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Re: Hardcore libertarians: explain your anti-IP-rights position to me.
by
Mr2001
on 24/06/2011, 21:25:42 UTC
Right, because we don't have Libertarian IP in this country. If we did, you would likely have to enter into a contract with the rights holder to buy a CD. This could easily be made efficient and streamlined and there would be a large incentive to do so. As I said, you'd probably have to show some kind of ID card that indicated you had entered into a contract with the distributor of the movie in order to enter a movie theater. It wouldn't be hard to make this efficient.
That would be fantastic. I don't think people in general would stand for all these restrictions on their speech and property rights if they had to explicitly agree to them each time they bought something.

For instance, buying decongestants at the drug store is such a hassle (thanks to anti-meth laws) that I find myself discouraged from doing it, even though all I have to do is go to the counter, sign a form, and show my ID. I could foresee a lot of customers choosing not to buy CDs and movie tickets if buying them meant voluntarily agreeing to pay thousands of dollars in fines and/or serve jail time if they used their knowledge of that music/film in the wrong way thereafter.

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Note that the terms could be much worse than the ones in the United States. With IP terms set by law, the terms are a balance between creators and consumers and include things like fair use. With IP terms set by contract, the terms are much more in the control of the creators and likely would include much more restricted fair use rights. This is why Microsoft uses EULAs.
Considering the difference in political clout between creators and consumers, I don't think there'd be much difference. There's basically no one looking out for the interests of consumers or defending fair use anymore. The "limited time" of a copyright term has gotten longer and longer, and been extended retroactively with no reason not to expect future extensions, such that it may as well be unlimited. The perceived purpose of copyright has shifted in many eyes, from giving authors an economic incentive for future work, to instead giving them their morally deserved rewards for past work. Fair use as we know it today is good for critics and parodists but has almost no value to consumers.