39 lines
2 KiB
Markdown
39 lines
2 KiB
Markdown
The 'intellectual property' oxymoron
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"*If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive
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property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an
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individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the
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moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and
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the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is
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that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it.
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He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening
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mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
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That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the
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moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to
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have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them,
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like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any
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point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being,
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incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in
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nature, be a subject of property.*" -— Thomas Jefferson
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Copyright
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Copyright infringement is not stealing, and copyright law is against the free
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market, it is a government sponsored monopoly.
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Copyright law is routinely abused to suppress free speech and individual
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freedoms, it is abused by recording companies to exploit artists, it is abused
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by governments to control information. Copyright law is not only evil, it is
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also stupid, and should be ignored by anyone that believes in a free society
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and free markets.
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Bach, Shakespeare and Michelangelo didn't need copyright, we don't need copyright.
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Copyright infringement is a victim-less crime, nobody has a right to have a
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monopoly on ideas or information, you have a right to keep your ideas and
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information private, but if you make them public, they are not your private
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property anymore.
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