slothman32's Journal: rights and privleges

What are people's ideas of what rights and privleges are?
I personally think rights are something you are born with but the gov't can take away.
A privlege is something you aren't born with but the gov't can give you it.
E.g. A privlege would be a drivers permit.
A right might be the "freedom of assimbly(sp)".

With those rules "Copyright" would in fact not be a right since people could remove laws allowing it.

natural rights

[zogger]

Copyright I think is tricky. Your original work is your property, a natural right to own, after that it becomes a governmental controlled sort of granted "right" that can change over time.

In this digital age though, I think it needs a radical restructuring, because the actual cost of making copies is so cheap as to be near completely free in actual cost. So we have to decided collectively is it better that copyright be shoved aside more so that we can develop replicator technology and make it more available

Re:natural rights

[mcgrew]

Once you give a thing away it is not your property. Once you tell a story you have given it away.

Rights are really anti-rights

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Everything government gives you, including rights, are really privileges. Real freedom comes with duty- government is about removing that duty from the individual.

Government and rights

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Don't forget that rights that are "innate" cannot be used unless the government guarantees them. Without the guarantee of free speech, it's as if you don't have the right at all. At that point, the debate about how innate it is is moot.

I only point this out because some consider government to be only bad when it interacts with the rights of human beings. They are wrong.