Because of their monopoly on broadband service in my area, I am a Cox Road Runner subscriber.[...]
They don't care because they have a monopoly.[...]
The current system is not working and the free market is [...] not solving the problem.
Where is this "free market" you're talking about? To be fair, the term "free market" is ultimately associated with laissez-faire capitalism; I don't think the US's economic system fits this description. Also, I think your comments on how your telco has a monopoly are quite revealing.
The fact that people have to do a co-op to get broadband and appeal to such organizations as "public service" boards is very revealing in itself.
You're asking for more government intervention? What caused this situation? Government intervention. You said it yourself. Your telco has a monopoly. What will save it? Complete and unabashed deregulation of the telco industry. Let them all fight for your business; that's the way business works. Whomever offers the least expensive/highest quality service deserves your patronage. Stupid, lazy, incompetent companies (as you find in most unregulated areas) don't.
They don't offer DSL in your area in an unregulated market? Hmm. Must not be worth their time. Tough luck. If broadband is that valuable, though, you'll move to where it is avaialable -- or companies will innovate to bring cheaper broadband to the boonies and make it worth their time. You don't have the right broadband after all; more precisely, no one has the right to demand the services of anyone for any reason -- only to offer value for value in a mutally-agreed-upon trade.
Why should the government apply restriction after restriction and regulation after regulation upon telcos when the root of the problem is the restriction and regulation? Of course, I'm not advocating a government that doesn't care when consumers get screwed. But the main way to get screwed in a free market is to violate a contract or license. The job of the courts (i.e., not of bureaucrats) is to arbitrate such disputes and protect the individual rights of all parties; instead, the legislature gives arbitrary power to bureaucrats (e.g., the FCC and "public service" boards) to regulate companies; the only available response to that kind of power left to the capitalist is to vie for favor and maintenance of monopoly by whatever means necessary.
Deregulate. Unrestrict. Again, this doesn't mean the abrogation of rights. This ultimately means upholding of the individual rights of businessmen and consumers.
They had a very clear understanding of what rights are, they believed in natural rights. And, no, they were not all theists. I believe they used the term Creator because it doesn't necessarily imply a god [sic] let alone a specific god.
Urm, my point was that they did not have a fundamental understanding of what rights are. The philosophical connection between rights and existence (the former being conditions of the latter) was not made until the twentieth century. The fact that they referred to a Creator and thus latched on to the common fallacy that a mystical being gives one rights is proof of this.
And yes, "Creator" implies a God. What other being is (hypothetically) capable of creating the universe and every man? And yes, they weren't all Christians, but they were mostly theists.
Creators of a copyrightable work do not naturally have any special rights to that work.
Why? Why? Why? You say this as if it's a fact when it directly follows from the fact that if a man has a right to own the effort of his mind (and thus his physcial property, for instance), then he has a right to his "intellectual" property or ideas. He has every right to keep them to himself, to sell a license to them, or to sell them outright. No, you say? How else would you get his ideas except by force? And what is force but the violation of a man's most fundamental right to be free from force and coersion?
Do you see the contradictions you run into here? I suppose you may not care. "Social contract" theories always end in relativism and thus an acceptance of contradictions as being valid.
By your logic, if a man's right to his IP is merely "granted him by his fellow man," then who grants him his right to his wealth? Who grants him his right to his property? Who grants him his right to his own life? His "fellow man"? Who is his fellow man? There is no such thing. Mankind does not operate in consensuses. Someone always disagrees. What else? Mob rule? Mob rule is such as a government or society goes when it lives by majority rule without thought for the minority (and thus the smallest and most important minority: the individual). Does the majority rule with no checks?
No, you see, the social contract theory is a bunch of hogwash. There is no "fellow man" or "public" except the summation of the individuals who make up that public. Neither God, nor the government, nor my "fellow man" give the individual man his rights. He has those rights by his nature -- as conditions of his existence.
If you take away his IP rights, you take away his right to life. It's a delicate stack of cards -- grounded in logic -- and logic never allows contradictions to exist.
Companies, not creators of copyrightable works, are abusing the copyright system for monetary gain and noone [sic] is doing anything to stop them.
Who owns the copyright to anything by nature? The author: the person who created the idea or the work. Sometimes this is multiple people, sure. But the fact exists that many authors/creators nowadays would rather sell their copyright outright to a company (usually in exchange for employment). That is their right. You have no right to make any claim on any IP that is not yours. It is not yours, and if you do not want it or cannot afford it, then do not buy/license it. It is not your right to have anyone else's property. When a company who owns a copyright says they want to sell the thing for $80 x 10^24, that's their business. I'm not forced to buy it, no matter how good it is. In fact, the only societies where I am forced to buy them are fascist, socialist, or communist.
[...] It's nice to see that there's a broadcaster out there more interested in providing a meaningful service than figuring out ways to squeeze more and more money out of viewers.
When I see statements like this, it always makes me wonder if no one ever stops to think about reality. No, not about "pragmatic" abandonment of principle -- about the adherence to principle -- i.e., the principle of being true to reality.
The assumption that if you're trying to make a profit, you're automatically not interested in providing a meaningful service, coupled with a sexual lust for governmental controls, only enrages me as much as it is inane. In a truly free economy (not anarchy and not fascism for the idiots out there), innovation and profit are directly connected. If you don't provide something meaningful that people want, they won't buy it.
Marketing is not, despite claims to the contrary, the production of demand. The only way this hypothesis holds true is when people don't think for themselves. This is often true, but marketing is not the cause.
In any case, I don't know if this guy's service could actually be considered "meaningful." "Altruistic" might perhaps be a better word, and in my book, that's the lowest of all evils.
Unfortunately, even the Founders and authors of the Constitution did not fully understand what rights were. They said that people were "endowed by their Creator" with rights, but I don't even think they meant this, precisely.
Being theists (of some variation) they believed that man was created by God and that by nature of that creation -- by nature of being a man -- they had rights. If they were to generalize further, they would have realized that man has rights b/c rights are what he requires to exist, thus to live, thus to think, thus to own property, thus to be free from coersion.
People still don't realize this today. They think people have rights to the minds of others. They think that groups of people have rights (only individuals have rights). They think people have economic rights (your "right" to a job or to health care can only negate the individual rights of those who provide you a job or a health care). And if politicians think that we have a right to health care b/c we pay taxes, then that isn't a right, it's a purchased service.
Owners of music have the right to sell their music to whomever they want, under any license they want. If people don't buy their music for any reason, owners are free to change the price or license restrictions. A music consumer has no rights to that music except to listen to it, to use or destroy the medium he may have bought with it (e.g., a CD), and to do anything else his license permits him.
An owner of some music has every right to say whom he will allow to rebroadcast his music and under what terms. If he allows no one to broadcast it, then he will receive no royalties. Simple as that. It is only a matter of value-for-value trade.
A "natural right" or "right" is, in its most basic form, a condition of existence. The concept of property rights (and thus, intellectual property rights) springs from a line of logic that goes something like this:
Man has the right to exist (since a right is a condition of existene), thus man has the right to live (since a man must live to exist).
Man is a conscious being and has a mind. It is by his mind that a man lives. (In order to get food or shelter or anything, he *must* choose to think and choose to act; he is not like an animal in this respect -- for instance, he doesn't have the instinct to kill or find his own food; he must learn to do it.) Therefore man has the right to use his mind. As a corollary, since thinking is a volitional act, man has the right not to think or act under coersion (force), as a man cannot properly think or act when he has no choice of what to think or do.
Since man must use his mind to live, he must be able to keep the product of his mind and effort. (If he is the one who thinks and decides to find his food, he has the right to keep that food.) A man is, therefore, not the servant of others; his mind can serve him (fundamentally) alone, the benefits of his knowledge to others notwithstanding. Therefore, a man has the right to his own (earned) wealth, thus to his own (earned) property. (You'll notice that if a man does not have a right to his property, he does not have the right to live.) As a corollary to this, another man does *not* have the right to the man's mind or his property. Saying otherwise would make the first man the second man's slave and ignore the freedom required for the first man to think and act and produce.
Intellectual property (IP) rights are merely an application of property rights. Man has the right to keep the product of his mind. This applies to his physical property as well as his IP.
So you see how man's "natural rights" are not changed by technology. Why? Technology does not change the nature of reality, reality itself, or man's nature. Technology is, in fact, a blatant demonstration of man's nature.
I think I should note also the consumer of a product has the rights of a consumer, not of a producer. With physical products, the consumer buys a product and owns that individual product -- but (unless he actually does buy the idea) he does not purchase the idea for the product. Likewise, he does not purchase the actual software or music or novel when he buys a copy of it. The owner (be it the author, the producer, the performer, etc.) of the IP still owns the song. The consumer usually buys an implicit or explicit license (and possibly the actual medium, like the CD or videotape) to use the IP for his own (or his company's, or whomever's) use.
Now if the owner *owns* the IP, and the licensee has the right not to be forced to purchase a license to the IP, the owner can ask whatever-the-hell he wants of the licensee as payment. If the licensee is not willing to pay it, he doesn't have to buy the license.
I can't help but comment that if you follow Richard Stallman's arguments, you will see that his "philosophy" ends in socialism, not in liberty.
I do not have the right to IP that someone else owns. Saying that I do is a contradiction. It assumes that the author of the IP is my slave but still did not create the IP under coersion. It ignores the source of all property and wealth: man, and delegates it to the status of "natural resource", or Stallman's favorite euphemism, "information." Stallman completely ignores the source of IP and thus relegates all producers, authors, composers, etc. to the position of slaves.
If you want to understand individual rights more, I would direct you to objectivism.org.
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Because of their monopoly on broadband service in my area, I am a Cox Road Runner subscriber.[...]
They don't care because they have a monopoly.[...]
The current system is not working and the free market is [...] not solving the problem.
Where is this "free market" you're talking about? To be fair, the term "free market" is ultimately associated with laissez-faire capitalism; I don't think the US's economic system fits this description. Also, I think your comments on how your telco has a monopoly are quite revealing.
The fact that people have to do a co-op to get broadband and appeal to such organizations as "public service" boards is very revealing in itself.
You're asking for more government intervention? What caused this situation? Government intervention. You said it yourself. Your telco has a monopoly. What will save it? Complete and unabashed deregulation of the telco industry. Let them all fight for your business; that's the way business works. Whomever offers the least expensive/highest quality service deserves your patronage. Stupid, lazy, incompetent companies (as you find in most unregulated areas) don't.
They don't offer DSL in your area in an unregulated market? Hmm. Must not be worth their time. Tough luck. If broadband is that valuable, though, you'll move to where it is avaialable -- or companies will innovate to bring cheaper broadband to the boonies and make it worth their time. You don't have the right broadband after all; more precisely, no one has the right to demand the services of anyone for any reason -- only to offer value for value in a mutally-agreed-upon trade.
Why should the government apply restriction after restriction and regulation after regulation upon telcos when the root of the problem is the restriction and regulation? Of course, I'm not advocating a government that doesn't care when consumers get screwed. But the main way to get screwed in a free market is to violate a contract or license. The job of the courts (i.e., not of bureaucrats) is to arbitrate such disputes and protect the individual rights of all parties; instead, the legislature gives arbitrary power to bureaucrats (e.g., the FCC and "public service" boards) to regulate companies; the only available response to that kind of power left to the capitalist is to vie for favor and maintenance of monopoly by whatever means necessary.
Deregulate. Unrestrict. Again, this doesn't mean the abrogation of rights. This ultimately means upholding of the individual rights of businessmen and consumers.
Urm, my point was that they did not have a fundamental understanding of what rights are. The philosophical connection between rights and existence (the former being conditions of the latter) was not made until the twentieth century. The fact that they referred to a Creator and thus latched on to the common fallacy that a mystical being gives one rights is proof of this.
And yes, "Creator" implies a God. What other being is (hypothetically) capable of creating the universe and every man? And yes, they weren't all Christians, but they were mostly theists.
Why? Why? Why? You say this as if it's a fact when it directly follows from the fact that if a man has a right to own the effort of his mind (and thus his physcial property, for instance), then he has a right to his "intellectual" property or ideas. He has every right to keep them to himself, to sell a license to them, or to sell them outright. No, you say? How else would you get his ideas except by force? And what is force but the violation of a man's most fundamental right to be free from force and coersion?
Do you see the contradictions you run into here? I suppose you may not care. "Social contract" theories always end in relativism and thus an acceptance of contradictions as being valid.
By your logic, if a man's right to his IP is merely "granted him by his fellow man," then who grants him his right to his wealth? Who grants him his right to his property? Who grants him his right to his own life? His "fellow man"? Who is his fellow man? There is no such thing . Mankind does not operate in consensuses. Someone always disagrees. What else? Mob rule? Mob rule is such as a government or society goes when it lives by majority rule without thought for the minority (and thus the smallest and most important minority: the individual). Does the majority rule with no checks?
No, you see, the social contract theory is a bunch of hogwash. There is no "fellow man" or "public" except the summation of the individuals who make up that public. Neither God, nor the government, nor my "fellow man" give the individual man his rights. He has those rights by his nature -- as conditions of his existence.
If you take away his IP rights, you take away his right to life. It's a delicate stack of cards -- grounded in logic -- and logic never allows contradictions to exist.
Who owns the copyright to anything by nature? The author: the person who created the idea or the work. Sometimes this is multiple people, sure. But the fact exists that many authors/creators nowadays would rather sell their copyright outright to a company (usually in exchange for employment). That is their right. You have no right to make any claim on any IP that is not yours. It is not yours, and if you do not want it or cannot afford it, then do not buy/license it. It is not your right to have anyone else's property. When a company who owns a copyright says they want to sell the thing for $80 x 10^24, that's their business. I'm not forced to buy it, no matter how good it is. In fact, the only societies where I am forced to buy them are fascist, socialist, or communist.
When I see statements like this, it always makes me wonder if no one ever stops to think about reality. No, not about "pragmatic" abandonment of principle -- about the adherence to principle -- i.e., the principle of being true to reality.
The assumption that if you're trying to make a profit, you're automatically not interested in providing a meaningful service, coupled with a sexual lust for governmental controls, only enrages me as much as it is inane. In a truly free economy (not anarchy and not fascism for the idiots out there), innovation and profit are directly connected. If you don't provide something meaningful that people want, they won't buy it.
Marketing is not, despite claims to the contrary, the production of demand. The only way this hypothesis holds true is when people don't think for themselves. This is often true, but marketing is not the cause.
In any case, I don't know if this guy's service could actually be considered "meaningful." "Altruistic" might perhaps be a better word, and in my book, that's the lowest of all evils.
Unfortunately, even the Founders and authors of the Constitution did not fully understand what rights were. They said that people were "endowed by their Creator" with rights, but I don't even think they meant this, precisely.
Being theists (of some variation) they believed that man was created by God and that by nature of that creation -- by nature of being a man -- they had rights. If they were to generalize further, they would have realized that man has rights b/c rights are what he requires to exist, thus to live, thus to think, thus to own property, thus to be free from coersion.
People still don't realize this today. They think people have rights to the minds of others. They think that groups of people have rights (only individuals have rights). They think people have economic rights (your "right" to a job or to health care can only negate the individual rights of those who provide you a job or a health care). And if politicians think that we have a right to health care b/c we pay taxes, then that isn't a right, it's a purchased service.
Owners of music have the right to sell their music to whomever they want, under any license they want. If people don't buy their music for any reason, owners are free to change the price or license restrictions. A music consumer has no rights to that music except to listen to it, to use or destroy the medium he may have bought with it (e.g., a CD), and to do anything else his license permits him.
An owner of some music has every right to say whom he will allow to rebroadcast his music and under what terms. If he allows no one to broadcast it, then he will receive no royalties. Simple as that. It is only a matter of value-for-value trade.
A "natural right" or "right" is, in its most basic form, a condition of existence. The concept of property rights (and thus, intellectual property rights) springs from a line of logic that goes something like this:
Man has the right to exist (since a right is a condition of existene), thus man has the right to live (since a man must live to exist).
Man is a conscious being and has a mind. It is by his mind that a man lives. (In order to get food or shelter or anything, he *must* choose to think and choose to act; he is not like an animal in this respect -- for instance, he doesn't have the instinct to kill or find his own food; he must learn to do it.) Therefore man has the right to use his mind. As a corollary, since thinking is a volitional act, man has the right not to think or act under coersion (force), as a man cannot properly think or act when he has no choice of what to think or do.
Since man must use his mind to live, he must be able to keep the product of his mind and effort. (If he is the one who thinks and decides to find his food, he has the right to keep that food.) A man is, therefore, not the servant of others; his mind can serve him (fundamentally) alone, the benefits of his knowledge to others notwithstanding. Therefore, a man has the right to his own (earned) wealth, thus to his own (earned) property. (You'll notice that if a man does not have a right to his property, he does not have the right to live.) As a corollary to this, another man does *not* have the right to the man's mind or his property. Saying otherwise would make the first man the second man's slave and ignore the freedom required for the first man to think and act and produce.
Intellectual property (IP) rights are merely an application of property rights. Man has the right to keep the product of his mind. This applies to his physical property as well as his IP.
So you see how man's "natural rights" are not changed by technology. Why? Technology does not change the nature of reality, reality itself, or man's nature. Technology is, in fact, a blatant demonstration of man's nature.
I think I should note also the consumer of a product has the rights of a consumer, not of a producer. With physical products, the consumer buys a product and owns that individual product -- but (unless he actually does buy the idea) he does not purchase the idea for the product. Likewise, he does not purchase the actual software or music or novel when he buys a copy of it. The owner (be it the author, the producer, the performer, etc.) of the IP still owns the song. The consumer usually buys an implicit or explicit license (and possibly the actual medium, like the CD or videotape) to use the IP for his own (or his company's, or whomever's) use.
Now if the owner *owns* the IP, and the licensee has the right not to be forced to purchase a license to the IP, the owner can ask whatever-the-hell he wants of the licensee as payment. If the licensee is not willing to pay it, he doesn't have to buy the license.
I can't help but comment that if you follow Richard Stallman's arguments, you will see that his "philosophy" ends in socialism, not in liberty.
I do not have the right to IP that someone else owns. Saying that I do is a contradiction. It assumes that the author of the IP is my slave but still did not create the IP under coersion. It ignores the source of all property and wealth: man, and delegates it to the status of "natural resource", or Stallman's favorite euphemism, "information." Stallman completely ignores the source of IP and thus relegates all producers, authors, composers, etc. to the position of slaves.
If you want to understand individual rights more, I would direct you to objectivism.org.