Of course, the attempt to stop a development supported by a violent fashion trend, carried by the [...] influential female kin, could impossibly succeed. The policy is considered to have cost 16,000 people their lives, through executions and armed clashes, plus the yet uncounted who were sentenced to slavery on galleys and other punishments. In Valence, on one single occasion, 77 people were sentenced to hang, 58 to be broken on the wheel and 631 to the galleys, one was acquitted, and none were pardoned. But this was so far from effective, that the use of printed calico spread through all social groups during this period, in France and elsewhere.
Sixteen thousand people, almost exclusively common folks, died by execution or in the violent clashes that surrounded the monopoly.
Here’s the fascinating part:
Capital punishment didn’t even make a dent in the pirating of the fabrics. Despite the fact that most people knew somebody personally who had been executed by public torture, the copying continued unabated at the same level.
So the question that needs asking is this:
For how long will the politicians continue to listen to the copyright industry’s demands for harsher punishments for copying, when we learn from history that no punishment that mankind is capable of inventing has the ability to deter people from sharing and copying things they like?
To get the issue of illegal file sharing off the table, we must find another solution. But that is no problem, because such a solution exists.
Once you accept that copyright must be scaled back, a whole palette of advantages to that scenario become apparent. Two billion human beings would have 24/7 access to all of humanity’s collective knowledge and culture. That’s a much larger leap for civilization than when public libraries arrived in 1850. No public cost or new tax is involved. All the infrastructure is already in place. The technology has been developed, and the tools are deployed. All we have to do is lift the ban on using them.
File Sharing And Fundamental Rights – The Bottom Line
The relationship between file sharing and fundamental rights is very simple:
• File sharing is here to stay. No matter what the Pirate Party or anybody else will or won’t do, it is not going to change this fact. In the long run, it will become impossible to charge money for just digital copies. This is a piece of technological history, and there is nothing more to discuss.
• So why bother? The copyright industry will not be able to stop file sharing. The file sharers will find ways of protecting themselves through anonymization, encryption, etc, as needed. No problems for them. But the copyright industry will try to set examples by punishing random individuals in a hard and disproportionate way.
This is not acceptable. An even bigger problem is the general surveillance of everybody’s private communication, and the censorship and blocking systems that the copyright industry is proposing. For this reason, we must take the political fight to align copyright legislation with reality.
This is really all there is to it. The only way to even try to reduce file sharing is to introduce mass surveillance of all Internet users. Even this is not very effective, as experiences from the last decade have shown. But if you want to fight file sharing, mass surveillance is the only way. The copyright industry knows this.
So, even those who do think that file sharing is harmful to society and should be eradicated, have to ask the question if they are prepared to accept the surveillance society to achieve this. Because once the surveillance systems have been installed, they can be used for any purpose that the ones in charge of them see fit.
You may well feel that you have “nothing to hide” right now when it comes to file sharing, if you are not doing it. But can you be certain that you will always have “nothing to hide” when it comes to expressing views that future governments may not like? How do you know that you would want to be unquestioningly loyal to the government the next time it slips into McCarthyism, or worse, and starts listing and blacklisting people with certain political sympathies?
If you build a system for mass surveillance, there will be a system for mass surveillance ready the day someone wants to use it for other purposes. This is the bottom line in the file sharing debate.
Chapter 4
Copyright Is Not Property
The Copyright Monopoly Is A Limitation Of Property Rights The concept of property is older than history, probably as old as mankind itself.
But the copyright monopoly is not a property right. It is a limitation of property rights. Copyright is a government-sanctioned private monopoly that limits what people may do with things they have legitimately bought.
All too often, we hear the copyright lobby talk about theft, about property, about how they are robbed of something when someone makes a copy. This is, well, factually incorrect. It is a use of words that are carefully chosen to communicate that the copyright monopoly is property, or at the very least comparable to property rights.
This is only rhetoric from the copyright lobby in an attempt to justify the monopoly as righteous: to associate “the copyright monopoly” with a positive word such as “property”. However, when we look at the monopoly in reality, it is a limitation of property rights.
Let’s compare two pieces of property: a chair and a DVD.
When I buy a chair, I hand over money for which I get the chair and a receipt. This chair has been mass-produced from a master copy at some sort of plant. After the money has changed hands, this particular chair is mine. There are many more like it, but this one is mine. I have bought one of many identical copies and the receipt proves it.
As this copy of the chair is mine, exclusively mine, there are a number of things I can do with it. I can take it apart and use the pieces for new hobby projects, which I may choose to sell, give away, put out as exhibits or throw away. I can put it out on the porch and charge neighbors for using it. I can examine its construction, produce new chairs from my deductions with some raw material that is also my property, and do whatever I like with the new chairs, particularly including selling them.
All of this is normal for property. It is mine; I may do what I like with it. Build copies, sell, display, whatever.
As a sidetrack, this assumes that there are no patents on the chair. However, assuming that the invention of the chair is older than 20 years, any filed patents on this particular invention have expired. Therefore, patents are not relevant for this discussion.
Now, let’s jump to what happens when I buy a movie.
When I buy a movie, I hand over money and I get the DVD and a receipt. This movie has been mass-produced from a master copy at some sort of plant. After the money has changed hands, this particular movie is mine. There are many more like it, but this one is mine. I have bought one of many identical copies and the receipt proves it.
But despite the fact that this copy of the movie is mine, exclusively mine, there are a number of things that I may not do with it, prohibited from doing so by the copyright monopoly held by somebody else. I may not use pieces of the movie for new hobby projects that I sell, give away, or put out as exhibits. I may not charge the neighbors for using it on the porch. I may not examine its construction and produce new copies. All of these rights would be normal for property, but the copyright monopoly is a severe limitation on my property rights for items I have legitimately bought.