Re: "Against Intellectual Property"

On Mon, Jul 31, 2000, Robert Cumbow <rcumbow[_at_]grahamdunn.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Jul 28, 2000, Pat Sloane <patsloane[_at_]aol.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 7/27/2000, Eric Eldred <eldred[_at_]eldritchpress.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > Those of you who are not Slashdot readers might not be aware of
> > > this link,
> > >
> > > http://danny.oz.au/free-software/advocacy/against_IP.html
> > >
> > > "Against Intellectual Property," chapter of a book,
> > > "Information Liberation," by Brian Martin.
> >
> > I presume Brian is going to put this book on the internet for free,
> > and doesn't need any income from it. It's nice to have people able
> > to do this, and I'n certainly not against philanthropy, including
> > yours.
>
> [...]
>
> I, too, believe that authors should be compensated for their work,
> and I doubt that anyone on this list disagrees. I have to protest,
> though, two bits of unreasoned stereotyping in Pat Sloane's posting.
> First, I see no correlation between being rich and having or not
> having talent. Second, I see nothing "nasty" about "capitalist
> profit," which is, after all, why we in capitalist countries have
> jobs, and why we enjoy a comparatively comfortable standard of living.

As the presumed target of Pat's argument, I should state here that I actually agree with Robert. However, the argument should be addressed to Brian and his book. And since Brian's book puts forward a larger anarchist argument I doubt that this issues would be persuasive to him. But you can always try!

A larger point might be this. One can be a capitalist and still approve of experiments with copyright. As a college student I was very persuaded by John Maynard Keynes's book, "Essays in Persuasion," and in particular his essay called I think, "Economic Possibilities for Our Granchildren." Essentially, if I remember correctly, he advanced the idea that capitalism (strictly speaking in its financial aspect of reinvesting compound interest) had a moral basis for society because each generation built a better world for the next, buildings, roads, universities, books, etc. So for many generations it is good that a sort of Puritan ethic of work and savings be reinforced. But in later generations, when the reinvested capital has built a rich society, it might be a good idea to experiment with other ethics instead of continual reinvestment. One might think of spending some of the savings for other purposes. The point is one cannot really criticize the spending if one bases the earlier savings, morally, on the idea that spending should eventually be attained. There has to be some point -- and it is futile to argue when or where -- that experiments in living in a new way be conducted. Keynes almost agrees with Marx that the end state might be some sort of communism (or maybe anarchy) but that one cannot predetermine it -- it is up to that generation to experiment and decide for themselves. (And of course Keynes was correct that communism or socialism or anarchy would not be successful in leading us to the end state, but capitalism seems to be achieving it.)

What is the relevance to this list? I think we all are trying to examine the principles of copyright in a new world of the Internet and associated technological changes. What we should be doing is examining the roots of our concepts, discussing how to reframe our institutions to meet the new challenges. I think Martin's book is an example of the questioning that we should seriously address. If it takes radical changes in copyright to meet the ends we agree with, then let us discuss them. We do not have to all agree on "capitalism" or "compensation" being the primary aspect of copyright, but we should look at the whole picture.

Eric Eldred
<eldred[_at_]eldritchpress.org> Received on Wed Aug 02 2000 - 21:07:16 GMT