[pp.int.general] where is the manifesto?

[Richard M Stallman]

    > No. Actually the analogy helps to clarify my point. Assume someone
    > gets a licence from the city of Berlin (where I am currently) to
    > operate a bar in street X house number Y for the coming 10 years. Then
    > this gentlemen starts making investments - he has the right for this
    > address, so he believes he can be sure the investment is protected.
    > Imagine that the city council after two years says: we have made up
    > our mind, and we discontinue your licence. Not because we have any
    > complaints, but because we simply decided to do so.

If someone proposed to choose specific copyrights and abolish them,
while maintaining the copyright system in general unchanged, that
analogy would be valid.

However, the Pirate Party proposal is not of that form.  Rather it
proposes to reduce, in a uniform way, the power given to all copyright
holders.

If you want to make an analogy with bars, here's the right way to do
it.  Suppose the City of Berlin decides to forbid sale of alcohol.  (I
am not in favor of such a prohibition.)  If this reduces the income of
bar owners, should Berlin be required to "compensate" them?

There are who people who argue that it should -- people who believe
that business deserves to decide everything.  That right-wing proposal
has been embodied in some Low Wage Treaties.

It should be clear that this vicious and twisted "principle" puts
business profit above everything else.  It makes sense when applied to
property in a narrow sense.  When stretched to "anything you could
pawn", it becomes an injustice.  It's not wrong only because it
has bad effects on copyright.  It is wrong in general.

    Please understand: I say all this in order to get the focus on
    actions that ARE feasible - rather than actions that are
    unthinkable in the present legal order - which we do not want to
    destroy, as Richard Stallman agrees.

I doubt that I agree fully with that statement.  The immoral
"principle" that unjust privileges can be created but not destroyed
deserves to be abolished; if "the present legal order" includes that
"principle" then I cannot agree we should preserve it.