[free-sklyarov] Libertarian anti-DMCA is fantasy

Ethan Straffin drumz at best.com
Wed Jul 25 16:35:29 PDT 2001


Seth Finkelstein writes:
> 	There were no lobbyists calling on a Libertarian congress
> member saying "This is about PROPERTY RIGHTS. It's about THEFT
> of OUR PROPERTY. You should see that Libertarianism requires that
> PROPERTY be protected from hacker-THIEVES. And here is a very
> large campaign contribution to help you study our point of view."
> 
> 	If that happened, I think the votes would be a different
> story.

Maybe.  Maybe not.  One thing is certain: Libertarian candidates take an
oath to their party to oppose the initiation of force.  To the extent that
voting for the DMCA violates that oath -- and I think most of us would
agree that it does -- LP candidates are going to be less susceptible to
the influence of corporate dollars than are most Democrats and
Republicans.  (Think Libertarians would give us a corporate-controlled
government?  Well, what exactly do we have now?)

Libertarians are very insistent that there needs to be an identifiable
victim before the state can use force.  In Sklyarov's case, who's the
victim?  Not Adobe: a typical Libertarian would clearly identify code as
speech, and conclude that the First Amendment overrides any claim by Adobe
of victimization.  The only possible victim is the publisher whose
encrypted work is transferred to another party without his permission --
and in that case, the perpetrator is the person who made the transfer, not
the person who wrote the software to make the transfer possible.  A
responsible Libertarian will not agree that it is acceptable to prosecute
someone for "contributory infringement" simply because prosecuting the
actual infringer is held to be impractical.

I'm not going to argue that everyone should go out and vote Libertarian in
every race; I'm registered with the LP, but I voted for Democrats and
Republicans in the last election as well.  But I think there's a strong
case to be made that a Libertarian vote can be effective, and is becoming
more so as the party grows.  In fact, the National Review thinks that we'd
currently have a Republican rather than Democratic Senate if not for the
influence of the LP on the last election, and the Republicans are already
considering asking the LP to sit out certain races in 2002 -- not that
we're likely to oblige them unless we get some firm commitments from their
candidates to put the social conservatives in their place and give equal
time to advancing libertarian goals.

Ethan
--
"One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils
in this world are to be cured by legislation." -- Thomas Brackett-Reed





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