[pp.int.general] Purpose of copyright

[Ole Husgaard]

Hi,

Richard M. Stallman skrev:
> http://int.piratenpartei.de/Pirate_Manifesto_parties_at_a_glance,
> for Denmark, says
>
>     The official aim of the copyright system has always been to find a
>     balance between the interests of publishers and consumers,
>
> Traditional statements of the purpose of copyright have not generally
> mentioned the interests of _publishers_ as a goal.  It is rather the
> _authors_ whose interests they cite.
>   
Thank you for letting us know. I was quite shocked to see this wording,
and I have immediately changed it to say "find a balance between the
interests of cultural creators and the general population".

Also, I investigated where this wording came from, and it looks like it
was copied from a page at the PP SE website:
http://www.piratpartiet.se/international/english

Most likely the Pirate Party in Sweden would like to change this page,
as it does not correspond with their basic policy document "Principer 3.1".

Also, this document is the basic policy document for the Pirate Party in
Denmark, as we decided on the party founding meeting to pirate copy it
for ourself without asking the swedes for permission  ;-)

> People do often say that the goal is a balance between the interests
> of authors and those of readers.  But I think that this idea of
> "balance" elevates the authors too much: they do not deserve to be
> given the same importance as the readers.  For more explanation, see
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html.
>
> I argue that copyright primarly exists to serve the interests
> of the readers.
>   
Yes. I would even go a step further and say that copyright should ONLY
exist for the benefit of the general population.

Even when we take rights away from the general population by creating
limited monopoles for the cultural creators, we do this because it is
supposed to benefit the general population by giving them access to more
cultural works, as the monopoly acts as an economic incentive for the
cultural creator to create more works.

> To refer to the readers as "consumers" adopts a rather narrowly
> economic viewpoint on copyright.  If we think that it is not solely an
> economic issue, we might do well to avoid the term "consumers".
>   
Indeed. In my view, the only argument for having an economic issue in
copyright is to create an incentive for cultural creators to create more
works.

We should recognize that the non-economics - in particular the right to
attribution - also act as incentives for cultural creators, and that the
economic issues currently often work against the objective of copyright
by limiting the access to cultural works.

Best Regards,

Ole Husgaard.