MESSAGE
| DATE | 2001-12-07 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Stallman re: Information Producers Initiative
|
>>
>> I find that using the term "creators" to describe writers of books,
>> software, etc., encourages people to think of them as semidivine and
>> entitled to special power over the public. The media companies, which
>> seek greater power over the public (expanded copyright laws), always
>> claim to be acting in the name of the authors. They love to call the
>> authors "creators".
The problem of language and winning the propaganda war is even more
difficult than just this. As we have discussed from time to time, and
others have agreed, much of the terminology used regarding cultural
articifacts are really propaganda newspeak. Here is a short list of terms
that we need to convert in legalese and in daily conversation.
1- Intellectual Property - Shared cultural artificats of ideas and
expression can not be propery because they have no physical existence.
Although we can extrapolate from real property abstract rights and
articles, such as coinage, bank notes, and stocks, this can not be
confused with true cultural artifacts of music, words and design, all of
which are without scarcity, and require sharing for their existense. Not
only are they required to be shared, but we as species exist soley due to
our ability to share such cultural artificats. It is our natural right to
share cultural artificats, song, words, ideas, story telling, design.
Intellectual property needs to be called what it is, government franchises
of our cultural heritage, or just government franchises for short.
2- Copyright - The term copyright is based on the midevil term 'Right'
which is different than the term as understood today. A copyright is a
Monopoly, and a government franchised monopoly at that. We need to call
copyright a monopoly of cultural heritage...or monopoly for short. So
instead of saying,
"Warner Bros has a substantial investment in intellectual property under
copyright",
we should be saying,
"Warner Bros has a substantial investment in government franchises of our
shared cultural heritage though legal monopolies on cultural artifacts."
3- Pirating - What is commonly described as piratingthe is really
violation of the legal monopoly of a cultural artificat.
4- Fair Use - Increasingly, I'm seeing the term fair use as an unecessary
burden (which is weird since I started NYers for Fair Use). We should
drop the term for the term 4th Amendment of the Constition or Property
Rights.
Lastly, fair use is not an exception to copyright. Government Franchises
of Monoply on Cultural Artifacts is an exception of the 4th Amendment of
the Bill of Rights (and usually the first amendment as well).
Ruben
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Fair Use -
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