Copyright
Discussion started by Dirk Meulenbelt
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With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas, and submit new ideas.We discuss whether it would be moral to abolish copyright
I am not allowed to sell my Star Wars fan-fiction. Why not?
Not a lawyer but I believe such fan fiction would be considered a derivative work.
Copyright protects original creators’ exclusive right to create derivative works. So, selling your Star Wars fan fiction without permission from the copyright holders would be copyright infringement.
See this article.
Copyright is stifling to creativity, as now people are not incentivised to write fan-fictions.
People can still publish fan fiction as long as they get the copyright holder’s permission.
Intellectual property is a contradiction in terms because information isn't scarce the same way that private property necessarily must be.
To keep someone from copying your work you have to infringe on the private property of that person by claiming an exclusive right on prohibiting his use of his privately owned copying medium to instantiate a certain pattern.
‘To stop someone from murdering you you have to infringe on his private property by claiming an exclusive right on prohibiting his use of his privately owned gun to shoot you’ How is that different?
Murdering someone destroys their scarce property (their body in this case). Copying something using your own property leaves the original totally untouched.
One can steal value without stealing physical property (as happens when you transfer someone’s digital money without their consent).
The issue is scarcity. Digital money is also scarce since you cannot double spend it. If it wasn't scarce, it wouldn't be money and neither would it be private property.
But digital money isn’t physically scarce like someone’s body. Your argument rests on physical property being special in some way.
Do you agree that scarcity is at least a central consideration in determining whether copying information in disregard of consent should be considered a crime or not?
Copyright infringement usually isn’t a crime.
Imagine living on a flat planet that extends infinitely in all directions.
Land is not scarce on this planet.
You build a house, mixing your labor with an acre of land. Someone comes and takes your land, saying you have no cause for complaint since land isn’t scarce.
See how scarcity isn’t necessary for something to be property?
Take someone’s reputation. That isn’t a ‘scarce’ thing yet it’s a good thing there are laws against defamation.
I'm not sure it's a good thing.
So if someone publishes a blog post falsely but believably accusing you of being a pedophile and then all your business partners stop talking to you and you lose all your money and your friends and family ghost you, you wouldn’t want to have any legal recourse?
I'm not sure, seriously. I'm open to suggestions.
There's lots of things that I think people shouldn't do yet should still be legal.
Laws (against murder and other crimes) don’t reduce to physical property.
Libertarians often think that the purpose of the law is ONLY to define and enforce property rights. In reality, the purpose of the law is to prevent and address the arbitrary in social life.
It’s true that it would be arbitrary if anyone could just take your property against your will, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only kind of arbitrariness the law should prevent/address.
Ridiculous definition of murder. Classic libertarian thought bending over backwards to reduce everything to property rights. Please cite a legal text where the definition of murder invokes scarce property.
No. I don't expect to find it, but that doesn't make it less true. That's how I make sense of the difference between IP and real property.
If current law isn’t based on what you claim it’s based on then that does make it less true.
Maybe? Kinda? Not sure.
You don't get to use your knife to aggress on others, that much is clear. So perhaps this can be understood as a right of others to do certain things with your property.
Right, like preventing you from murdering them.
exactly
So… the law extending to others’ property is nothing new and not totalitarian in and of itself.
true!
I should be clear though that it is only right for the law to interfere with property to protect others’ rights. It’s not right for the law to confiscate your money to collect taxes, say.
Just intuitively, I feel like there's a difference between forcing others not to force you, and forcing others not to copy you. I feel like defending against others using your scarce means towards their ends is just, while defending against others using non-scarce means towards their end is wicked. Since I impose no opportunity cost on someone by copying information, they have no claim on my scarce means as recompense. The copy-ability of information gives us this nice non-zero-sum situation where we can have our cake and eat it too because we don't have to economize on non-scarce things.
Correction: In some sense copying information does impose a cost, but I think of that cost more akin to the cost imposed on an incumbent producer by his competing alternatives in a free market.
When I distribute Harry Potter for free, I am simply offering better terms for access to the information than JK Rowling, so in a free market I should be the one that ends up distributing because I solve the same problem at a lower price.
This duplicate is symptomatic of a larger and common issue of just reverting back to one’s previous arguments when one hasn’t fully processed the counterarguments. Veritula helps you avoid doing that because you can just look up each idea’s ‘truth status’. If it has outstanding criticisms, you don’t invoke it again. You either save it first or work on something else.
‘When I distribute other people’s bicycles for free, I am simply offering better terms for access to bicycles than the stores that sell them, so in a free market I should be the one that ends up distributing because I solve the same problem at a lower price.’ 🤡
Copyright is routinely violated without consequences anyway.
‘Lawbreakers get away with it all the time so it’s fine.’ How is that an argument?
Just that if it was so crucial for innovation then you'd expect innovation to suffer from all the copyright infringement that is going on.
That could be happening though, so agreed that it isn't a good argument.
I do expect innovation to suffer from current copyright infringement, yes. Just add up all the infringed copies being shared times the average price, that’s the damage being done and it discourages creators from creating more.
All that being said, I think crediting people for inspiration is good form and should be part of common polite behavior.
Am I committing aggression against JK Rowling if I pirate a PDF copy of Harry Potter?
You’re violating her rights: specifically, her copyright. That’s an aggression.
Okay so without referring to current legislation. I understand that it is currently illegal, just like tax evasion, but that won't go far in persuading me that it isn't right.
Ok let’s rewind the clock and say JK Rowling has finished writing Harry Potter but she hasn’t published it yet.
And she says: I’m going to publish and sell this book on condition that anyone who buys it not distribute it further. They can read it but they can’t redistribute it without my permission.
Those are the terms of publication. It’s a contract. And anyone who buys the book is then bound by the contract.
She would not publish the book otherwise.
She created a value and she wants to trade that value for something specific (money in exchange for reading, not redistributing).
Others are free to take her up on the offer or ignore her.
So it's not me who's pirating the book that is violating her right. It's whoever uploaded it for me to download it, right?
If you’re looking for someone to assuage your guilt over having pirated copyrighted content in the past, you won’t get that from me.
Lol no, I'm trying to understand your point. You're saying that buying a book is a bit like signing an NDA, where I can be held liable for breach of contract if I disclose information. Did I get that right?
Not like signing NDA since you are free to talk about the ideas in the book in your own words, but kinda like breach of contract yeah.
Okay well I have never thought of it in those terms. I definitely think NDAs should be enforceable.
If someone steals a bike and then gifts it to you that doesn’t mean the owner can’t have it back just because you didn’t steal it. Same for copyright.
So then JK Rowling can use violence against me to extort the value that I have supposedly stolen by downloading a book that was uploaded in violation of a contract by a third person?
Not sure that’s extortion but yes, generally speaking, people have the right to use force to prevent and address the arbitrary in social life (#1345).
But I was never party to that contract! I never agreed not to distribute it, and I also didn't actually distribute it. I just downloaded it from Pirate bay.
There, the owner is short of a bike. Returning it to him will make him whole. The situation looks quite different in the case of information, at least in my eyes. What exactly is to be returned?
Maybe you could simply pay her the price of the book plus interest plus a fee for the inconvenience. Plus some ‘deterrence fee’ so that most people don’t even think of doing it to begin with.
But I didn't agree to buy the book. I wouldn't have bought it if I hadn't found it on pirate bay, let's say.
You never agreed to buy the bike either, that’s the point.
You didn’t trade value for value. You traded nothing at all and only received. A free market and justice depend on people interacting as traders, not as leeches (objectivism).
I have received a pattern of information. Information cannot be owned as it is non-scarce. JK Rowling is asking me to give her money for something that was never hers to begin with.
I wasn't aware that I signed such a contract when buying a book. I think for the contract to be valid I have to be aware of the conditions, no?
Ignorance of the law is not generally a legal defense, afaik.
If it were, any criminal could simply claim he didn’t know what he was doing was illegal. Which would be arbitrary.
Which brings us, again, to the purpose of the law: to prevent and address the arbitrary in social life (#1345).
Your perspective on whether she loses anything really doesn’t matter. That’s the same even for cold hard property. If I exchange your tic tacs for $1,000,000 without your consent, you only win, you didn’t lose, but it’s still theft.
agreed
Copyright just seems so arbitrary to me. The whole edifice of law around it. Why 70 years after the author's death? What's "original"? When is it "my own words?"
Why 70 years after the author's death?
That seems excessive to me too, but you can thank lobbyists for that. Doesn’t mean copyright doesn’t make sense as a whole.
Wouldn’t copyright make LLMs illegal, too?
LLM coders should come up with something else that doesn’t steal value.
Maybe LLM coders aren't stealing value but instead creating it?
They are creating some but also stealing lots. You could steal a bicycle to become a courier and create value as a courier, but you still shouldn’t steal the bicycle in the first place. And if the thief complained about not being able to create value because it’s illegal to steal bicycles, everyone would rightly laugh at him. It’s his responsibility to find win/win solutions with people, not leech off others in the name of ‘creating value’.
I doubt it. I hope they keep doing it. I hope to live in a world where copyright isn't enforced. I expect to see more creation and novelty.
I doubt it.
Unclear what “it” refers to.
I doubt it.
You just say that without any reasoning.
Midjourney wouldn't exist... Our cool pics of Mujahideen eating Bacon wouldn't exist.
‘Couriers who jump start their careers by stealing bicycles wouldn’t exist.’
It's a good point, but I don't think those two compare. Again, bicycles are scarce. My use prevents your use.
It’s about value not physical scarcity. If you only steal it while I’m asleep and return it before I wake up and want to use it it’s still theft.
There's this nice bit in Man, Economy & State where Rothbard explains that durable goods can be broken down into their unit services (not sure that's the term) and that all durable goods get used up as they provide service.
So I guess someone would reduce the serviceable lifespan of the bike by using it during the times that you aren't using it.
Yeah. And if he takes it against your will and replaces it with a brand new bike it’s still theft.
I should say, the issue of LLMs isn’t entirely clear cut since they don’t actually redistribute any text. So their output may not be a copyright violation in the original sense. Could maybe be a derivative work of the training data though (see #1322).
There are a lot of open legal questions about AI. See https://hawleytroxell.com/insights/how-i-really-feel-about-chatgpt-from-an-ip-lawyers-perspective/. For example:
Copyright owners and patent holders have no recourse against infringing, illegal AI output since the law has not yet caught up to create a remedy. So if I ask ChatGPT to write me some Star Wars fan fiction and I then place that content on the internet or sell it on Amazon, Disney has no remedy—except to sue me somehow, because they are Disney and have a lot of money.
And:
I cannot register copyrights in content authored by an AI because I am not the author, and the AI cannot register its own copyrights because it lacks personhood.