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[FYI] Property Interests in Conflict -- the Technology/Copyright Crossroads
http://cryptome.org/pic-mg.htm
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Property Interests in Conflict -- the Technology/Copyright Crossroads
Remarks for the Progress and Freedom Foundation conference on “The
Future of Online Music, Movies & Games”
By Mike Godwin
Senior Technology Counsel
Public Knowledge
<mnemonic{at}well.com>
Based on remarks originally delivered June 10, 2003
In his comments on the first panel at this conference, our master of
ceremonies Jim DeLong expressed his distress at anti-property
rhetoric. And it’s true that current debates about copyright in the
Internet Age have led to some commentators to argue for the
distinction between copyright interests and the traditional interests
associated with real and tangible property. Those commentators have a
point, insofar as the bundle of rights associated with “intellectual
property” (which is itself only a few decades old as a term of art)
is different in many ways from the rights associated with real or
tangible property (as well as from the rights associated with “non-
intellectual but intangible property,” such as accounts receivable).
But it is a point that doesn’t advance the current debate at the
intersection of copyright and technology policy, because it doesn’t
point to a resolution of that debate that will generate much of a
consensus among policymakers or among the rest of us.
Furthermore, we should also consider that one source of anti-property
rhetoric is the rhetoric of those who want to stress the connection
between (or even identity of) intellectual property and traditional
property interests. That’s because there is a regrettable tendency to
invoke property doctrine as if, standing alone, it were dispositive
of any the questions raised by computers, file-trading, the Internet,
and the current struggle at the intersection of copyright and
technology policy. There’s a tendency to invoke property doctrine
loudly and then sit down, satisfied that all questions have been
answered.
Jeff Eisenach suggested in his remarks from the audience that the pro-
property/anti-property rhetorical divide maps to the traditional left-
right polical spectrum, but that characterization is clearly
incorrect; Richard Epstein noted, for example, that even within the
American libertarian movement, itself generally sympathetic to pro-
property arguments, there is division these issues, and when it comes
to libertarian views on copyright and technology policy, I can assure
you that there’s even more division.
Assume copyrighted works are property -- then what?
[...]
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