"Like going to a town square and listing to a performance of a play or musician. That was free then, and all you had to do was get there."
"It was free then because the authors/performers chose to make it available for free."
With all due respect, that is not historically correct, except for very recent history. There was no way for musicians in the past to stop anyone from copying their song, and an attempt to do so (say, going to a judge and asking a punishment for the copier) would have met with incredulity. The notion of copyright is fairly new, and considering it "property" is much newer still.
Philosophy aside, the ancient town singer could have had meaningful property rights to his songs only if the king &c had chosen to enforce them.
Going a bit further back in time we'll find disagreement even about whether land could be property. What exactly can be owned is not something God-given or obvious, it is decided by the society and its laws, and whether or not we want to consider ideas or expressions ownable and what exactly that should mean is not a fact that could be discovered, it has to be decided.
We should consider what the impact of various copyright/patent laws would have on the society, and what we want the society to be like, and then decide what to do about it.
"If I rip a CD and put the songs in MP3 on my web site without the permission of the copyright owner, what I am doing is illegal."
I've been told that in ancient Iceland they used to have a meeting once a year, where the chief (or Master Lawkeeper or some such) would recite aloud all current laws from memory. If he made a mistake or forgot something others could remind him, but if nobody did, whatever was omitted was no longer law. Today, even setting up legislation votes so that congresspeople or whoever would have to write the law they are voting on from memory and it'd only pass if the majority agree word to word wouldn't get too many laws passed...
Note to all non-Americans: The rest of the world tends to follow USA in such things. If you live in EU and want to prevent this kind of madness there, *now* is the time to write your MEP and national legislature representative about it. I'm pretty sure the lobbyists of Micro$oft et al have already begun to work for a similar directive in the EU. Likewise elsewhere, write to or call your MP/senator/whatever. *Now*.
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With all due respect, that is not historically correct, except for very recent history. There was no way for musicians in the past to stop anyone from copying their song, and an attempt to do so (say, going to a judge and asking a punishment for the copier) would have met with incredulity. The notion of copyright is fairly new, and considering it "property" is much newer still.
Philosophy aside, the ancient town singer could have had meaningful property rights to his songs only if the king &c had chosen to enforce them.
Going a bit further back in time we'll find disagreement even about whether land could be property. What exactly can be owned is not something God-given or obvious, it is decided by the society and its laws, and whether or not we want to consider ideas or expressions ownable and what exactly that should mean is not a fact that could be discovered, it has to be decided.
We should consider what the impact of various copyright/patent laws would have on the society, and what we want the society to be like, and then decide what to do about it.
But should it be illegal? Why / why not?
I've been told that in ancient Iceland they used to have a meeting once a year, where the chief (or Master Lawkeeper or some such) would recite aloud all current laws from memory. If he made a mistake or forgot something others could remind him, but if nobody did, whatever was omitted was no longer law. Today, even setting up legislation votes so that congresspeople or whoever would have to write the law they are voting on from memory and it'd only pass if the majority agree word to word wouldn't get too many laws passed...
Note to all non-Americans: The rest of the world tends to follow USA in such things. If you live in EU and want to prevent this kind of madness there, *now* is the time to write your MEP and national legislature representative about it. I'm pretty sure the lobbyists of Micro$oft et al have already begun to work for a similar directive in the EU. Likewise elsewhere, write to or call your MP/senator/whatever. *Now*.