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House Bill to Make File-Sharing an Automatic Felony
JAgostoni writes "Wired news has an article about a new bill that would make it a felony to upload a file to a P2P network." EFF has a copy of the bill online. Conyers and Berman both get over a quarter of their campaign funding from Hollywood, according to opensecrets.org. You may remember Berman from this bill and this one.
Information is not property, in itself. It would be "dealing with the property of another contrary to the wishes of another" if I were to modify or delete HIS copy of the information on a particular substrate. But to do similar to MY copy of the information has NO EFFECT on his.
(When did they put in a posting length limit? I've never hit that before. Did I really rant that much? :) )
Competition may undercut prices to devalue their competitors' products. This should not be illegal. It is an individual's right to do with his property as he chooses. If he chooses to sell it and take a loss, that is his right. While this might cause trouble for his competitors in the short-term, in the long-term he will not be able to sustain his loss, and the price will rise again, allowing more room in the market for competition to return. (Or else he will fund the loss with sales of another product, in which case competition can shift to competing over the new product.)
I do not believe content duplication should be illegal, because all it does is devalue the property of another. I believe that property consists only of the tangible medium in which the content is recorded. When I use my media to duplicate the content a friend possesses in his media, the value of the media upon which the original content is recorded may decrease, but I have not damaged or stolen the media, nor have I killed or injured anyone. Copyright law unfairly gives a third party control over an exchange between two individuals on the basis of perceived devaluation of that third party's property. Since devaluation of property is not a sufficient reason for which to restrict fundamental rights, this is unacceptable.
In the long term, devaluation due to content duplication may cause a product's value to go to zero. However, this is not always the case. RedHat Linux CDs may be duplicated without restriction, yet they still retail for $5 at Linux Central, and original RedHat CDs from RedHat with support retail for over $40. Even if the value of the content were reduced to zero, it would still not be a sufficient reason to restrict the rights of others. There is a time during which the value of the content is positive; in this time the originator of the content can secure a (non-exclusive) profit. Once the value of the content is zero, the originator needs to move on and compete on a different product. Rights should not be infringed to guarantee profitability to anyone for any reason.
Currently United States law restricts my rights, supposedly to encourage innovation. This is a tradeoff I would refuse if asked. Even if the innovation of others is encouraged, I would not choose to have my rights infringed by law. I refuse to take advantage of the law to restrict the rights of others regarding content I create, and I choose to work within the system to persuade others of the importance of these rights in the hopes that this unfair restriction may one day be removed.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Rich