Hi sorry for the earlier email. I sent it by mistake before I'd finished writing it.
How does the market decide that the _thought_ creation belongs to the creator as you state?Obviously the fact that copyright is a legal fiction imposed by the government and is in no-way a market based solution. Someone else using my idea prevent me from using the idea myself nor can I stop someone using my idea after they've got it from me. These are two of the differences that distinguish physical property from ideas. I don't see how copyright is some kind of natural right. Surely the libertarian solution is not to impose government enforced monopolies! A libertarian solution would be market-based rather than being imposed by the government. For example why not let a song publisher to enter into a contract with a consumer about how they can use the song that they purchase? Then the purchase price would factor-in the amount of freedom that the consumer would have with the recording they've purchased? Why does the government need to interfere at all by setting blanket terms of copyright? "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." --Thomas Jefferson Hamish > -----Original Message----- > From: Fred Foldvary [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Friday, 5 September 2003 21:54 > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: intellectual property > > > --- Steve Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Conversely, I could argue that all of the music I've ever > downloaded from > > a P2P network was fair use, since it did not reduce > royalties. Why? A > > All I have to do is claim that I would have never purchased > the music at > > the market price. > > A uniform rule is needed that applies to everyone. Under > that rule, some > would have bought the music and others not. The net result > of enforcing > the rule is more royalties to the creator. > > The market rule is: to the creator belongs the creation. > > Fred Foldvary > > > ===== > [EMAIL PROTECTED] >
