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Re: the best justice money can buy --Lessig (fwd)
Forwarded message:
> Date: Fri, 06 Feb 1998 18:12:38 -0800
> Original-From: Bill Stewart <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: the best justice money can buy --Lessig (fwd)
> >If there were no copyright nobody would have any reason to market
> >software or much else for that matter. I would predict that much of
> >the technology and infrastructure we have now wouldn't exist.
> >It would also stiffle [sic] creativity and new methodologies because
> >there would be no profit in it to recoup development costs.
>
> If there were no copyright, markets for information and entertainment
> would definitely have evolved differently than they have in the US
> and Europe, and would use much different mechanisms for getting money
> to the producers of information, such as standard sale contracts.*
> On the other hand, if there were no colonialism, markets for sheep in
> New Zealand would have evolved much differently than they did,
> a problem they're now gradually working their way out of.
The point is that it would *not* effect single instances or markets, it
would effect the very fabric of trust that is inherent in a society that
rewards creativity. If there were no copyrights and by extension no
protection for the creator or implimentor of an idea we would have a
situation where the groups with the resources would be the ones able to best
actualize and therefore reap the benefits of ideas. In such an environment
why would some individual choose to go head to head in a battle they
couldn't win due to resources and a lack of a standard infrastructure?
They wouldn't, they'd go back home and grow food and mind their own
business. They wouldn't exchange ideas because it could be taken as a given
that mail and other forms of non-direct communications would be insecure.
>From this we can deduce that the actual target of delivery would very likely
not receive it and that some intermediary would in fact take possession of
that material and take advantage of it. So we can assume that people would
not work on colaborations bigger than their immediate neighborhood. Now it
is also clear that within that neighborhood some will have more resources to
actualize ideas in respect to many of those who actualy create the ideas.
In such an environment why would the individual increase this parties
resource share to their own detriment? They wouldn't.
> Copyright is certainly a major market convenience, because it means
> that individual authors, middlemen, and readers don't have to
> negotiate contracts each time they trade information for money,
> or having to read the annoying shrink-wrap licenses on books
> the way they did for a while on packaged software. It also
> makes it more difficult for alternative mechanisms to evolve,
> because it's got an 800-pound well-armed gorilla subsidizing it.
The protection of ideas and the reaping of the actualization of the creation
going to the creator is the issue, copyright is simply one of many
mechanisms that impliment this fundamental belief of who should benefit. If
we do away with this we are also doing away with a much deeper and
fundamental aspect of modern society, trust that our toil will benefit us in
the end.
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