[nylug-talk] silly DMCA tricks

[Mordy Ovits]

On Friday 02 May 2003 02:17 pm, Peter C. Norton wrote:
> > Michael is right that copyright is a more artificial right than the
> > "natural" ones.  That's why normal property law wasn't enough.
>
> But it is a "right" that's conferred by law.  I am not at all
> convinced that the argument that michael puts forward, that copyright
> is "A fiction of the legal system"

Well, it is :-)

> followed by "There is no principled
> way to argue for a fundamental "right" not to have things you utter
> ever uttered by others" is valid, since the law doesn't cover
> utterances.  It could be a reductio ad absurdum that's actually based
> in a valid argument

OK, not utterances, but speeches.  Still, saying that I can't give the same 
award-winning speech you gave is hard to cover with a "fundamental right."

> That said, "natural [rights]" are also conferred on to us by law. More
> "natural" rights, like free speach, life, liberty and persuit of
> happiness, etc. are legal constructs that are only available to us as
> long as they are enforced by law, and are malleable and constantly
> being refined, eroded and built back up (keeping my fingers crossed
> that Ashcroft goes to hell sooner rather then later).

There are no perfectly natural rights.  I don't want to get philosophical, 
but there is a spectrum of rights with decreasing "naturalness."

Property rights are probably at the very top of this hierarchy, followed by 
the freedoms of speech, press, assembly, etc.  Right to a speedy trial and 
gun ownership float somewhere below that.  Copyright is a right that would 
fall near the very bottom of such an ordering.

This is not a measure of goodness, justness or value.  It is soley a measure 
of what we consider natural.

Mordy