Almost all the people who get their news from the government-media complex are clueless about how libertarians answer these questions. Here’s a primer that explains copyright issues within the framework of the non-aggression principle:
http://mises.org/daily/3682
On patents, imagine two guys come up with an idea at the same time, independently. Up until Obama made a great gift to the biggest crony capitalist corporations in the world with his changes to the patent law, you could challenge any patent issued to anyone, if you could show that you had the idea first, or if you could show that it was already an idea in use, or if it was “prior art”. With Obama’s change, if you get to the patent office first, the patent is yours.
Tesla sued Marconi over the radio patent and it took about twenty years but the US Supreme Court finally admitted in its decisions that the facts showed that the patent belonged rather to Tesla. Wolves and hen house. Twenty years. To this day your lying history textbooks teach school kids that Marconi invented radio. Wolves and hen house.
Tesla improved the durability of Thomas Edison’s light bulb many times over. Edison refused to pay Tesla the $20,000 that Edison had promised for the achievement, and that’s when Tesla quit. But Edison gets the government monopoly complete. Wolves and hen house.
(1) IP laws just don’t work for the same reason that over the long run, government is a purely destructive force, imperialist conquest and looting and robbery by any other name.
(2) Tangible property is one thing. “Intangible” property is different. A new computer algorithm per se is not even eligible under the copyright monopoly grant in place in the USSA today, but put a few of them together and name them Dick, Jane and Sue and they’ll “grant” you a copyright.
The biggest gotcha that to me clinched the argument is that there is *not one* natural measure by which to say how long a copyright or patent monopoly should last.
HOW COPYRIGHT STARTED
In the days when all copying was by hand, there was almost nothing like any copyright law. After the printing press made books much more widely available, the term “copyright” first came about as a way for monarchs to censor publications, and suppress things they didn’t like. Later on, the “nicer” monarchs began conceding them as monopolies for the authors, with a “copyright” being a special royal “permit” to publish the book as a government-guaranteed monopoly.
Somebody taking your automobile without permission is a tangible theft and you can show actual harm. You don’t have the use of it anymore. If somebody copies your book or your music, you still have the use of it.
One law professor specialized in “IP” law on CSpan recently testifyied about file sharing proposals and copyright law and made one good point. He said revenues for music companies may have gone down with file sharing, BUT he pointed to the FACT that production of music has not diminished at all, and it thrives as good as ever.
Why should a big mega-corporation control the entire music market anyway? Give peace a chance, give the little guy a chance.
Trutherator's Weblog 