[free-sklyarov] Libertarian anti-DMCA is fantasy

[Seth Finkelstein]

On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 08:03:29PM -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> I've spoken with and interviewed representatives of the Competitive
> Intelligence Institute and the Cato Institute and the Pacific Research
> Institute (libertarian think tanks) and not one believes that what
> Dmitry did should be a crime.

	Not a one of them has to raise a ton of money to run for
office either. It is very, very, easy to say what you think your
audience wants to hear, especially when those PR people know exactly
what that interviewer would like to have presented as their stance.

	It is quite another to vote on a law knowing that a large
amount of campaign contribution money is riding on that vote. And
perhaps that leads to a re-thinking of one's convictions. Especially
when there are plausible ways of coming to an ideological view that
is in harmony with the money. It's happened many a time.

> These groups are your natural allies, and frothing here against "those
> evil libertarians" or whatever won't help them move from criticizing
> the DMCA and Dmitry's arrest to participating in an active repeal/
> rewrite effort.

	I don't recall using the words you put in quotes. I do recall,
however, one poster saying "Yes, this is a shameless plug for the
Libertarian party". And then someone else who once was defended by
the Cato Institute as a "libertarian journalist" under attack
(http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v22n4/crosshairs.pdf)
chimed in. And this was at the same time as another person ranting
"Feinstein is a socialist".

	Trying to use the DMCA and Dmitry's arrest as plugs for
this sort of politicing doesn't help anyone. It's just attempting
to hijack the efforts in the service of annoying proselytizing.

	Why? Because it does not solve the problem. The core is
"What Is Property", and why. I was accused in trolling for asking how
Declan can justify making his living from a government-granted
monopoly on speech. But that's a true question. It's a deep issue.
Copyright is a restriction on speech. It declares punishments
for people who say things, merely on the basis that those things have
been said by someone else. It says this speech is *owned*. It's a kind
of property in itself. That's a very weird thing at heart.

	However, it's been in the Constitution from day 1, as a
specific power of Congress. Once you accept speech can be
a kind of property (even if an odd type of property), how far
once goes to enforce those *property* *rights* is a question
that has to deal with the implications of this type of property.

	In fact, the DMCA is Libertarianism in action. It's the
government enforcing (intellectual) property rights on behalf
of the owners of that property. No smiley. That's what it is.

	I'm not trying to argue against copyright _per se_. But once
you've taken the step that people can be punished at all for what they
say, just to support this property-right, increasing and extending
those punishments follows the same path.

	Libertarians and similar, at least the ones posting here, do
not seem to grasp this problem. Their replies boil down to "No, the
line is *here*!" Why is it there? Do you have an explanation that
works for copyright in the first place? Government-bad doesn't cut
it. That's just demagoguery.

	I'll try to put it another way: If, as a purely ideological
matter, you can swallow a restriction on a right to say the speech
(i.e. to copy it), then it's not a big jump to an ideological
justification to restricting speech about enabling people to copy that
speech. If there ever were a lot of real Libertarian Party politicians
trying to get a lot of money to seriously win a high office, I suspect
they'd find proclaiming the property aspects very appealing.

	I believe the proselytizing that we saw today is at best
extremely distracting noise, and worse, downright intellectually
harmful to understanding and thinking about this issue. Hence
my writing in opposition to it.

	But as always, feel free to consider this "typically,
nonsense or otherwise not worth the time it takes to reply."

-- 
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  sethf at sethf.com  http://sethf.com
http://www10.nytimes.com/2001/07/19/technology/circuits/19HACK.html