Comments on: How Much Right in a Copyright?

By: Megan McArdle

Megan McArdle — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:33:59 +0000

Yes, obviously, I do not mean that easements are exactly comparable to fair use. What I mean is that there are all sorts of laws that allow others to use your tangible property without your permission for various reasons.

By: Sympathy For The Record Industry « Around The Sphere

Sympathy For The Record Industry « Around The Sphere — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:32:45 +0000

[...] Julian Sanchez on Bunch: Call this the Lockean theory of copyright—a theory conspicuously absent from the Constitution’s Copyright Clause, which ties “exclusive rights” to the promotion of artistic and scientific progress. The thing is, this reading seems to make patent law a gross violation of the same right. Doesn’t it “rob” those who independently replicate a patented invention the right to profit from their labor? [...]

By: Led

Led — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:23:53 +0000

Easements are not about fair use. I assume you’re talking about prescriptive easements and not easements voluntarily agreed to, but those easements are about not interrupting historical practice. It’s exactly the same idea as adverse possession or “squatter’s rights” or the old saw (that’s more right than most old saws) that “possession is 90% of the law.” You’re better off not thinking about intellectual property as “property” in the technical legal sense because it causes all sorts of doctrinal confusion.

By: Matthew Yglesias » Intellectual Property is About Consumers

Matthew Yglesias » Intellectual Property is About Consumers — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:59:26 +0000

[...] want to turn this into an ideological food fight, so I’m eager to note that libertarians like Julian Sanchez and Tim Lee have the right take on this. I note that this issue is specifically addressed in the [...]

By: Megan McArdle

Megan McArdle — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:39:24 +0000

There are “fair use” exemptions to other sorts of property laws, actually. Look at the law of easements, for example.

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:33:47 +0000

By that same logic I am stealing from Ford every time I buy a Toyota.

Reading the actual text of the clause, it always seemed to me that the entire point of patents was that they do expire, encouraging inventors to get their ideas eventually into the public domain instead of keeping them as trade secrets that could disappear if a company went under. The limited term was the carrot to convince people to do that, not the primary purpose.

By: Zamfir

Zamfir — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:17:32 +0000

That Steve Jobs comparison is less silly than it sounds at first. If laptop-stealing were extremely common and unavoidable, say on average a month between buying and theft, laptop-making wouldn’t be much of a business.

That’s the analogy people make: by downloading music you “steal” directly from the “owner”, but indirectly you hurt the producers etc.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 04:33:56 +0000

Producers may not have copyright in the underlying musical work, but they often do own copyrights in the recordings. The copyright act actually lists sound recordings separately from musical works (§102) for this very reason.