

Jail Terms for Unlocking Cellphones Shows the Heart of the Copyright Monopoly - ninthfrank07
https://torrentfreak.com/jail-terms-for-unlocking-cellphones-130512/

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bediger4000
_The copyright monopoly was always about control over other people’s property,
and always about preventing creativity and innovation that could threaten the
incumbents_

I don't know about _always_ , I suspect that at first, for a year or two, it
was about getting incentives to the right people. But as soon as a printer
made better money than a writer, that was the end of incentives to the
creators.

But Falkvinge is correct: right now, copyright is about protecting incumbents.
It's my belief that governments tend to back "intellectual property" as a way
to stuff the free speech genie back into the bottle. Property rights are much
stronger than free speech rights almost everywhere. Invoking "my property" on
somebody's creation is just a way of keeping most people from speaking out.

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rayiner
Some very "down is up and up is down" speak here, to generalize from DMCA
applied to cell phones (which is a travesty, everyone agrees) to saying
copyright is about "control over other peoples' property." Falkvinge strains
to find the edge cases in the application of the copyright laws, then tries to
make it seem like that's what the copyright battle is really over. But in
reality, the battle is not about copyright suppressing "creativity and
innovation." The MPAA and RIAA aren't coming after people making their own
movies, music, software, and games and releasing them under Creative Commons-
type licenses. What the battle is about is people wanting to download shit for
free. It's the rhetorical equivalent of criminals holding up hostages as human
shields.

~~~
spacelizard
It's not about "people downloading shit for free" and it has never been about
that. Nobody downloads things "for free," there are real costs associated with
downloading anything on the internet. If these companies wanted a cut of that
it would make significantly more sense for them to lobby for more
subsidization funded by a tax on general internet or computer use; computers
are pervasive enough that this would be pretty profitable for them. This is
not the route they chose though, they instead chose to attack people's free
speech by redefining the word "property" for their own purposes.

Obviously they chose to do it this way because it grants them significantly
more power when an entire branch of law is devoted to the restrictions they
can impose by being "copyright holders," rather than them just receiving
simple monetary kickbacks. And this is their goal: to gain power over you and
I.

~~~
tzs
> This is not the route they chose though, they instead chose to attack
> people's free speech by redefining the word "property" for their own
> purposes

Nope. The term "intellectual property" has been used with its current meaning
for well over 150 years, long before the companies you refer to existed. They
are not redefining "property".

~~~
spacelizard
It doesn't really matter how old the use (or in this case, misuse) of the term
is. It is still an affront to the way we consider property in all other
aspects. Just because they were doing it a long time ago does not make it any
less invalid now.

~~~
tzs
It is quite consistent with the way we consider property in all other aspects.
In law, property is any thing, tangible or intangible whereby a legal
relationship between persons and the State enforces a possessory interest or
legal title in that thing. It has never been limited to just physical things
the way modern revisionists are trying to claim.

