Re: <nettime> What has copyright to do with democracy?

[Heiko Recktenwald <heikorecktenwald@googlemail.com>]

Good question, I asked the same, when I read some remarks claiming a 
connection. IMHO is is plain nonsense!

Your argument that copyright is a monopoly is weak. You could say the 
same about property. Property as a monopoly against thieves. Both are 
absolute rights against everybody  In contrast to contracts that give 
rights against certain people only.

And that printers had such a monopoly is weak as well. Printers did what 
they wanted. As a matter of fact. Like thieves and users of P2P networks 
worldwide do what they want.

But rights may be weak as well in certain situations. When you dont 
secure your bicycle in certain parts of some towns thieves may come and 
steal it.

People may not care about your copyright as well. Copyright is usefull 
in the internet too, see Google v. the publishers, but the enforcement 
is rather difficult. It is fun to have a library of mp3s. And unlike 
bicicles that are still expensiv mp3s cost nothing to produce as far as 
copying is concerned. Nobody believes the arguments of the music 
industry when it comes to mp3s from the 70s, oldies. The catalogue of 
the internet is much bigger than the catalogue. In the case of google 
books as well.

Copyright is more or less just disapearing in certain cases in the times 
of the internet by what people actually do. But this is anarchy, not 
democracy. The natural status according to Hobbes. I would not even call 
it a revolution. A revolution is some new law, here we have nothing.

The most interesting part in that game play the mp3-search-engines and 
organisers of catalogues like Piratebay. Search engines may sell their 
result and Piratebay is an open invitation to detectives to find out 
what certain people that really exist have on their harddrive. Search 
engines and Piratebay etc are hard organisations in a soft game. I would 
boycott boths, well, P2P does not work without, but I boycott P2P as 
well. Servers like, you know the names, are hard organisations as well, 
but they dont serve such a clear purpose and this is their strenght. All 
you need is google and your brain.


H.

Karl-Erik Tallmo schrieb:

> In view of recent debates, not the least those in Sweden, I wrote 
> this article about the democratic aspects of copyright legislation. 
> Many people today claim that copyright and democracy are incompatible 
> concepts, that copyright infringes the privacy of readers and other 
> cultural consumers etc. I believe it is not that simplistic:
 <...>


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