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August 09, 2007
Intellectual's Property
I'm not a copyright lawyer. I am a political theorist-- a non-practicing one with the smallest degree one can have and still call oneself a theorist. Indeed, my old political theory professor would probably have a stroke hearing me call myself a political theorist. Nonetheless, some things are very, very basic. Like the basis for intellectual property protection...
I once had (my then congress critter) Richard Pombo explain to me that copyright was basically like any other form of property, and therefore deserved the exact same protection as A) your jewels, B) your house, or C) anything else you might own. I started voting against him right away...
The US constitution is very clear on why we have IP protections: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;" (US Constitution Article 1 section 8).
Matthew Yglesias sums this up very susinctly: "The idea of copyright is not that creators deserve your money, but that you, the citizen, deserve a world in which creators have incentives to create."
Every time we are asked to set aside certain memes for the exclusive monetization of others, we must first ask "who is it that is not able to be creative in the current environment?" American Society is currently producing more and better memes than anyone else in the history of the planet. That's a pretty strong argument for the status quo...
Posted by Andrew at August 9, 2007 08:04 PM
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