[pp.int.general] philosophy vs. action

[Reinier Bakels]

> About that FUD in the newspaper, we can also note some things:
> * it's an "action" of our enemies
> * but it's not a single action, they have their "philosophy" behind all of 
> their actions. This is how they achieve to attack in all fronts, with the 
> appearance of being coherent with themselves.
> * without their "philosophy", they would had never achieved so much 
> restrictions and "intellectual property" laws.

Their filo$ophy is to make money, by exploiting present copyright to a 
maximum extent, while striving at low cost enforcement, which is criminal 
law.

We badly need some sort of "fair use" regulation, instead of the present law 
that considers all copying (even of my own legally objtained CDs onto a MP3 
player!) "reserved" acts in the sense of copyright.

In an economic sense, information (eventually the object of copyright) is a 
"public good". Externalities can be internalised IF the cost of 
internalisation does not exceed the benefit. One way to achieve that is to 
let the taxpayer pay for copyright enforcement! Via criminal enforcement 
(effectively creating another - negative - externality). Incidentally, one 
of the objectives of criminal law is to deter potential tresspassers. If the 
probability to get caught is low, the substance of the threat must by very 
terrifying. Like renowned copyright professor Hugenholtz said some years 
ago: "why not the death penalty"?

Solutions for a more balanced copyright have already been given (although 
admittedly on a fairly theoretical level): 
http://www.ip.mpg.de/ww/de/pub/aktuelles/declaration_on_the_three_step_/declaration.cfm
While this is really a modest approach (within present law!) such proposals 
should not be ignored imho.

Perhaps the easiest "counter-philosophy" is top argue that the persistent 
reference to the interests of (allegedly) poor artists is false and 
dishonest: they are only exploited as a pretext for the greed of record 
companies.

reinier