Intellectual Property doesn’t necessarily protect the artist

It seems to me that many people support the idea of IP (intellectual property) because they think it functions to protect the artist (including music and literary artists here) of the work, but I think this is actually not all that common. Generally when a person is unknown to the public, they often end up signing all their rights away to some type of company such as a publisher or record company. This artist ends up at the mercy of their recording company/publisher, and they don’t necessarily get paid all that well, unless they’re true superstars of their artform. If their recording company doesn’t want to promote their music, they’re not really able to do much about that.

So is this suggesting that good artists should not be rewarded for their efforts? Not at all, good artists are rewarded in the marketplace by people who want to ensure that they keep producing more. Many bands and singers make lots of their money from live performances, and they don’t actually make all that much out of CD sales because of the recording company’s cut as well as other costs involved. There are even artists who take a “screw the record labels” position and tell their fans to download their music, such as Trent Reznor of NIN. Here’s a really interesting article about how there are some artists who are now embracing the internet as a way of cutting out the middleman: Trent Reznor: Take my music, please. In the past, it would have been much harder to promote your band/music as a nobody, but now with the internet and websites like youtube, if you produce something that people like, it’s very easy to distribute your music and promote yourself as an artist. Here’s another related blog post at mises.org: Authors: Beware of Copyright.

All of this IP monopolising is only possible with the state’s violent imposition on people who don’t have contractual agreements with each other to not reproduce ideas or use ideas. Compare this with the open source and free market method of computer software, which promotes scientific growth. Plenty of the technology used to access the internet is open source in some way, or IP was not sought over it, and we are much better off for it. The guys behind one of the first popular types of web browser (NCSA Mosaic) could well have changed history if they had instead tried to patent the concept of “a web browser”, and forced everyone else to pay through the nose everytime they used the internet? Where would the world be now if they had the money and desire to use the state ‘protections’ for monopolising intellectual concepts? 

In the true free market, artists will find many ways to be rewarded for their efforts, whether that is through voluntary donations, being the first one out with a product, live shows or something else. IP isn’t necessary for artists to make a living, IP is only necessary for entertainment industry middlemen to make cash at society’s expense.

Politics is a game

Democracy and politics are nothing but a game played by politicians, most of them don’t actually have underlying core values, they just pretend that they do. This is evident in the lack of consistency in the application of their ideas, the constant flip-flopping of positions, as well as the over emphasis on public image and appearance. 

Just look at the billions of dollars being handed out as “bailout money” to firms that are politically connected. They are not more deserving of this money than the people who are paying for it via taxation. But then suddenly, once AIG started paying out some of the bonuses it was contracted to pay out, this made people unhappy because now the people who were partly responsible for the crisis were getting rewarded handsomely for it. Never mind the fact that as a percentage of the overall bailout money, the bonuses make up a tiny percentage.

So now the politicians are all running around trying to look “angry at AIG” for paying out the money it was contracted to pay, and looking at ways to just tax that specific money back. The politicians are crying nothing but crocodile tears, it was the politicians who gave them this money in the first place. The politicians were the ones who made this possible, via the sick game called democracy. No wonder individuals and businesses are reluctant to carry out any major investments, it’s because they don’t know who it will become politically expedient to persecute. The politicians, in their impartial and farsighted wisdom may decide to come after anyone by either nationalising a business, or passing unfavourable and restrictive regulation.

I’m sure there are many politicians who don’t actually believe that drugs should be illegal, they just hold this as their political opinion to score points with the voters for looking “tough on crime”. They’re perfectly happy to see millions of dollars poured into “The War on Drugs”, and for thousands of people to sit in jails for victimless crime, so long as it is politically expedient.  Do they spare a thought for the many families that get ruined or the people who lose their livelihoods? Or what about the people who get caught up in an endless cycle of jail and recidivism because nobody will hire them thanks to their criminal record? 

You could look at the way Obama ran for US President by being deliberately ambiguous and relying heavily on positive imagery and uplifting rhetoric to carry the day. He had millions eating out of the palm of his hand, as if somehow the hopes and dreams of millions could overturn immutable laws of nature and economics (eg. scarcity, the fact that we have finite resources on Earth). Obama ran a campaign of “change”, but exactly how much has changed since he got into office? The US government is still running massive deficits, the empire is still expanding and pursuing it’s foreign interventionist policy, the federal reserve continues to devalue the USD, as well as Wall st firms and other related financial insiders still receiving bailout money. So, you tell me, where’s the ‘change’ ? 

The underlying problem here is not just the individual politicians responsible for bailouts and so on, it is with democracy. I think too many people just give democracy a free pass and believe that “democracy is more stable”, when really, it isn’t. There is no such thing as “stability under democracy”, only the illusion of it.

iiNet exposes the true nature of the Australian internet filter

iiNet recently backed out of being a guinea pig for the Australian government’s internet censorship plan, citing the ambiguity of what the government classifies as “unwanted material” was causing them to become uncomfortable with the idea of censoring the internet. According to them, the plan is no longer just about stopping child porn, which is what most civil libertarians have been saying all along. This contradicts what Stephen Conroy (the politician pushing the filter through, for any non-Australian readers) has been talking about because he was suggesting that the filter would only be used to “go after the filth – like child pornography“. Remember, this is the guy who said: 

“If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree.”

He actually said this, I’m not making it up, go here and see. This is the kind of master logician we have ruling over us, thank god we have impartial and farsighted rulers to tell us what we’re allowed to see and what we can’t. 

The past week or so has been pretty eventful as far as the internet filter goes. There was a leak of what is purported to be the blacklist on wikileaks, Stephen Conroy came out saying that that wasn’t really the blacklist (although he said there are many websites common to both lists). It’s worth pointing out that Stephen Conroy’s words can’t really be taken at face value since we have no way of verifying the information. He suggested that it wasn’t the ‘real’ blacklist because the number of sites on the two lists differed, but what if one list just had more of the subdomains on the addresses? Or it could be the case that he’s just lying to save face, it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen a politician do that!

Anyway, with iiNet now out of the picture, it can no longer be claimed that the filter has been tried in one of the bigger ISPs since Optus and Telstra also aren’t taking part in the trial. So now we have a bunch of small ISPs that have very small numbers  of clients being used in the trial. Is it at all inconceivable to think that using small ISPs will help Stephen Conroy’s case for censorship? They are not going to have anywhere near the level of difficulty that a larger ISP will have implementing such a filter, who may have to slow down the internet for their consumers to even be able to put the filter in place. 

Once the filter is put in, is it even guaranteed to block all “unwanted content”? Clearly, the answer is no, because there are many ways of circumventing the filter (by going via avenues that it doesn’t block or using proxies), which means that parents will falsely think that the entire internet is safe for their children. So not only will the government fail, it will actively do harm by lulling people into a false sense of security. 

Does anybody seriously doubt that the filter will be used by every special group that wants to impose it’s will on everybody else? We’ve already had some senators say that they want the filter to block certain things before they support the bill to put it in place! (Xenophon and Fielding have already expressed their desire to ban gambling and porn respectively) Don’t forget, plenty of politicians might want to “just add” certain websites to the filter after it has been implemented too.

Even if this filter doesn’t expand out to ban what every Tom, Dick and Harry wants to ban, even if the filter doesn’t slow down the internet for every Australian, even if the filter doesn’t go through, this is still a bad indication for the future. The fact that things have even gone this far proves that you don’t have rights in this system, the government does not care about you. There is plenty of scope for more scrutiny and skepticism of what the government does.

“I enjoy life under government, so what’s your problem?”

I often hear words to the effect of “I enjoy life under government, so what’s your problem” from people who have run out of things to say in response to my criticism of government. When people make this type of statement, they are missing a crucial point: their choice of government means other people don’t get a choice. When you say, “I want a labor government”, you’re saying “I want this group of people to impose their will on everybody else with the guns of the state”. So if the labor party happen to be anti-freedom of speech , that choice is now imposed on everybody else. (The labor party is just an example, the other political parties are no better)

• Even if you don’t plan to do drugs yourself, do you at least agree that people should be free to choose what risks they take with their own body? 
• Even if you don’t plan to go out/work at night in the city, do you understand why it’s wrong for the government to impose rules about compulsory lockouts?
• Even if you don’t enjoying being in the presence of smokers in clubs, pubs and bars, do you agree that the owner of the premises should have the right to decide if it is a smoking/non-smoking venue?
• Even if you aren’t homosexual, do you at least agree that homosexuals should be treated the same as every other person and therefore should have the right to marry? 
• Even if you don’t agree with what a person says, do you at least respect their right to say it?

I think it is actually this sense of complacency and lack of concern for individual rights that governments often use to expand their powers. By taking rights away from one group at a time, over a long period of time, there is a downwards trend in overall freedom. This happens because some people are too reluctant to speak out against the injustices, preferring to “not rock the boat”. 

You should care about the rights of all people, not just your own freedoms. Why?

“In Germany, they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up”

Martin Niemöller 

“That’s the way it is”

Many people I speak to in day to day life fail to grasp the difference between ”what happens now” and “what should happen”. It seems to me that some people seem to think that because things happen in a certain way now, this means the way things happen now is justified. This is pretty obviously fallacious reasoning because it’s appealing to tradition. Generally speaking this type of argument won’t be delivered in such a simple way, because it sounds ridiculous if it is. I think that even for people who already understand this crucial difference between a positive statement (statement of what is) and a normative statement (statement of what should be), it’s not always easy to identify when someone else is committing this error.

It’d be like having a conversation going like the following:
A: Hey B, I’d like to have a piano with more than 88 keys, because I’d like the flexibility
B: No A, you’re so silly, everybody knows that pianos only have 88 keys.

B’s response to A’s desire is not really a good response. And perhaps “That’s the way things happen now” is not always delivered as an argument, but I think it’s falsehood is something that needs to be stressed.