“We all want legal protection (or at least prosecution of the criminals when we are wronged). The RIAA thinks they get to be first in line just because Obama has stacked the Injustice Department with RIAA lawyers.”
That’s what I’m getting at. This ought to be a limited, practical disucssion. They’re not saying copyrights should be absolute and extend at least 100 generations after the originator’s death, with life imprisonment for anyone who dares transfer information from one format to another. Yet, for some odd reason, free speech, Orwell, fascism, Evil Corporations, and so on get drawn in. All I’m asking is how come this never happens when we discuss property rights, for instance?
Orwell, fascism and evil corporations don't come up when we discuss the use of eminent domain to obtain land for private development?
The reason no one is discussing property rights is that “intellectual property” is not property in the same sense as real-estate or gold. It is consists in nothing other than a government-granted monopoly.
“Piracy” does not deprive anyone of, say, a song, as it creates another copy of the song. All it does is deprive someone (in the ideal world the artist who recorded the song, in the real world a company that bought the rights to the song and probably tries to not pay a continuing stream of royalties to the artist if they can help it) of putative revenue they might have earned if the person desiring a copy of the song to listen to at will had been willing to pay a price based on the government-granted monopoly. Monopoly prices are usually higher than those created by the market. (And for goods which can be infinitely reproduced, an efficient market drives the price toward zero.)
Once copyrights and patents extend beyond the Constitutionally mandated purpose, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries,” and turn into a way of using state power to secure the market position of some types of corporations, it is natural to talk about fascism, whose economic program involves state cooperation with moneyed interests “in the common good”. Once intrusive technical means of law enforcement are broached it is natural to talk about Orwell.