Copyright
Lamar Smith has revealed himself as an RIAA puppet and more importantly, an idiot. Update: Ok fine, he’s just really an incredibly corrupt tool.
“We want to know exactly what they plan to do to stop illegal downloading on their campuses,” Smith continued in a statement. “Universities have a moral and legal obligation to ensure students do not use campus computers for illegal downloading. These schools do not give away their intellectual property for free, and they should not expect musicians to do so.”
[Public] Universities are not responsible for imparting morals. They should be amoral (not immoral) in their education, unbiased by society’s choices of “good and proper”. The important thing to remember about morals is how fluid they are and how they can be used for evil. In the past it was “immoral” to associate with a person of different skin tone. It’s still “immoral” for two guys or two girls to love each other. A University is not the setting for teaching morals.
Universities are also not responsible for enforcing laws. They have a legal obligation to obey them and comply by the rule of law, but it’s up to police to enforce laws. Making schools play the role of police is unfair to everyone involved.
Last I checked it’s also up to the citizens of a country to make the laws, not multinational cartels. This is the inherent flaw in giving corporations even a subset of the rights of citizens. Corporations should not have the right to hold intellectual property, because they don’t feel, they don’t care, and they never die. IP rights are designed to benefit smart, hard working people for their entrepreneurial spirit, not to allow people who’ve never had an original idea in their lives to profit of the backs of naive, creative types. IP rights were designed to reward innovation, not to allow infinite profit from one good idea. The expiration of copyright was designed to allow of people to take someone’s idea and expand upon it, to better the community of human knowledge through contribution. Does giving Disney an eternal copyright on Mickey Mouse benefit society or Disney? Who do we care about more?
I’ve got a new idea. If you don’t want to share your ideas freely…DON’T. I can live without them. Human beings have an innate desire to create and lack of monetary incentive isn’t going to stop people from making music, writing books, or creating art. If you’re such an amazing artist, people will pay you. Maybe not enough to buy gold chains and bentleys…but isn’t it about wanting to express yourself? If you make enough to live on comfortably and get a chance to free your soul once a night, isn’t that enough? Being an artist isn’t supposed to be easy, most of the best art is rooted in conflict (When was the last time you read a book without conflict?). I don’t wish I had artistic talent so I could make the big bucks. I wish I had artistic talent to hear just that one person say, “Your art really touched me, thank you”, money might be icing on the cake, but the emotional connection and meaning is what I wish I had.
Now I’ll differ a bit on engineering and invention. There’s significant research and development costs1 involved in that much more related to physical property than art is. I’m not sure of the specifics involved in this, there needs to be some protection, but it needs to be limited enough that you couldn’t just sit on a really good idea forever.
Whew! Ok, I’m done for now.
1 Don’t try to relate this to the artist argument, a Guitar/Violin/Pen/Typewriter/Paintbrush, doesn’t count as a significant cost.
