[pp.int.general] Purpose of copyright

[Christian Engström]

Ole Husgaard wrote:
>> The official aim of the copyright system has always been to find a
>> balance between the interests of publishers and consumers,
>>     
> 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
>   
Thanks! I changed the text to

    The official aim of the copyright system has always been to find a
    balance in order to promote culture being created and spread.

I completely agree with RMS that is actually a balance between the 
general public's desire that works should be created vs. the general 
public's desire to enjoy and share those works, and that even describing 
it as as balance between artist's rights vs. the general public is 
misleading. It is two conflicting interests that we, the people, have, 
so the only legitimate stakeholder is ourselves.

However, since I don't want to go into that particular discussion at 
that particular point in that introductory text, I took the easy way out 
and omitted exactly what it is that should be balanced. ;)

But it is an important point that RMS is making, and we should remember 
to bring it up whenever the question of balance comes up.

/Christian

/Christian

> 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.
>
> ____________________________________________________
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>
>   


-- 
Christian Engström
vice ordf Piratpartiet

+46-70-663 37 80
christian.engstrom at piratpartiet.se
http://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/

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