[free-sklyarov] Libertarian party is not our friends, they are no better then the democrats and republicans.

Wed Sep 12 15:32:27 PDT 2001

Mr. Eakins is clearly someone who has the rare gift of not only a 
remarkably developed sense of eloqution, but also the political savviness 
born of many years in the area.

Since EFF has not denounced Tuesday's terrorist attack -- their home page 
at eff.org is silent on the topic! -- I conclude that I must inform them 
"your [sic] for it."

Also, I don't recall Mr. Eakins posting a denunciation. I wonder why?

At 03:25 PM 9/12/01 -0700, Charles Eakins wrote:
>If your silent about something, in my book by default your for it.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: free-sklyarov-admin at zork.net
>[mailto:free-sklyarov-admin at zork.net]On Behalf Of Declan McCullagh
>Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 3:24 PM
>To: Seth David Schoen
>Cc: free-sklyarov at zork.net
>Subject: Re: [free-sklyarov] Libertarian party is not our friends, they
>are no better then the democrats and republicans.
>
>
>I'm actually writing an article on how conservative and libertarian
>groups view intellectual property, and I have not yet found one
>libertarian group that supports the DMCA.
>
>[Obviously Democrats and Republicans are a little more enthusiastic
>(http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,45522,00.html). Then there's
>the SSSCA, which top Dems and Repubs in the Senate are supporting.]
>
>If there is one, please let me know. The article's on hold for
>obvious reasons, but I am fairly confident my statement above
>is accurate.
>
>-Declan
>
>
>On Wed, Sep 12, 2001 at 01:11:39PM -0700, Seth David Schoen wrote:
> > Xcott Craver writes:
> >
> > >     I've had baffling discussions
> > >     with [self-proclaimed] libertarians, who believe the DMCA is good
> > >     because it allows fair use disputes to be resolved by market
> > >     forces, rather than by law.  I.e., companies sell restrictive
> > >     technologies and consumers "vote with their wallets."  The anti-
> > >     circumvention part prevents people from circumventing the market.
> >
> > Thus the article Declan told us about,
> >
> > http://www.cfif.org/5_8_2001/Free_line/current/free_line_copyright.htm
> >
> > and also something Fred von Lohmann found along similar lines:
> >
> > http://www.cato.org/dailys/08-23-01.html
> >
> > I was writing a reply in which I maintained that copyright was a
> > government regulation which interfered with the free market in
> > creative works.  So there is an exactly parallel argument -- and it's
> > unlikely that CFIC and Cato would maintain that copyright should
> > exist because there is a market failure in the absence of regulation.
> >
> > This leads me to the (unsurprising) conclusion that the most important
> > thing you can do to get libertarians and trade proponents to oppose
> > things like the DMCA is to spread the word that copyright is a form of
> > government regulation.
> >
> > In the trade world, this could be surprisingly difficult.  I recently
> > learned that the U.S. government adopted the position that inadequate
> > intellectual property laws constitute an "unfair trade practice" way
> > back in 1984, after an intense lobbying campaign by copyright
> > industries.  This policy decision came years before either copyright
> > law or international trade law were on the public's radar; at that
> > time, they were both very obscure and it was hard to imagine that
> > there would be protests in the street over either.
> >
> > But there is a long legacy in U.S. trade policy of viewing countries
> > which don't have U.S.-equivalent copyright laws as somehow deficient
> > or criminal.  This is strange.  People in the U.S. don't think that a
> > foreign country is doing something wrong if it doesn't have a Federal
> > Reserve Bank, if it doesn't have a federal system with states and a
> > central government, if it doesn't have ZIP codes... but if you don't
> > follow us on copyright policy, you're a rogue nation!
> >
> > This policy is only really defensible if you view copyright law _not
> > as a public policy choice but as a recognition of right and wrong_ --
> > which is certainly the way libertarians and many other people have
> > viewed legislation about murder, and frequently about physical
> > property.  The distinction is more or less equivalent to the archaic
> > distinction between the malum prohibitum and the malum per se, the
> > infraction of the law as violation of government policy, or as
> > inherently evil act.  That's what I was getting at when I wrote that
> > copyright infringement was like tax evasion rather than like theft.
> >
> > If infringing copyrights is seen as a malum per se, then almost
> > everybody will agree that countries which tolerate it or don't crack
> > down firmly as though they were havens of actual piracy, what the
> > U.S. alleged of the Barbary States.
> >
> > If it's a malum prohibitum, then eventually many people will ask why
> > the U.S. is imposing this legislation on the rest of the world.
> >
> > This, I think, is the real intellectual battle of the copyright wars.
> > If copyright is not a form of property (and I pass over the question of
> > whether anything is really a form of property), then copyright law, as
> > all legal scholars seem to think, _was made by a legislature, and can
> > be unmade if the public interest requires_.  But if copyright is a
> > real right of creators, everywhere and always wrong to infringe,
> > legislatures are just doing their duty in approximating an ideal of
> > perfect protection.
> >
> > That's why I complain about the two pieces mentioned above.  I don't
> > care whether MOCA passes; I don't care whether we have any particular
> > scheme of compulsory licensing for on-line music.  I care about
> > refuting the suggestion that we shouldn't even _propose_ to reform
> > copyright law, shouldn't even _consider_ reforming it, because to make
> > any reform at all would violate the property rights of authors.
> >
> > That is a bad suggestion, but one which underlies huge expanses of
> > debate in the world today, not to mention U.S. trade policy.
> >
> > --
> > Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org> | Its really terrible when FBI
>arrested
> > Temp.  http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | hacker, who visited USA with
>peacefull
> > down:  http://www.loyalty.org/   (CAF) | mission -- to share his knowledge
>with
> >      http://www.freesklyarov.org/      | american nation.  (Ilya V.
>Vasilyev)
> >
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