Archive:Ideological grounds

From the beginning of recorded history, our culture has been expressed through free speech, artistic works, music, and visual communication.

The advent of copyrights in earlier times provided convenient mechanisms for rewarding and encouraging these creative works, but back then, and until recently, the distribution of said works to the public required substantial manufacturing and marketing costs. Now, as with a friend of mine, anyone can distribute their creative works for a flat fee of roughly $40 a month to anyone anywhere in the world.

This ability of anyone to exchange cultural expression is the extension of recording technology, TV, radio, and free speech.

Art and expression are what make us human, but those who have invested in expensive regimes of physical distribution are now arguing that archaic laws (which refer to cd's as "phonorecords") should be used to prevent this valuable cultural exchange.

They claim the commercial protection which copyright was meant to insure now grants them permission to own and control our works of cultural expression. (They also claim they should be immune from the business cycle and from servicing their customers, and exerting control over what is available on the market allows them to essentially censor what we see and hear.) When you buy or are given something, that is yours. No matter what, you should be allowed to govern what is yours.

These interest groups should not be allowed to invade such a personal aspect of our everyday lives, nor should they be allowed to choke off cultural expression simply because of an easily addresed issue of compensation.

Our governments should be more constructive regarding compensation for art on the internet.

Software, on the other hand, is a tool, much like a lathe, wrench, or car engine.

While in the tangible world you can dismantle, repair, or otherwise tinker with the workings of those tools to make them better work for you, many software packages are of a closed and proprietary form, which prevents end consumers who are capable from making said software more useful for both themselves and society.

In the physical world you are allowed to craft jigs and adapters to allow you to better work with objects, but proprietary models on computing platforms prevent this simple functionality.

It is as if certain companies have put a man in your house who stares over your shoulder and says "uh-uhh, youre not allowed to do that with what you own, and no helping others either"

The computing platform and the internet call for a new system of compensation which prevents such invasions of personal rights to use and exchange. It's time to call for a change to the old system of "intellectual property".