Crosbie Fitch 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Sad State Of Copyright: Guy Using Short Clips Of Music In Viral Videos Accused Of Infringement

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 30 Apr, 2012 @ 11:10pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    There is no inherent conflict in natural rights. Our liberty to swing our fists is naturally delimited by another's right to life and privacy. Conversely, if another is invading our privacy and threatening our life by swinging their fists at us, then swinging our fists at them in defence is no longer a matter of liberty, but of life.

    What few realise is that our liberty is abridged (our right to copy annulled) by the privilege of copyright (since 1709).

    Copyright is an instrument of injustice and should be abolished. For a short introduction to the rights of man see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_of_Man#Arguments

    For further reading see my comments to http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2012/04/17/mike_masnick_no_wrong_stop_that.php

  • On the post: Sad State Of Copyright: Guy Using Short Clips Of Music In Viral Videos Accused Of Infringement

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 30 Apr, 2012 @ 04:37pm

    You're missing the white elephant. It's not a matter of fixing the DMCA, nor even a matter of fixing copyright. It's a matter of abolishing copyright - repealing the Statute of Anne and every enhancement and ancillary law since.

  • On the post: Sad State Of Copyright: Guy Using Short Clips Of Music In Viral Videos Accused Of Infringement

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 30 Apr, 2012 @ 04:11pm

    YouTube isn't Copyright

    Don't confuse YouTube's policies with copyright. That said, YouTube has probably confused its own policies with copyright.

    There is nothing a priori WRONG with infringing copyright.

    Failing to realise this is probably where YouTube gets the idea of 3 strikes from.

    Copyright is a privilege that means the holder can sue the infringer IF THEY WANT TO. If the holder has no issue with an infringement of their privilege then they simply do nothing, e.g. if they really like what someone has done with their published work. This is why copyright infringement is not wrong, not even illegal.

    Unfortunately, the copyright cartel has hyped up infringement so much (they now class it as a 'cybercrime') that everyone now assumes that all copyright infringement is WRONG - a violation of a poor starving artist's human right.

    YouTube similarly now supposes that all detected 'likely-to-be-infringements' are wrong (2 of which they so generously forgive with warnings).

    Therefore YouTube is not a primary place for artists to publish their work that builds upon the work of others. A secondary place, perhaps - create a new account per work.

    The Pirate Bay's Promo-Bay might be worth checking out.

    Artists used to take their copyright infringing derivative works to record labels who'd do all the clearance for them. Self-publishing artists today are going to have to avoid any facility still contaminated by the 18th century privilege established by the Statute of Anne.

    Perhaps Kutiman has some suggestions?

  • On the post: No Record Label, But Amanda Palmer Raises Over $100k In Just Six Hours On Kickstarter

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 30 Apr, 2012 @ 02:49pm

    Sell music, not copies

    How many times have people insisted that artists cannot sell music direct to their fans, but must forever be restricted to selling copyright protected copies at monopoly prices?

    http://culturalliberty.org/blog/index.php?id=251

    Selling music is the future.

    Selling copies is the past - we make our own copies for nothing.

  • On the post: Wikileaks Truck Owner Arrested For Photographing Police; Told It Was Because He Was 'A Dick'

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 27 Apr, 2012 @ 03:14pm

    Re: Re: Backwards Queries...

    Constable Savage would not have hesitated to arrest for the offence of "Photographing a police office whilst on duty". See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO8EpfyCG2Y

    Updated version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ59yboiIK4

  • On the post: Copyright Maximalists Try To Regroup And Figure Out How To 'Fight Back' Against The Public

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 18 Apr, 2012 @ 12:36am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Let's really strive for IP Minimalism

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
    This has been called "one of the best-known sentences in the English language", containing "the most potent and consequential words in American history." The passage came to represent a moral standard to which the United States should strive. This view was notably promoted by Abraham Lincoln, who considered the Declaration to be the foundation of his political philosophy, and argued that the Declaration is a statement of principles through which the United States Constitution should be interpreted.
    So, if you want to understand the meaning of the Progress clause, this is a good place to start.

    As to property, privacy is a natural right (the individual's innate power to exclude others from the spaces they inhabit and the objects they possess) and it is from privacy that possessions and thence property derives. We are at liberty to exchange our possessions, and the truth of our exchanges establishes the transfer of title.

    Of course there are some things decreed to be property that are not naturally so, e.g. radio frequencies. However, this does not invalidate the natural rights of the matter.

  • On the post: Copyright Maximalists Try To Regroup And Figure Out How To 'Fight Back' Against The Public

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 17 Apr, 2012 @ 01:40pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Let's really strive for IP Minimalism

    It allows Congress to grant a monopoly to the authors and inventors to the fruits of their labors for a limited time.


    Yes, a lot of people have been brainwashed to believe this - that because Congress did grant copyright, that therefore it must have been empowered by the people in The Constitution to grant this privilege... empowered by the people to secure their liberty - and then immediately abridge it in the state's interest.

    It takes programming, bordering upon hypnosis, to read "secure the exclusive right" as "grant copyright" or "annul the right to copy in the majority to leave it in the hands of the few".

    Check out http://archive.feedblitz.com/528094/~4007566 for some background reading with respect to monopolies and The Constitution. From that you should see why it is essential to understand the difference between a natural right to be secured and a privilege/monopoly granted by the state.

    That Madison wanted to grant copyright is beside the point. The point is, he could only insert a clause that empowered Congress to secure a right. If he'd written the clause to empower Congress to grant the monopolies of copyright and patent it would have been struck out - or the Constitution would not have been ratified. Only after ratification did he /Congress legislate the Statute of Anne as a fait accompli.

  • On the post: Copyright Maximalists Try To Regroup And Figure Out How To 'Fight Back' Against The Public

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 17 Apr, 2012 @ 11:54am

    Re: Re: Re: Let's really strive for IP Minimalism

    Yes, IP Maximalists will laugh - they are incorrigible. However, we shouldn't waste our breath fighting Maximalists. We should be educating each other, and letting the people see that copyright is an instrument of injustice.

    Just as with slavery, people need to understand that such injustice is not necessary to produce cotton for their clothes, nor food for their tables, nor must people sacrifice their liberty that musicians may make music or that storytellers may write stories. The confiscation of our liberty is necessary only for the cartel's monopolies. To persuade a man to collect cotton, or a musician to make music, it is sufficient to pay them an equitable amount of money. See Kickstarter for a glimpse of how a musician's fans can exchange their money for the musician's music (without having to exploit or enforce an anachronistic and unethical 18th century monopoly).

    People need to see the injustice of copyright (Richard O'Dwyer et al) and that it is necessary only to publishing corporations - not artists.

  • On the post: Copyright Maximalists Try To Regroup And Figure Out How To 'Fight Back' Against The Public

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 17 Apr, 2012 @ 11:37am

    Re: Re: Re: Let's really strive for IP Minimalism

    My pleasure, TasMot. Try http://culturalliberty.org/blog/index.php?id=283 for starters and then check out the further reading at the end.

  • On the post: Copyright Maximalists Try To Regroup And Figure Out How To 'Fight Back' Against The Public

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 17 Apr, 2012 @ 09:23am

    Re: Let's really strive for IP Minimalism

    You could make a good start by ceasing to rubber stamp the belief that The Constitution empowered Congress to grant monopolies such as copyright and patent. As much as Madison may have wanted it to, it didn't. It only empowered Congress to secure the individual's exclusive right to their writings and inventions.

    See http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.


    The Statute of Anne (copied as the US Copyright Act, 1790 - see http://btlj.org/data/articles/25_3/1427-1474%20Bracha%20050911.pdf ) granted a privilege. It did not secure the unalienable right of an individual. See Paine: 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 debate should be whether you abolish government, or just the anachronistic and unethical privileges granted in a less humane era (? 1709 by Queen Anne, and ? 1790 by Congress).

  • On the post: It Is Time To Stop Pretending To Endorse The Copyright Monopoly

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2012 @ 12:45am

    Re: End Copyright?

    That's a non-sequitur. Why, simply because a monopoly has ended, will movie lovers such as you refuse to pay good movie production companies good money to make good movies?

    You have been hypnotised by the cartel to believe that without those monopolists getting extremely wealthy on monopoly profits (Hollywood accounting that gives them the lion's share of revenue from movie goer to movie maker) movies will no longer be made. If you remove the monopoly you simply remove the monopolistic middlemen, you do not remove the demand or the supply. While there remains a demand for movies and a supply of people able to make them (at far better value for both vendors and customers given free market pricing) then there will be an exchange of movies for money.

    Try checking out http://vodo.net as one of many ventures exploring film production/distribution/financing without monopoly.

  • On the post: Why Chris Dodd Failed With His SOPA/PIPA Strategy

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 20 Jan, 2012 @ 09:40am

    Re:

    As we should know by now, either copyright has a future or the Internet has a future.

    There is no future for both.

    Stop kidding yourself that in the future some incredibly talented legislator will invent a magical copyright law that can prohibit the copying of published works without interfering with the people's cultural liberty.

  • On the post: DOJ Gives Its Opinion On SOPA By Unilaterally Shutting Down 'Foreign Rogue Site' Megaupload… Without SOPA/PIPA

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 19 Jan, 2012 @ 02:53pm

    Re: Re:

    It will soon be classed as an act of sedition/extremism/terrorism to post the following, so read it while you can:

    When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. ?Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

  • On the post: It Is Time To Stop Pretending To Endorse The Copyright Monopoly

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 06 Jan, 2012 @ 01:44pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:This is common in my "profession"

    No debate, precisely because the securing of natural rights was not controversial.

    Grants of monopolies on the other hand, were controversial. This is why Madison couldn't insert a clause that explicitly empowered Congress to grant monopolies such as copyright.

  • On the post: It Is Time To Stop Pretending To Endorse The Copyright Monopoly

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 06 Jan, 2012 @ 01:38pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:This is common in my "profession"

    Perhaps you could point this contradiction out to me?

  • On the post: It Is Time To Stop Pretending To Endorse The Copyright Monopoly

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 06 Jan, 2012 @ 09:32am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:This is common in my "profession"

    There is a resolution, though a heretical one, and that's to cease pretending that the Progress Clause* empowered Congress to grant the monopolies of copyright and patent.

    The author's/inventor's exclusive right to their writings/designs is a natural right that Congress is empowered to SECURE. One right is not secured by the annulling of another. Privacy is NOT secured by abridging liberty, annulling the right to copy published works (qv abridging freedom of speech). The granting of monopolies by the state abridges liberty. To secure privacy, the exclusive right to one's writings/designs, you provide legal remedies against burglars - you don't throw kids in jail for iPhoning cinema screens (copying that which they have been made privy to), or bankrupt them because they shared music (making copies of that which they have purchased).

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_of_Man#Arguments

    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.


    http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html
    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,


    TO SECURE THESE CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS

    The author has an unalienable right to exclude others from their writings - a right that should be secured.

    The author is NOT endowed by his creator with the power or right to prevent others making copies of his published works - those works which he has voluntarily ceased to exclude others from.

    Copyright and patent are unconstitutional privileges, but of course this is heresy.

    * It is amusing that even the Wikipedia entry is insistent that the clause be known as the 'Copyright clause' - despite the fact that 'copyright' isn't mentioned - perhaps as if by induction people will eventually believe the clause does grant copyright.

  • On the post: It Is Time To Stop Pretending To Endorse The Copyright Monopoly

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 06 Jan, 2012 @ 05:56am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Public Domain

    Sorry, I'm so used to copyright supporters so often being Anonymous Cowards that I sometimes forget to check continuity of correspondent identity. Thanks for pointing out my oversight. Substitute Matthew Nelson's for 'your'.

    But yes, I can rattle off blog comments a little too hastily. You were right to pick me up on my poorly qualified statement. Thanks.

  • On the post: It Is Time To Stop Pretending To Endorse The Copyright Monopoly

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 06 Jan, 2012 @ 05:22am

    Re: Re: Re: Public Domain

    In the context of your assertion that Copyrights and patents exist for the public good! They're social contracts. I meant that the notion that 'social contract' (quoted to refer to your dubious use of the term) provided sanction to enact copyright was a utilitarian invention (revisionist in nature) that arrived long after the Statute of Anne, not that the philosophical concept of social contract per se was a recent invention.

    1) There is no social contract in which the people in forming the US government agreed to sacrifice their cultural liberty in exchange for allegedly greater cultural output (or technological liberty for progress). This is nowhere to be found in the US Constitution, but people still insist that the US Copyright act of 1790 is part of such a social contract.

    2) There is no social contract giving rise to the Statute of Anne. It was simply an expedient privilege to restore printing monopolies back to the Stationers' Company. That is has a pretext of encouraging her subjects' learning does not make it a social contract.

    In any case, even if the US Constitution had empowered Congress to grant monopolies, the idea that a social contract even could be about people surrendering some of their natural rights in order to receive consequential benefits (viz liberty in exchange for imagined greater prosperity from monopolies) is simply more sophisticated corruption. People can surrender a share of their alienable property, sure, but not their inalienable rights.

  • On the post: It Is Time To Stop Pretending To Endorse The Copyright Monopoly

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 06 Jan, 2012 @ 02:49am

    Re: Public Domain

    The notion of 'social contract' is a utilitarian invention that arrived long after Queen Anne's Statute. It's pure revisionism to suggest that the people voluntarily sacrificed their cultural liberty so that the press could be enriched and the crown could quell seditious propaganda.

    In any case, one is not supposed to be able to contract away one's inalienable liberty (however many virgins you are promised in heaven as a consequence).

    There's nothing wrong with locking information away. You may have heard of such a thing as privacy? In any case, corporations have to rely upon their human constituent for any kind of secrecy, and as we know, their employees' freedom of speech cannot be abridged (even if the corporation does fancy a competitive advantage).

    Consider at least the possibility that the monopolies of copyright and patent are fundamentally unethical derogations of individual liberty. I know it's difficult if you've been taught to believe they're as right as apple pie, but do try.

  • On the post: The Insanity Of Copyright Law: When Even Professionals Have No Idea They're Breaking The Law

    Crosbie Fitch ( profile ), 05 Jan, 2012 @ 04:12pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: It's not broken

    Reflect away. :-)

    Can I take it that you now recognise that "light years apart" may be somewhat of an exaggeration?

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