Comments Elsewhere

Henry: Most inventions and copyrights are bestowed to working folks with a need to remunerate themselves.

So what? When did the world start owing them a living?

If you cannot find a way to feed yourself with your writing or your inventing, without the aid of a government-enforced monopoly, of arbitrary length, on the use of ideas copied or derived from yours, then you need to find another line of work. Your need to remunerate yourself is not a claim on anyone else’s pocketbook.

Henry: Tell me whether you find it hard to believe that in a world without copyright, the Disneys and Stephen Kings of the world would not troll the world of uncopyrighted material in order to recast it and sell it through their pre-existing “sales channels.” Tell me who in this world would benefit more, the artist or the media conglomerate.

Who cares? The question is one of justice in property rights, not one of class solidarity. It’s not the government’s job to police academic honesty or creativity. Rooting out “plagiarists” is a job for critics, teachers, peer reviewers, and the reading/listening/viewing public, not lawyers, judges, and bureaucrats.

But, just out of curiosity, where do you think the media conglomerates will get the money to sustain their giant, centralized operations once they no longer can rely on monopoly profits from their own productions or the productions they acquire from others?