Crosbie Fitch 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: When You Realize That Copyright Law Violates Free Speech Rights, You Begin To Recognize The Problems…

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 15 Sep, 2010 @ 09:29am

    Re: The "balance" delusion

    The argument for 'balance' is also known as the logical fallacy of 'appeal to moderation', i.e. that extremism is by nature invalid and justice always to be found as a happy medium.

    No doubt those who called for abolition of slavery could be rejected on the same basis, that the correct approach to growing disquiet in the cotton fields would have been most appropriately addressed by finding balance between the farmers' labour needs and their slaves' need for better living conditions.

    At the end of the day individuals have a natural liberty to share and build upon mankind's culture. The question is whether the state should place the demands of its wealthy publishing corporations over and above the natural rights of its citizens. It's not a balance. It's copyright or abolition. Like pregnancy (no such thing as 'slightly pregnant'), either people are at liberty to make copies of what they have or they are not.

  • On the post: When You Realize That Copyright Law Violates Free Speech Rights, You Begin To Recognize The Problems…

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 15 Sep, 2010 @ 08:17am

    The Constitution is nevertheless consistent

    Copyright (the re-enactment of the Statute of Anne in the US in 1790) does indeed conflict with the right to free speech.

    However, as I've tried to explain to you before, Mike, the 'progress' clause does not conflict.

    People are naturally at liberty to copy or communicate any speech or intellectual work that they are in legitimate possession of.

    Authors have a natural right to exclude others from their writings (in their possession) - because others are NOT in possession of them (must commit burglary in order to obtain them).

    This is why the author's exclusive right to their writings does not conflict with any other individual's freedom of speech.

    Copyright, on the other hand, says that even if an individual is in rightful possession or receipt of a covered work they still cannot copy or communicate it (even within the privacy of their own home). That's why the privilege of copyright is fundamentally unethical, an anachronistic instrument of injustice that should have been abolished along with slavery.

  • On the post: Why Must ISPs Pay To Be The Mandatory Copyright Cops Of The Entertainment Industry?

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 15 Sep, 2010 @ 04:21am

    Money for nothing

    If a corporation can lobby the government to let it continue to legally extract money from all participants in mankind's cultural exchange and yet provide ever diminishing levels of service in return, then it's increasing its profits and share price - something it's legally constrained to do.

    So, really it all comes down to corrupt law: The creation of legal entities we call corporations. The creation of legalised extortion rackets (monopolies of copyright & patent). The creation of further laws to force others to police/enforce their rackets and laws to punish any disobedience on the part of the citizenry.

    To assume corporations have an entitlement mentality is to buy in to the idea that corporations are human beings who might have a brain into which a feeling of entitlement might manifest. Corporations are best considered immortal alien robots whose predatory Asimov-like 'laws' direct them to maximise the extraction of revenue from the human workforce.

    The solution is obvious:
    1. Dissolve corporations into associations of culpable individuals (with no legal constraint to maximise share price)
    2. Abolish all privileges, such as copyright & patent
    3. Reform trademark, e.g. change to law against passing off
    4. Reform libel laws - end legal concept of defamation

    Implementing that solution is of course a bigger problem, with a less than obvious solution.

    This predicament was created through an accretion of corruption (lobbied legislation).

  • On the post: Why It's Important Not To Call Copyright Infringement Theft

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 15 Sep, 2010 @ 12:36am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Well, of course, everything we talk about is a concept or idea.

    The argument it seems you would have is whether the concept of natural rights does have a basis in nature. Whether people's need/ability to preserve their lives, need/ability to exclude others from the spaces they inhabit and objects they possess, need/ability to pursue and apprehend the truth, and need/ability to evade capture or control by others are powers they have by nature or because a state thinks it would be useful to grant them.

    Natural rights are recognitions of the individual's self-evident needs and abilities and their power to fulfil and protect them - and that individuals come together to empower a government to protect these rights (equally).

    If you don't recognise any truth in that, you may prefer to consider the corporation primary, and the state as subordinate marshal of a secondary human workforce, with 'rights' being privileges granted/rescinded to citizens for good/bad behaviour.

    The thing is, the word 'right' and its meaning precedes the invention of the corporation (and the elevation of the corporation above the individual).

    Thomas Paine was by no means the first to recognise the existence of (natural) rights and explain them, but he wrote some good stuff in the 18th century. See Wikipedia (Rights of Man):

    Human rights originate in Nature, thus, rights cannot be granted via political charter, because that implies that rights are legally revocable, hence, would be privileges:

    It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect - that of taking rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few . . . They . . . consequently are instruments of injustice.

    The fact, therefore, must be that the individuals, themselves, each, in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.

    I really don't think it's wise to persist in claiming that individuals don't have any (natural) rights, that all we have are privileges (legally granted rights) that a paternalistic state considers conducive to a well behaved populace.

    There is an incentive of course, to denigrate natural rights, because if individual liberty is a natural right that ethically supersedes the monopoly that derogates the right to copy from it, then supporters of copyright will be keen to deny any distinction between rights individuals have by nature and transferable privileges granted by law (that lucratively end up amassed and enjoyed by legal entities we call corporations).

  • On the post: Why It's Important Not To Call Copyright Infringement Theft

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2010 @ 02:48pm

    Re: Re: I blame kindergarten.

    There are many unethical and ethical things people can do with respect to intellectual works.

    Copyright is unethical.

    Copyright can be ethically neutralised, e.g. by providing a copyleft license.

    Some of the ethical things that you can do with respect to an intellectual work will infringe a holder's privilege of copyright.

    So, some copyright infringement is ethical.

    Generally all acts that individuals are naturally at liberty to do are ethical irrespective of whether they infringe copyright.

    Singing a song you've heard on the radio in public (even in a supermarket) is ethical even if you haven't paid the compulsory license fee.

    Selling five million t-shirts with the lyrics to Lennon's song Imagine printed on them is not unethical - despite being a large scale commercial infringement.

    Copyright is an instrument of injustice - it prohibits and criminalises ethical acts of cultural engagement and exchange.

  • On the post: Why It's Important Not To Call Copyright Infringement Theft

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2010 @ 02:01pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    I would accept a definition of theft as anyone (I have not given authorised access to my private domain) who violates my privacy to reduce/diminish/destroy/remove/appropriate/access/operate/copy/consume/exploit/borrow/communicate my possessions.

    Copyright, in prohibiting my liberty to make copies or derivatives of my own possessions, even in the privacy of my own home, is therefore a violation of my privacy and diminishment of my use of my possessions.

    Now even if you can't bring yourself to call this theft (as obtaining possession), perhaps you'll at least see how it is far closer to theft (as act of burglary and impairment of property) than illicit manufacture and sale of goods contrary to grant of monopoly (infringement of copyright).

    I respect your argument. When I say 'copyright is theft' I'm certainly not saying "copyright meets the popular definition and understanding of the meaning of the word 'theft'". I'm asserting that it could and should be regarded as theft, at least in some aspect.

  • On the post: Why It's Important Not To Call Copyright Infringement Theft

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2010 @ 01:18pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Queen Anne diminished our property rights such that we can do less with our own property than we used to be able to.

    I can still read my book of folk tales, but I can no longer write out a copy nor embellish or alter it for the benefit of my child. If I do take back my natural liberty to do this, I commit copyright infringement.

    Copyright is theft.

    Copyright infringement is liberty.

    Copyright is an instrument of injustice and should be abolished.

    Those who want to keep the privilege will describe detractors as pirates, anarchists, or extremists and their words as hyperbole.

  • On the post: Why It's Important Not To Call Copyright Infringement Theft

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2010 @ 12:54pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Legislatively granted 'rights' or legal 'rights' (properly termed privileges) are unethical - instruments of injustice.

    Natural/human rights used to be simply rights, needing no qualification, until the granted ones displaced them in common parlance as they do today.

    Unsurprisingly, because (natural) rights are ethical and privileges (legal rights) aren't, many so called IP lawyers will prefer to use 'right' rather than privilege to describe copyright and its decomposition - obviously, because it sounds FAR better (ethically legitimate).

    "I have a right to exclude you from singing my song" sounds far better than "I've been granted the privilege of being able to sue you if you sing my song".

  • On the post: Why It's Important Not To Call Copyright Infringement Theft

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2010 @ 12:33pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Copyright is so called, because it is the right to copy, annulled in the majority, left by exclusion, in the hands of a few.

    So it is a right, naturally yours (and everyone's), but derogated by statute to create a privilege for the exploitation of printers/publishing corporations.

    Thus copyright is a privilege - everyone else's right to copy specially suspended and reserved to a certain holder - initially the initial possessor of the original work (the author).

    In other words copyright constitutes theft, theft from you of an act you would naturally be able to perform in the privacy of your own home - making copies of your possessions (songs, stories, pictures, etc.). This is why publishing corporations would like to invade your privacy in order to detect any private copies you make or share with your friends.

    Now as for natural or human rights such as the author's exclusive right to their writings (as recognised in the US Constitution), this is logically limited to the natural lifespan of the individual. Corpses have no privacy (barring familial considerations).

  • On the post: Why It's Important Not To Call Copyright Infringement Theft

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2010 @ 11:17am

    Re: Re: Natural rights gives a straightforward explanation

    It may be time for you to decide whether society grants you your right to life, or whether nature imbues you with it.

    Any state that attempts to convince its citizens that their (natural) rights are granted to them and can be rescinded where expeditious soon finds a tadette of disquiet - ultimately ending with insurrection.

    You may have noticed this sort of thing happened concerning slavery with respect to a certain class of citizens and their (natural) rights.

    Even the privilege of copyright's derogation of people's natural right to liberty (their right to copy) is currently challenging your assertion that the right to liberty or to copy is granted to people at the state's convenience.

    Saying that there are no natural rights, that all rights are granted by society (thus making copyright a right rather than a privilege), is a denial of reality (no doubt led by an ulterior aspiration to power).

    The nature of Homo Sapiens has been determined through millions of years of evolution, not the whim of social engineers operating under the delusion they can extract a 'social contract' from people to surrender aspects of their natural rights for the 'greater good'.

    Ask the millions of file-sharers why they do not continue to respect the social contract they notionally agreed to in 1790 to recognise the exclusive right of copyright holders to manufacture copies of covered works and no-one else. For you this is presumably delinquency to be remedied by 're-education'. For those who recognise natural law it is human nature, natural cultural liberty.

    It is copyright that is unnatural, cultural liberty that is natural.

    It is not a matter of cultural liberty granted to people or rescinded from them according to the state's need for a wealthy and well behaved press - except in the minds of those with contempt for the natural rights of human beings (such as the boards of publishing corporations).

  • On the post: Why It's Important Not To Call Copyright Infringement Theft

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2010 @ 09:58am

    Natural rights gives a straightforward explanation

    An individual has a natural right to exclude others from their private domain (spaces/possessions) - that which a human being is naturally able to occupy, secure and exclude others from.

    Theft is the removal or communication of any material or intellectual work from an individual's private domain by someone not privy (given authorised access). It matters not whether the thief has been 'helpful' and left substitutes, copies or originals behind.

    If someone has been granted a privilege that enables them to sue anyone who competes with them in the marketplace concerning manufacture and supply of covered works, whether baskets or books, then manufacture & supply contrary to this is purely an INFRINGEMENT of that privilege. It is violation of no-one's privacy, but competing supply contrary to the grant of monopoly. One could infer that there may have been illicit collection of market revenue reserved to the monopoly holder, but this is rather inexact and nebulous.

    'Theft' should be reserved for violation of the natural right, not infringement of a state granted privilege.

  • On the post: HDCP 'Master Key' Found? Another Form Of DRM Drops Dead

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2010 @ 07:37am

    Plenty stupid with DRM, but nothing wrong with it

    There's plenty that is stupid with DRM, but there's nothing actually wrong with it.

    The only thing that is wrong is the privilege of copyright, and the DMCA that prohibits the circumvention of 'technical protection measures' that make even a weedy effort to impede the efforts of possessors to make copies.

    Without copyright or the DMCA, there'd be no problem. DRM would soon be regarded as crazy as a perpetual motion machine.

    It's because there are crazy laws on the statute books that say it's possible to legally prevent people copying what they have, that people then assume it's technically possible to prevent it.

    We must remember that it's only possible to prevent people copying what they DO NOT HAVE. This is a natural law. You cannot both give someone access to a work AND prevent them communicating it or making a copy of it.

  • On the post: Can Antitrust Law Stop Abuses Of Intellectual Property And Free Access To Knowledge?

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2010 @ 02:44am

    Re: anti-competitive

    Yup, it's a bit like calling the police to arrest soldiers for killing people on the battlefield.

    Copyright is a monopoly.

    If you don't want such anti-competitive commercial privileges then abolish them. Don't be so stupid as to quibble between 'fairly anti-competitive' and 'unfairly anti-competitive'.

  • On the post: John Mellencamp: Takes From Others, But Refuses To Give Back

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 13 Sep, 2010 @ 07:16am

    Re: Re:

    You betray yourself.

    So called 'holders' are called 'holders' because they hold 'rights' that have been legislatively granted to them (or to others who have handed them over to them). Such granted rights that maybe transferred are properly termed privileges.

    Rights in the natural sense (as used to be the only sense before rights were granted by law) are imbued in man by nature and are inalienable. This is why no-one 'holds' their (natural) right to life or their right to privacy, and why no-one can sell it.

    If by 'piracy' you mean people enjoying their natural right to liberty, their natural right to engage in cultural exchange to share music, etc. and this enjoyment being contrary to the suspension of their natural right to copy by the 18th century privilege of copyright, then yes, this is natural for Homo Sapiens.

  • On the post: John Mellencamp: Takes From Others, But Refuses To Give Back

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 13 Sep, 2010 @ 12:46am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    It's only called the 'IP clause' or 'Copyright clause' by those who would insinuate that it gives Congress power to grant copyright - to re-enact The Statute of Anne (of 1709) in 1790.

    The clause is actually nothing to do with granting monopolies, but securing the natural right authors and inventors have to exclude others from their intellectual work - which obviously/naturally only applies to those works in their private possession. Plainly, no-one can have a natural right to exclude others from what has been given to them, for such would require super-natural or inhuman power (such as that which may be lent by the state by way of privilege).

    I can naturally exclude you from my writings that are in my possession. However, if I later give or sell you a copy and thus naturally include you, I cannot then simultaneously, naturally exclude you (from certain acts you are naturally at liberty to do). For such perverse and unnatural exclusions I need a corrupt state to help me.

    If I've written a song or story I can naturally exclude you from it - until, that is, I sing or tell it to you, whereupon I have no natural power (or right) to prevent you singing or telling that story to anyone else.

    Obviously, grants of monopoly are fundamentally illegitimate (instruments of injustice), and so it's not surprising that their corrupt proponents will pretend them to be natural rights. It's truly astonishing to see them claim that people have a natural right to prevent anyone re-singing the songs they sing or re-telling the stories they've told.

    It's just as egregious to pretend that the legislation of US copyright in 1790 (a slightly edited version of the Statute of Anne) is the securing of an author's natural exclusive right to their writings (as Congress was only empowered to do by the 1787 Constitution).

    Notwithstanding any of this, there were Framers such as Madison who were keen for copyright to be granted (to enact the Statute of Anne) for the benefit of the press and state in the US - irrespective of their lip service and pretence of hand-wringing angst with respect to the granting of monopolies. The problem was, the Constitution couldn't empower the granting of privileges such as monopolies. The most it could do was to empower the securing of self-evident natural rights. Hence we have a natural rights based Constitutional clause that copyright supporters pretend sanctions the re-enactment of the Statute of Anne, and the granting of a monopoly. This is further supported by insinuating that 'legislatively granted right to exclude others from making copies' is the (natural) 'exclusive right' referred to by the Constitution (which obviously couldn't refer to a privilege that hadn't yet been granted).

  • On the post: Are Non-Commercial Creative Commons Licenses A Bad Idea? Nina Paley & Cory Doctorow Debate…

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 12 Sep, 2010 @ 01:41am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The conundrum

    Actually, I'm all for selling one's work, and having the right to sell it in a free market (denied by copyright and such licenses as CC-NC).

    If I spend a day weaving a basket I've copied from an expert weaver, I have a right to sell my labour - without that expert having a monopoly that prevents copies being made of his baskets.

    If I spend a day remixing a few videos I've found on YouTube, I have a right to sell my labour - without any monopoly having been granted to the producers of my source videos to prevent me.

    So, I'm all for selling work, and I've got no problem with people making and selling copies.

    The problem is that there's an 18th century privilege called copyright that scuppers all this - a now ineffective monopoly that makes people think they should be able to sell copies that cost next to nothing to make for the price of an hour's labour. A lucrative prospect, but achieved most unethically at the cost of everyone's cultural liberty.

    The market for copies at inflated prices is over. The free market in intellectual work resumes.

  • On the post: John Mellencamp: Takes From Others, But Refuses To Give Back

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 11 Sep, 2010 @ 04:37pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    "the clause empowering Congress to grant patents and copyrights"

    There is no such clause.

    "That every man is entitled to the fruits of his own labour must be admitted . . . ."

    Sounds reasonable to me.

    "Authors have a natural property right in their work".

    I agree.

    "It's natural to expect rewards for your labor."

    That you expect reward doesn't make it a right. I expect to be rewarded for weaving baskets, but I recognise that there's a remote possibility no-one will want to reward me for my work. As to the level of such reward, that is of course determined in a free market - not one in which I've been granted a monopoly.

    "Common law copyright was based on natural law"

    Wash your mouth out with soap!

    "Lockean natural rights underpin U.S. constitutional and statutory law."

    Aside from the privileges of copyright and patent.

    "the reality is that copyright finds its roots in both natural and economic rights."

    Saying it's a reality doesn't make it so. (what are 'economic rights'?)

    Such wishful assertions underline your contention, but they don't constitute much of an argument.

    Where did Locke say that every man should be granted a monopoly over the fruits of his creativity, or that every man is born the natural power to prevent any other from bringing to market a similar or improved product?

  • On the post: John Mellencamp: Takes From Others, But Refuses To Give Back

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 11 Sep, 2010 @ 03:17pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Copyright grounded in principles of natural rights?

    You're the first I've come across to dare say that.

    Perhaps you'd like to explain further?

    How did copyright exist in nature before Queen Anne granted it in 1710?

  • On the post: Are Non-Commercial Creative Commons Licenses A Bad Idea? Nina Paley & Cory Doctorow Debate…

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 11 Sep, 2010 @ 03:02pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The conundrum

    Photoshop isn't available under a CC-NC license last time I looked.

    If you're worried about taking something away from artists you should learn from the experts - record labels.

    The sale of copies has become a dead end. Fortunately, the sale of art direct to fans is beginning to see a resurgence.

    If you wove a basket and sold it for $10, would you require a share of the profits if the purchaser then resold it for $50?

    It's nice to be granted a monopoly so only you can keep on selling copies of your work. Some people can only sell their work once.

  • On the post: John Mellencamp: Takes From Others, But Refuses To Give Back

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 11 Sep, 2010 @ 11:52am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    "Constitution gives the power to secure exclusive rights to Congress"

    Yes, power to secure the exclusive rights that authors were born* with.

    "Congress gives those rights to authors via the Copyright Act."

    No, Congress did very little in the way of securing the exclusive rights that authors were born with. Instead, it simply re-enacted the Statute of Anne, i.e. enacted copyright that suspended the people's liberty and right to copy in order to grant a per-work reproduction monopoly for the benefit of the press.

    All men are born equal. If you corrupt the language to exclude blacks, Jews, alleged paedophiles, suspected terrorists, and other pariahs from mankind then you can treat them worse than animals. A similar corruption exists today in corrupting the language to term copyright as an exclusive right in order that it appears to have constitutional sanction.

    Money may not be the root of all evil, but it's having a damn good try.

    You should really worry that corporations have been legally elevated to have (at least) the same status and rights as human beings (whatever you think 'rights' means these days).

    * 'born' is a clue - authors are human beings, not corporations.

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