Journal: Bitter Protest Against Copyrights

If I said there was no incentive to grow potatoes without the right to rip up your yard and plant some, or I said there was no incentive to process cotton without the right to own slaves on the plantation - most people would see these as the worthless shallow arguments that they are. But if I said that there is no incentive to make beneficial or creative works without the right to restrict what people copy (copyrights), then all of a sudden people just take it on faith. They don't even question it, they just assume that society would fall apart without them. This is intellectually dishonest, if the Renaissance can happen without copyrights then so can the information age, besides incentive does not a right make.

Even so, some would argue that those who copy things are akin to thieves or pirates, like those who board ships and murder people. People who copy things are even accused of stealing food out of the mouths of artists. However, these accusations simply hide a cruel lie - that copyrights somehow help creative people. The truth is that for every creator that copyrights have benefited, there are literally unmentioned thousands who copyrights haven't helped a bit, hindered, or even destroyed. Some are even forbidden from sharing their own creations in public, others are sued for using their own works. It would be more accurate to argue that copyrights ruin the creative and deceive them while doing it.

Others would argue, in ignorance, that copyrights are like a property right. Yet, while the moral and historical foundation of property derives from mutual respect and the fact that property has physical limits, the foundation of copyrights derives from kings who granted publishers monopolies in return for not publishing bad things about the monarchy. There is no equivalency relationship. In fact, it would be more accurate to argue that copyright monopolies cheapen property rights by treating things that have real limits in supply such as food, shelter, and medicine like information that does not.

However, these aren't the only problems related to copyrights. They are just a sample of many that are constantly blown off, glossed over, or ignored. Like the failures of Hollywood culture, the failures of big media to provide quality material, the failures to provide reasonably priced books to college students while tabloids are dirt cheap, and massive anti-trust behavior in the software industry to name a few. In that way, asking how will the media make money without copyrights? is disingenuous and like asking how will robbers make money without old ladies to mug!

The problems associated with copyrights might have been bearable a quarter century ago when the biggest issue was copy machines. But today, in the information age, information is so easy to copy and manipulate that there can be no middle ground. Our society will either half to control all of it or none of it. Our communications will either half to be monitored or free, our privacy will either half to intruded or protected. Our speech, writing, and free expression will either half to be abridged or unabridged.

In that sense, copyrights are like the "slavery" of the information age, they are like a vine that will never stop growing to choke off our freedoms until we cut it off at the root. Unethical laws like the DMCA, endless copyright extensions, billion dollar lawsuits, are not just about problems that haven't been solved yet, but symptoms of a poor belief system brought to its logical conclusion. No wonder, efforts to find a "middle ground" on copyrights have been failures, they simply do not address the core issue. That contrary to copyrights, the right to copy and distribute creative works is a right!

Like freedom of religion, and freedom of the press, the right to copy things is a moral right, a right that exists above government. It is an inherent right that describes part of the nature of human existence. While the rules of politics were created because it is better to fight wars with words than with bloodshed, the right to copy does not require coercion to back it up. The rules are not the same and the wrongs of copyrights will not be righted through the system, but only by defiance.

Defiance by believing that people have rights even when they appear contrary to the system or the popular mob. Defiance, by shedding the guilt and shame that those who impose copyrights try to impose on us and understanding that they are the ones who should feel guilty and shameful. Defiance by knowing that free markets are about freedom, and not about false markets based on phony property rights. Defiance by copying and sharing creative works whenever such action permits, and defiance by using technologies that make it harder and harder for copyrights to be imposed upon us. And finally, defiance by rejecting the little lies such as - copyrights "help" artists, people who copy are "pirates", and copyrights are "intellectual property", and so on.

In my humble opinion, only then will we be able truly to enjoy the benefits that the information age has to offer.