discussion of child and parent as part of their thesis (not that it wasn’t implied somewhere).

Thanks to Kinsella’s arguments and his pointing to other arguments as well, i came to Tucker. I had scarcely heard of Tucker prior to considering this issue, but i came to find his position persuasive. At times, i can hardly remember how i saw it any other way. Isn’t that odd? This topic is outrageously interesting.

Even when i explained both sides to my kids, (together at the same time) one straight away was with Tucker (“patents and copyrights are different how again?”) while the other was with Rothbard (“the author has no right to generally withhold reproduction rights of his own creation?”). I really like this subject; there’s a side for everybody.

“Saying that IP laws constrain the disposal of property is no argument against IP.”

That’s not what I’m saying, and you know it. My fairly obvious point was that IP laws restrict completely non-violent, constructive uses of my own property that in no way involve the originator of the IP. You cannot say the same of vandalism or murder.

“All property laws constrain the use of property.”

Unjust, socialistic laws do so even more. That’s hardly a point in their favour.

“Real property is an artificial monopoly on land, designed to create a scarcity where none occurs”

That’s totally nonsense. Land is naturally scarce and limited. Copies of data are not.

Artisan:

You are correct i did not follow the parent/child discussion, but i think i can follow your oil drilling example.

Although i haven’t given the oil drilling scenario much thought, for sake of this argument, i will concede the premise that oil under your property is owned by the neighbor who discovered it first (on his property), and contrast the scenario with copyright.

In the case of the oil, the second driller is removing the first driller’s oil, a literally scarce resource. This is simple theft of a real physical and scarce resource owned by the first driller. Every ounce of oil extracted by the second driller is an ounce of oil not available to its rightful owner, the first driller and is therefore stolen.

In the case of copyright, absolutely no utilization of an electronic copy or the printing of it or reproducing of this copy in any ways deprives anyone else of access or use of their own copies etc. Oil is scarce; (electronic) copies of books and music are not.

WAIT! Don’t kill me right away. I agree with you on the following for instance: individuality has to stay sacred… if an individual has two computers, there’s no way he should buy twice the right to run the same software on them …

Copyrights are, I understand, relatively recent innovations. Though the Constitution authorizes Congress to institute it, it wasn’t done until about a century later, in the late 1800s. By then, the great works of W.B. Brown, Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville had already been written and published, yet “unprotected” in their own lands.

Some other authors unprotected by copyright law: Homer, Virgil, Chaucer, Dante, Murasaki, Bocaccio, Shakespeare, Spencer, Milton — well, you get the point.

Nowadays, we have 70-year posthumous copyright protection, quarter million dollar fines for violating it (as my DVDs consistently warn me), and literature and film are at their lowest point in the last few thousand years. Based on the empirical evidence alone, the imperative of copyright protection to promote literary and artistic creativity and value does not convince.

I haven’t researched it, but my impression is that copyright was originally conceived by mercantilist-types as a way for the government to stimulate certain kinds of production, as mercantilists are wont. Once such laws were in place, their justification seems to have morphed into a moral claim of ownership by copyright holders. This is interesting, because there’s no escaping the logic that legally enforceable intellectual property can only exist via the coercive redistribution of tangible property.

Those who argue for copyright law somehow feel these claims are superior to the claims of tangible property. Their lobbies, which include the power of the entertainment and publishing industries, push for ever greater extension of the copyright period.

Originally in the US, it was 14 years from the time of filing, with one 14 year extension allowed at the end of that time if then filed for again.

Now filing isn’t even required (though recommended). The coverage period is the life of the holder, *plus* 70 years after his death. Creators from Walt Disney to James Joyce have the glowing satisfaction of knowing their great-grandchildren are well provided for — assuming the estate isn’t passed down to unrelated people whom the creator never even met, as frequently happens. That’s why they created, after all — isn’t it?

The ethical case for IP, as I understand it, seems to be an extension of the free-rider argument. That is, somebody benefits from someone else’s idea, so they ought to pay for their share of it. Only instead of having to pay, say, a tax for one’s share of the cost of building and maintaining a lighthouse, people have to pay a fee to the holder dictated by the holder. (I understand it works somewhat differently from that with regard to songs.)

The free-rider argument, it seems to me, basically maintains, as opposed to the idea that property is tangible and discrete, that people owe one another for the beneficial externalities produced by others. If a service station opens across the highway from my roadside café and that increases my business, I should pay the owner of that station something. (To be fair, he should pay me if by closing his business my business suffers.)

I can’t record music that comes in on my radio over the airwaves that have entered my home on my own recording device. I’m benefiting from that, so I have to pay what the “holder” of the music demands, backed by the coercive agency of the State.

One argument sometimes used in support of IP — including by Rothbard — is that consumers have a contract, and IP is just enforcing contract. Good try, but doesn’t bear scrutiny.

Statutorily, IP isn’t contract law (though IP can apply to contracts). I never made an agreement with a publisher to not reproduce his book. I never agreed not to record the results of radio and television waves. I’m not even allowed to do it if I build my radio or television and the recording device myself from scratch, using technologies in the public domain.

BTW, one needn’t be an anarchist to see that there’s no good reason that the State should be in the contract enforcement business. There shouldn’t be any contract law, period. Contracts should only be private arrangements, voluntarily “enforced” by such means as collateralization, deposits with arbitrators, credit bureaus etc.

I should know better than to write late at night!

Just literature, of course. Obviously, much of early film was for simple amusement, but also naturally emphasized technical innovation and novelty. But overall film is arguably at its lowest esthetic ebb since before *The Birth of a Nation*.

I can’t blame that much on IP — after all, film emerged in the IP era in the first place. But IP “rights” keep expanding, and film isn’t getting any better esthetically. And the dazzling technical advances in film (“sfx”) are largely the results of technologies that are developing so rapidly that many of them grow obsolete before their patent holders can cash in on their patent-guaranteed monopoly powers.