I have a dilemma at work. I work in a school. Part of my job is to do photocopies for teachers. I am sometimes asked to make photocopies of worksheets whose legal status – whether they are copyrighted or not – is unknown to me. The teachers, who don't seem to know about the copyright issue, generally intend to distribute the copies at a later time. That gives me the chance to do a little research to check the legal status of the document and get the nerve to refuse to do something which is certainly wrong, if it is the case.
This situation of uncertainty gets thougher to deal with when, out of the blue, one of the teachers asks me to copy a worksheet for a kid who was absent at the time the sheet was distributed, on a previous day. The teacher expects me to come back as soon as possible so that this kid can do his work like the others.
If the copying were clearly a violation of the author's copyright, I could stand up to the teacher and diplomaticly say "I'm sorry but I cannot do this because …". And if it were okay, I'd go ahead and make the copy.
But in a case of uncertainty, what should I do ? Is it a case of remote material cooperation with evil with a proportionate reason, the proportionate reason being the need for the kid to get an education ? I do not want to infringe copyrights nor make a trouble in class without "sufficient" reasons.
Also, I wonder if making a copy of a collection of images previously copied by the teacher herself would change anything in the remoteness of my cooperation. (Pffeeww! I hope it is clear to you).
First, I'm pleased to say that I think I can cut the Gordian knot on your dilemma by noting that in U.S. copyright law fair use is considered to include significant copying of copyrighted works for classroom distribution. According to the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976:
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
So . . . work sheets, collections of pictures, whatever . . . if you're making copies for educational purposes, it looks like the activity is covered by fair use. I thus wouldn't scruple about it.
While this would seem to take care of the reader's issue, not everybody works in a school, so let's look at the moral principles that would apply if one's employer asks one to copy copyrighted material and it is not covered by fair use. What then?
If one is not approving of the act then one is not formally cooperating, which satifies one element of the moral calculus. One's cooperation would be material.
What is not satisfied is the traditional remote/proximate distinction. One's action in this case is not remote. If the law one is breaking is against copying and if you are the one doing the copying then your action seems proximate (or more than proximate), violating the traditional requirement that the cooperation be remote.
So I don't think that at least the traditional understanding of the doctrine of cooperation provides a defense.
What I do think provides a defense, morally speaking (the civil law is another matter), is this:
Copyright violation is a species of theft, and the definition of theft is as follows:
CCC 2408 The seventh commandment forbids theft, that is, usurping another's property against the reasonable will of the owner. There is no theft if consent can be presumed or if refusal is contrary to reason and the universal destination of goods. This is the case in obvious and urgent necessity when the only way to provide for immediate, essential needs (food, shelter, clothing . . .) is to put at one's disposal and use the property of others.
That leaves the case of substantially affecting his income. Here you might have to refuse the order even at the cost of a promotion or a job. The decision would be based on the relative harm to you of having to find another employment situation versus the harm being done to the copyright owner. That’s something that could go either way.
We don’t charge if it’s under $10 for classroom use anyway. I’m sure other publishers have similar policies. You would have to make over 60 copies of one page to exceed that amount. Onesies, Twosies is nothing to worry about (though it is considered good form to submit a request anyway).
Great post Jimmy. Thank you. I’ve wondered about this at my job.
It’s so good to have you back doing these excellent, concise analyses, Jimmy.
This one in particular is very helpful. An older one of yours on scrupulosity has recently been helpful to me in dealing with a scrupulous family member. Thanks.
yeah, thanks to Jimmy!
I am the “reader” who wrote. I forgot to mention that I am from Canada. Unfortunately, the legal provisions of fair use in Canada seem to me less generous than in the U.S.
Fortunately, I can turn to the rest of Jimmy’s great analysis for help.
Copyright violation is not theft because intellectual property is not property. Property refers to material objects, not ideas. If a man prints a book, it is his property. If he sells it to you, and you have bought it, it is now your property. You can do whatever you want with it. Read it, burn it, use it as a doorstop. Or copy it. If you want to photocopy each page and upload it to the internet to share it with the world then you can. It is your book.
Rather it is the enforcement of copyright law that is theft. Copyright law attempts to use the force of law to illegitimately restrict what you can do with your own property. You may have bought a book, but it is still the author of the text in the book that really controls it. The author is attempting to illegitimately control how you use your property, and he is using the coercion of law to do so. This is done to manufacture scarcity in the realm of ideas, and to create an artificial monopoly of production and sale.
You don’t have to worry about “substantially affecting” the income of someone who claims to have copyrighted an idea, because noone is entitled to income. Business lose substantial income all the time because competitors offer the same products and services at lower prices. Just because you are the first person to come up with an idea does not mean you are entitled to profit from it, or that you can prevent other people from doing so.
The existence of copyright has always favored the wealthy over the poor, as the wealthy are always quick to buy up such rights and horde them against the masses. Thus we see the consolidation of business, with the mass media in the hands of a few rich men who control most of what the populous sees. This takes the control of information away from localities, damaging subsidiarity and weakening the bonds that exist between families and communities. And it destroys culture, turning it into a commercial affair controlled by a few profiteers who care only to increase their own wealth.
Catholics cannot defend the existence of copyright law. Humans cannot own ideas. These are the province of God. By attempting to restrict how and when people can share or express ideas men overstep their bounds and infringe of the authority of the divine. Copyright only impoverishes a society, telling people that they cannot share knowledge they have acquired, because another person does not wish them to do so, despite the fact that in so doing they are neither depriving said person of anything, nor infringing on his property in any way.
Copyright is not found in natural law. Neither is it an invention of the Christian faith. It stems from a philosophy of entitlement that people can somehow control ideas, and prevent their dissemination. Such a philosophy find its genesis in avarice, arising from the putrid sewer of liberalism that only teaches people to care about increasing their own power and influence in the world. It is illegitimate and any law respecting it should be abolished.
“story telling” used to be a pretty good job, till people like randolph carter came along.
Randolph,
Catholic teaching recognizes the right to private ownership of property and other goods. This right to ownership is not limited to physical objects:
Property rights, however, are not absolute:
The Holy See recognizes the legitimacy of intellectual property rights, subject to limitations imposed by higher moral principles, such as serving the common good of humanity:
The Holy See has also recognized that the expanding use of the internet has led to particular questions regarding intellectual property and the public domain:
Copyright is not found in natural law.
Of course it is. “The labourer is worthy of his hire.” Exploiting the fruits of someone’s labor without recompense is an injustice.
@Fr. Terry Donahue, CC
Catholic teaching recognizes the right to private ownership of property and other goods. This right to ownership is not limited to physical objects:
I see nothing in Centesimus Annus that would support the legitimacy of IP laws. In it His Holiness attempts to discern the cause for the disparity between the poor the rich. He is not stating that “know-how, technology and skill” is property, but that those who posses such knowledge have a competitive edge, and this brings them wealth, whereas the poor of the world have no such knowledge, which keeps them poor. I would actually argue that IP laws compound this problem.
The Holy See recognizes the legitimacy of intellectual property rights
The document you quote, a letter from Mons. Diarmuid Martin to the World Trade Organization, does not make a positive case for the legitimacy of IP. Rather the letter assumes its existence and chiefly is concerned with limiting its scope with regards to where it might infringe on human dignity. The closest the letter comes to making an active endorsement of IP is when Mons. Martin writes: It must, of course, be recognized […] that IP protection is necessary for progress and for the just compensation of researchers and producers. But this is a throwaway statement. The letter does not back up these claims nor does it attempt to ground them in the traditional teachings of the church. The letter goes on to state:
Hence, whenever there is a conflict between property rights, on the one hand, and […] the common good, on the other, property rights should be moderated
And my argument is that IP laws do not serve the common good in anyway, and rather actively harm it.
The Holy See has also recognized that the expanding use of the internet has led to particular questions regarding intellectual property and the public domain:
This document you quote, a statement from the Pontifical Council on Social Communications, once again assumes the existence of IP, without attempting to make any argument that IP either serves the common good, or attempting to defend the morality of such laws with respect to the traditional teachings of the Christian faith.
If you can in fact make a positive case that the existence of IP laws serves the common good in the same way that material property laws do, then please do so. However, none of the documents quoted here support such a case.
Re: the necessity to judge how an unlicensed copy affects the income of the copright holder, I don’t see how this could ever be done, primarily because it’s impossible to say how many of those who would take a copy for free would be willing to pay for it, or how much they would pay.
I’ve seen studies that suggest that even in the case of major blockbusters, the groups of those who pay and those who copy are generally distinct subcultures. Preventing a member of the latter group from receiving a unlicensed copy does nothing to make him seek a licensed copy.
@Mary
Copyright is not found in natural law.
Of course it is.
No, it isn’t. At least it doesn’t seem to be much present in any of the civilizations throughout all of history, whether pagan or Christian (excluding our own, of course).
“The labourer is worthy of his hire.”
Yes, this is true. Employers must pay their employees a previously agreed upon amount. Not that this applies to copyright in any way. You are not commissioning or otherwise employing most novelists, musicians, or filmmakers to make the works they make. Why, then, should they be entitled to your money, or anyone’s for that matter?
Exploiting the fruits of someone’s labor without recompense is an injustice.
What does this even mean? “Exploiting the fruits of someone’s labor”? What exploiting? What fruits? Do you mean to say that if a man blazes a trail through a forest, and a day later you walk that same trail, that he is entitled to your money, because you have “exploited the fruits of his labor”? If a guy half a town away fires off fireworks into the sky, and you look out your window at the pyrotechnics display, does this mean he is entitled to your money. If a new church building is built in town, and you pass by it on the street and admire its sublime architecture, do you owe the architect recompense? If a neighbor plants a tree in his lawn by the sidewalk, and you pause for a second to cool off in its shade, do you owe him money? If you wake up one morning to find that someone has mowed your lawn, and the guy is standing on your doorstep demanding that you pay him for doing so, even though you never commissioned him to do so, do you have to pay him? If you forgo buying a book new, but rather buy a second hand copy, so that the author doesn’t receive any payment, are you, by reading this book, exploiting the fruits of his labor? How is that any different from, say, torrenting an ebook copy of the same book?
I would appreciate it if you could define just what you mean by “Exploiting the fruits of someone’s labor” and why doing so “without recompense is an injustice”.
It’s good to know that Pope John Paul II, as quoted by Father Donahue, got it wrong.
Jimmy, right under the copyright law section you quoted, there is also this:
“In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include — […](2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copy-righted work as a whole; and (4)…”
Could you explain further how items 2+3 affect the discussion. Maybe making 20 copies of one article in a scientific journal is fair use, but is 20 copies of a science textbook the same; how about 60 copies (three classes) of two articles? Has case law established guidelines for “amount and substantiality” quoted in item 3? You can say “common sense” to me – but I’m sincerely very clueless.
Jimmy, I’m afraid, you have not been as clear on this as you could have.
Do you mean to say that if a man blazes a trail through a forest, and a day later you walk that same trail, that he is entitled to your money, because you have “exploited the fruits of his labor” … If you forgo buying a book new, but rather buy a second hand copy, so that the author doesn’t receive any payment, are you, by reading this book, exploiting the fruits of his labor? How is that any different from, say, torrenting an ebook copy of the same book?
The difference is the agreements you make (or at least implicitly agree to by accepting the authority of the laws of the government you live under) when purchasing the book. You’ve made no agreements with the man who blazes a trail through the woods, so he cannot ask you for money (unless the trail is on his land or something like that).
When it comes to books. The author sells his work to the publisher under an agreement that he gets paid for every copy they publish. The publisher sells to a wholesaler who in turn sells the books to retailers both of whom agree to abide by the contract between the publisher and author and not copy the books. The government has decided to honor these agreements everywhere through copyright laws (they may be prudent or imprudent but don’t see anything morally evil in them). When you buy a book you’re basically buying the ink and paper but not the ideas contained it – when you sell a used book you sell the ink and paper, that’s why it’s perfectly legal to sell used books. I work for a company who rents books, once we buy a copy of a book we can rent it to as many people as we want. What we can’t do is buy one book and make 10 copies of it to rent to 10 times as people.
If you don’t like it, make an agreement with owner of the copyright so you can do whatever you want with whatever you’re buying. My wife and I did that with our wedding pictures. Now we print them out at Target, post them on Flickr, make collages for family members, etc.
I can imagine that not having copyright laws might actually inhibit the flow of information rather than free it up. Let’s say an author writes a book and knows that anyone he sells it to might start copying it and publishing it themselves. He’s going to charge a whole heck of a lot for one copy of his book – it could be his only paycheck from it. The current system isn’t perfect, but it’s probably better than nothing.
Father Donahue makes a good point with his quotes. The problem seems that immaterial copyright law is long since gone beyond protecting the rights of the artist to exploiting works of art and harming common good. For example in my home country a teacher cannot read a Harry Potter to children is a class room without it being a violation of copyright. Also I couldn’t borrow the same book to my friend without violation of law.
And also the fact that in some countries you can own genes and patent living creatures. This kind of thing is why many in here are starting to get a bit upset with the copyright law to a point where many, me included, are starting to think that it is an unjust law that should be restructured in ways that make it better for common good. Now it is valid for artist life time and 75 years after his/her death. To be just it should be valid artist life time. Now artist can sell his right to a company (very common). To be just it immaterial copyright should always be held by the artist. Just a couple of examples.
Brian said: “The author sells his work to the publisher under an agreement that he gets paid for every copy they publish. ”
The problem is that artists actually cannot refuse to sell if they want their books, music or whatever else to be published. This is immoral practice by the production companies where they exploit their position of power against the artist. That is also why the immaterial copyright law should be restructured to be such that artist always holds the right for his or her own work. That would be right, and that would make the artist able to enjoy the fruits of his or her labor.
One more comment look at this from CCC 2408: “The seventh commandment forbids theft, that is, usurping another’s property against the reasonable will of the owner.” (This was in the article).
If an artist is in a situation where is publish your book and sell me the right or don’t publish reasonable will of the artist doesn’t really exist. That would mean that publishing companies are stealing artist from their copyright.
P.S Sorry for 3 posts in a row.. i’ll stop here..
For example in my home country a teacher cannot read a Harry Potter to children is a class room without it being a violation of copyright.
Evidence?
Also I couldn’t borrow the same book to my friend without violation of law.
Evidence?
The problem is that artists actually cannot refuse to sell if they want their books, music or whatever else to be published.
There are plenty of self-publishing options out there. (Not that I recommend them, but if you object to the contract, you do have options.)
I’m not as disturbed by copyright law as I am by patent law. Fair use is codified, and can cover a whole mess of situations, so long as they are “fair.” This is something I spent some time on recently, when I was preparing to perform music for a graduation. Also, the four-point test mentioned above doesn’t have to have every single point satisfied to be considered “fair.”
I’m more upset about patent law, particularly the patenting of “methods” which has allowed the rise of software patents and business method patents.
mie, you make good points. I guess I was describing copyright laws in principle and you point out problems with the way they’re practiced. I agree that the examples you cite appear to be abuses and am much more sympathetic to arguments concerning the prudence and practicality of copyright laws than ones that claim such laws are philosophically illogical and un-Catholic.
I’d imagine that from a philosophical standpoint it’s less absurd to believe that we can own ideas than we can own physical property. No human in history has created any matter, but we all create ideas. Why do we so easily think we can rightfully own materially things which we did not create, but not ideas which we did. (I’m not saying we shouldn’t own property, I’m just showing that given our general acceptance of property laws there’s no reason why we can’t have laws protecting the ownership of ideas)
Why do we so easily think we can rightfully own materially things which we did not create, but not ideas which we did?
I think that’s a great question, actually, even though you probably meant it rhetorically. The reasons commonly given in defense of procurement of private property (e.g. ST II-II q. 66 a. 2) all seem to presuppose the limitations of matter and the stewardship of limited resources. Are any of them sound when applied to things immaterial and infinitely reproducable?
Mary the evidence is based upon the law. In the teacher case it would be public performance which is denied by copyright law (if a permission is not asked) and in the borrowing to friend case it would be “to sell or assign these rights to others”. That is from Wikipedia. Public performance is that which is outside of the circle of friends. The examples are not from real cases but they are true according to the law. (I looked it up from wiki international standard copyright law because my country laws are written in Finnish, direct borrowing it in English blog seems kind of out of place.)
Mary said: “There are plenty of self-publishing options out there. (Not that I recommend them, but if you object to the contract, you do have options.)”
You are right! There are but if you want to sell more than 10 copies it is probably not a good option. And that is the problem. The artist does not have bargaining power on this issue. Which they should have.
P.S. Note that I do not object the copyright law but only think that it should be fair to the artist and to the common good. I do object the way big corporations are taking advantage of it.
Do you mean to say that if a man blazes a trail through a forest, and a day later you walk that same trail, that he is entitled to your money, because you have “exploited the fruits of his labor”
He’s certainly entitled to stop you from using that trail if you don’t pay a fee, if he owns the forest or has such an agreement with the property owner.
I think that’s a great question, actually, even though you probably meant it rhetorically. The reasons commonly given in defense of procurement of private property (e.g. ST II-II q. 66 a. 2) all seem to presuppose the limitations of matter and the stewardship of limited resources. Are any of them sound when applied to things immaterial and infinitely reproducable?
Well we’re getting deep. I guess the question is are ideas infinitely reproducible? I would say no, there’s only one idea but many ways to communicate it. I can print a million copies of Hamlet, but each book isn’t the story itself – it’s the vehicle for communicating the story. The story exists apart from ink, actors, and even the neurons firing in Shakespeare’s brain. Destroying all the copies of Hamlet wouldn’t destroy the story of Hamlet. It’s still one story and it took Shakespeare time and effort to create it.
If we enjoy having men like Shakespeare come up with stories than it’s helpful to have some way to compensate authors for their time and effort. I guess this really isn’t too far removed from how we pay for material things. Most of the time when you buy something you’re not paying for the mere value of the particles that make it up – you’re paying for the time and effort that went into tranforming an ash tree into a Louisville Slugger or cow into a medium-rare steak. If we pay for the time and effort that goes into making material objects, why not do the same for immaterial?
Daniel said: “I’m more upset about patent law, particularly the patenting of “methods” which has allowed the rise of software patents and business method patents.”
I agree.
Brian said: ” I agree that the examples you cite appear to be abuses and am much more sympathetic to arguments concerning the prudence and practicality of copyright laws than ones that claim such laws are philosophically illogical and un-Catholic.”
I agree again. But i do think modern day business world has taken a step too far with it. Especially what comes to artist rights on their own product. To me the fact that the have a fair chance of success there is a need to sell your rights completely away is a tragedy. According to my understanding this is the case in USA as well as it especially applies to my home country. In here self publishing or anything like that is not really an option at all.
Brian you make a great point in your post!
I am not a philosophy but a business student so from my perspective I would have to also account that being infinitely reproducible is not the issue. Rather the issue is who pays to cost of producing the idea in the first place. I suppose Shakespeare made money from his plays. Let’s say if he would had to work 12 hours a day 6 days a week to make a living would he have written Hamlet?
I know there are people who wouldn’t care about covering the costs but I do think most of the artists do actually care about covering at least partly the costs of producing their product.
By the way John C. Wright has been debating materialists on his blog about whether non-material things (like ideas or a Supreme Being) actually exist and it influenced what I’ve written here. It’s interesting reading http://johncwright.livejournal.com/
Having had to deal with copyright issues fairly extensively, let me point out that ideas are not copyrightable or else mathematicians could copyright their formulae! What is copyrightable is the expression of the idea. I cannot copyright the idea of DNA, but I can copyright my drawing of DNA. If you want to create your own, individual idea of what DNA lookes like, then copyright cannot stop you, but you cannot have access to mine without my permission. Unfortunately, in printed works, in order to create a similar copy of my written or drawn work, you first have to use my work, if you did not independently discover it.
I, independently, did some research a few years ago which another person beat me to publishing. I cannot use his graphs in an article I write without his permission, but I can use my graphs if I independently create them (in my case, probably using a different piece of software).
I am not a fan of the ways copyright laws have been written (in my opinion, they favor longevity of copyright over public need – such as in the Mickey Mouse case), but no one owns ideas and ideas are not intellectual property. The law, in my opinion, is a bit nebulous, here and somewhat contradictory, since what does the brain produce, except ideas? Since an idea cannot be intellectual property, since ideas are excluded from copyright, and since the brain only produces ideas, then in theory, there should be not such a thing as intellectual property attaching to the brain. Intellectual property can only be the expression of an ideas, but then, strictly speaking, that is not merely intellectual.
No more time. Must go eat dinner 🙂 I am at a conference this week, so please, have pity on lambasting my comments. I have to use the computers at the university I am at and they have strict time limits.
Will type more as I am able.
The Chicken
Copyright is an essential mechanism for securing and supporting the ideas of the people. It is neither elitist nor propaganda for the affluent. It secures a profession, it secures quality, and it secures independent thinking. The rights of the collective do not outweigh the rights of the individual.
By the “creative commons” folks philosophy, a world without copyright, a person would be allowed to take, for instance, the Encyclopedia of Catholic Teaching, purchase it, copy it, amend it with a passage that scandalizes the Virgin Mary, and post it to the internet without noting the amendment to the text and thus scandalizing the original editors of the book.
In addition, copyright protects a profession. If all works were uncopyrighted and therefore the property of anyone who purchased them, they would have no protection. That is, an author who writes a novel is signed to a publisher who invests thousands of dollars in development, thousands of dollars in production, thousands of dollars in storage, thousands of dollars in distribution. Yet, per previous commenter, the purchaser of said book can post it to the internet for free to all. Collective rights! Yet, under these conditions, no books of quality would be published because the authors time-investment and the publishers cost-investment would not be protected.
The creative commons folks love open access to copyrighted material because at the moment there is still copyrighted material of great quality. It is easy to steal great works. It is far more difficult to create them. Make them simply a mechanism of the collective good and you will see the number of quality books published diminish at a rate that will make us look like a third world country. Meanwhile, under copyright, the United States has seen an explosion of quality works unheralded in history. Apparently, copyright has yet to truly infringe on the common good.
Lastly, copyright is protected in the Constitution of the United States of America. Paraphrasing – that Congress shall grant copyright for a limited time. I’m all for arguments about how limited that time should be. Personally, I think it should end when the life of the author has passed. Nonetheless, copyright is an essential element in the passage of ideas.
@Brian Walden
When it comes to books. The author sells his work to the publisher under an agreement that he gets paid for every copy they publish.
Yes, such an agreement would be binding between the publisher and the authoer.
The publisher sells to a wholesaler who in turn sells the books to retailers both of whom agree to abide by the contract between the publisher and author and not copy the books.
Yes, such an agreement would be binding on the wholesalers and retailers.
The government has decided to honor these agreements everywhere through copyright laws
No, this is false. Ordinary contract law would be sufficient for the government to honor the agreements that exist between an author and a publisher, or between a publisher and a wholesaler or retailer. Copyright law does not just affect the people who were involved with such agreements. It affects everyone in the entire society, including the vast majority of people who were never party to any such agreement.
I can imagine that not having copyright laws might actually inhibit the flow of information rather than free it up. Let’s say an author writes a book and knows that anyone he sells it to might start copying it and publishing it themselves. He’s going to charge a whole heck of a lot for one copy of his book – it could be his only paycheck from it.
You do of course realize that only a small fraction of the authors whose works are published actually make a living from their book sales. Likewise in times before copyright we did not see a dearth of creative works. You only have to look to the playwrights and poets of Greece, Rome, India, China, Medieval Europe, Arabia, etc. to see a tremendous outpouring of creativity. Amongst the educated classes were produced great works of literature and philosophy. Amongst the peasantry were circulated a vast wealth of poems, songs, and folktales. Very few of these people made a living from such works. The desire to create is innate in men, and independent of man’s capacity for greed. There are of course other ways to make money off writing aside from having a monopoly on the reproduction of text. I could elaborate on them, if you want me to.
I’d imagine that from a philosophical standpoint it’s less absurd to believe that we can own ideas than we can own physical property. No human in history has created any matter, but we all create ideas.
No, we don’t. All ideas — shapes, forms, sequences, sets and possibilities — have always existed, in the mind of God, who dwells beyond space and time. When you think you have “created” an idea, you have merely discovered something that was already known to the one who came before you.
Why do we so easily think we can rightfully own materially things which we did not create, but not ideas which we did.
Laws that protect private ownership of actual, material property serve the common good because such property is scarce. A farmer might grown turnips but if I come and take his turnips, he no longer has any turnips. I could steal your car, but this is wrong because it would deprive you of your car, impoverishing you. Copying an idea does not, however, deprive anyone of anything. If I copy the book an author wrote, he still has the idea of the book in his head, and his book is intact. Material objects are finite. This is part of the paucity of this world. We must not deprive men of the goods they have labored for. But then by copying an idea we are not depriving a man of his idea, or anything else.
If we enjoy having men like Shakespeare come up with stories than it’s helpful to have some way to compensate authors for their time and effort.
Of course you do realize there was no copyright in Shakespeare’s time.
If we pay for the time and effort that goes into making material objects, why not do the same for immaterial?
Oh joy, the labor theory of value. But in reality when we buy material objects we are freely giving money in exchange for said objects. We can’t just take them because that would deprive the seller of them and impoverish him. This doesn’t happen with ideas. Likewise simply because someone has expended labor to produce something does not mean he is entitled to money, or else you would have to buy everything that anyone has ever made, in order to compensate him for the effort it took him to make it.
@bill912
It’s good to know that Pope John Paul II, as quoted by Father Donahue, got it wrong.
Nowhere have I alleged that his Holiness was in error in anything, which is something that even a cursory examination of post would reveal. Kindly refrain from making such false accusations in the future.
@Mary
He’s certainly entitled to stop you from using that trail if you don’t pay a fee, if he owns the forest or has such an agreement with the property owner.
So if he doesn’t own the forest, or have such an agreement with the property owner, then he can’t? So then I’m free to exploit (by traversing) the fruits of his labor (the trail)? Does this fit your criteria for “exploiting the fruits of someone’s labor”. If not, why not? How do you define “the fruits of someone’s labor”? What, exactly, constitutes “exploiting” it?
@bklyn catholic
Copyright is an essential mechanism for securing and supporting the ideas of the people.
No it isn’t.
It is neither elitist nor propaganda for the affluent.
It is a grant of monopoly of production intended to benefit the few at the expense of the many.
It secures a profession, it secures quality, and it secures independent thinking.
It artificially creates a “profession” where there may be no market demand for it. It does not guarantee quality — the vast majority of works published are complete garbage. And it ensures that only those thoughts approved of by publishers will get printed.
The rights of the collective do not outweigh the rights of the individual.
False. The “rights of the individual” are a fiction invented by the diseased and decadent ideology of liberalism. In reality, there is only justice, and the duties that men have toward one another. The needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few. The common good outweighs the good of the individual. You cannot pass laws restricting how people may use their property if such restrictions do not serve the common good.
By the “creative commons” folks philosophy, a world without copyright, a person would be allowed to take, for instance, the Encyclopedia of Catholic Teaching, purchase it, copy it, amend it with a passage that scandalizes the Virgin Mary, and post it to the internet without noting the amendment to the text and thus scandalizing the original editors of the book.
No, that would be fraud. You can copy the Encyclopedia of Catholic Teaching all you want. You could even edit it. Attempting to pass off your edits as the work of the original author(s) would, however, be fraud. Just because you can copy something does not mean you can lie about it.
In addition, copyright protects a profession.
Copyright does protect a profession. The profession of the few at the expense of the many. Laws guaranteeing a right to an abortion protect the profession of abortionists. We could pass a law prohibiting the breathing-in of non-bottled air, which I’m sure would protect the profession of all those poor airsalesmen whose wares noone seems to ever purchase. Some people make it their profession to sit around all day and eat candy at the taxpayer’s expense. “Protecting a profession” is not the legitimate function of government unless it can be shown to serve the common good, which copyright does not.
Yet, under these conditions, no books of quality would be published because the authors time-investment and the publishers cost-investment would not be protected.
False. As long as there are people who wish to tell a story, or wish to pass on knowledge to others, they will have incentive to write books. And as long as they care that people like their books, they will endeavor to write good books. This was the case before copyright existed and will be the case long after it is gone. Least of all do I think that someone posting in a blog combox should go around saying that nothing “of quality would be published” if there were no financial incentive. Mr. Akin doesn’t seem to stand to gain much from running this blog. Do you find what he writes here to be of such uniform poor quality?
Meanwhile, under copyright, the United States has seen an explosion of quality works unheralded in history.
Ahahahahaha oh wow. Yeah man, sure. The collected works of Plato, Confucius, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Mencius, Homer, Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes? The Iliad? The Aeneid? Beowulf? Song of Roland? The Death of Arthur? Canterbury Tales? Romance of the Three Kingdoms? The Water Margin? Journey to the West? Dream of the Red Chamber? Mahabharata? Ramayana? Paradise Lost? Hamlet? The Bible? Hack work all of it! If only the people in those horrid and impoverished times had had the glory of copyright law, then they too might be able to enjoy such great works of American culture as The Da Vinci Code and Twilight! Oh yes we all remember the aching beauty of Danny Leiner’s epic coming of age drama Dude, Where’s My Car (a film surpassed only by what is certainly Leiner’s opus: Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle)! We’ve witnessed the despair, the triumph, the human drama of American Idol, seen the primal instincts and savage fierceness of man-returned-to-nature in Survivor! We’ve laughed at the comic genius of According to Jim and George Lopez. Oh yes, if only our ancestors had had copyright law, if only they had given grants of monopoly of production of books and texts, then perhaps they too might have been able to cast off the manacles of being burdened by such hackwork as Macbeth and Oedipus Rex, and embraced the true light of such edifying American entertainment as Plan 9 From Outerspace and Debbie Does Dallas. This is what Americans actually believe.
In reality America hasn’t produced much culture of any value for some time. Most of the great works of American literature were written in periods when the noose of IP was much more relaxed around the nation’s throat. Under copyright, the wealthy will buy up the rights to as many works as they can, and use those grants of monopoly to exclude others from the market, thus consolidating the nation’s media. And the large media conglomerates can effectively exclude others from entering the market, and when that fails, use their ill-gotten wealth to lobby politicians for new restrictions to the detriment of their competition. By prohibiting others from freely copying such materials, they create scarcity, and make culture into a consumer product. Thus sensationalism and appeals to the lowest common denominator become rampant. Anything to increase sales. Enjoy your mainstream media, propped up by copyright law, which will spread lies and slander about the Church. Enjoy your pornography industry. Enjoy your diseased cesspit of a culture that is incapable of thinking in terms of anything other than cheap political slogans and six-seconds news soundbites. It certainly is the pinnacle of all human endeavors. If only our forefathers could see us now, they would be moved to tears.
In the end copyright law only exists for the benefit of the few, who believe that they can restrict the free flow of information and lay claim to control the property of the entire country’s populace, all so that they can increase their own material wealth and power in this world. It does not serve the common good. There is no argument to be made for it. It is, at its heart, evil.
Randolph said: “Likewise simply because someone has expended labor to produce something does not mean he is entitled to money, or else you would have to buy everything that anyone has ever made, in order to compensate him for the effort it took him to make it.”
The problem with this is that in our current capitalistic method of exchanging goods and services you need to have a mechanism to at least cover the costs enough to make marginal income as high marginal costs. This is because otherwise there is no incentive in delivering those goods in capitalistic system.
The case then comes to be if you like capitalistic system or prefer socialist system. Most of those who support no copyright support socialist economic model because it can get rid of the need for copyright all together. It has other problems though.
I agree that copyright law currently has problems but getting rid of it completely is a problem too. Nobody has ever actually come with a system that would, inside a capitalist system, be able to support inventing ideas without copyright.
“Nowhere have I alleged that his Holiness was in error on anything, which is something that even a cursory examination of post would reveal. Kindly refrain from making such false accusations in the future.”
My error. The only language I understand is plain English.
Randolph Carter, is it your position that copyright laws are intrinsically wrong or merely impractical/imprudent?
Likewise simply because someone has expended labor to produce something does not mean he is entitled to money, or else you would have to buy everything that anyone has ever made, in order to compensate him for the effort it took him to make it.
Strawman.
You are of course perfectly free not to compensate the copyright owner. That is because you are perfectly free to do without the copyrighted material.
Interesting discussion. Thanks to everyone for your freely given thoughts. This combox seems to be living proof that people are often willing to put time and effort into worthwhile endeavors without any monetary compensation.
A question: If I recently came up with an idea for an application that would revolutionize the world of touchscreen cell phones, how can I release such an idea without it being snapped up by some cell phone manufacturer? Is there a way to make this idea universally available and prevent others from restricting its use? I can’t really afford a patent attorney right now. (I’ve looked into it.)
Of course you do realize there was no copyright in Shakespeare’s time.
Whereupon companies went to a great deal of effort to protect their plays. That’s why “bad quartos” are so bad.
Copyright, therefore, formalizes the relationship and brings in the long arm of the laws to enforce it, which is better all around. Because the copyright holder can bring in the law to enforce his rights, he does not have to stymie other people’s access just to enforce his rights. Just like laws against trespassing mean that you don’t have to build fences around your land which makes life more pleasant for everyone.
He’s not free to infringe on the owner’s property rights. And neither are you. Therefore all depends on the arrangement between him and that owner: work-for-hire, or royalty, or what.
Since, fortunately, a writer can not hijack a printing press to print his books, the case where he did infringe on the owner’s rights is moot.
This is why you are obliged to pay the book price even though only a percentage goes to the author. Otherwise you are infringing on the labor of the publisher that goes into printing it. Such as the slush pile readers.
You are right! There are but if you want to sell more than 10 copies it is probably not a good option.
And why not? Because the publishers have access to stuff you don’t, and you want access to them.
It’s not like writers are doing publishers a favor by letting them.
And that is the problem. The artist does not have bargaining power on this issue. Which they should have.
If in a certain area, you want to rent a home, but all the property owners only want to sell, is the problem that you don’t have any bargaining power? No, it’s that there’s a mismatch between what you want and what others want to sell.
Mary laws are meant to give fair treatment to the weaker party in negotiations. I don’t really understand where you are coming from. Are you saying we should let bigger ones bully the smaller ones just because they can? How about giving the smaller guys a brake.
You said yourself copyright is meant for artists to enjoy the fruits of their labor. I am saying most of them don’t because copyright has a problem.
Mary said: “If in a certain area, you want to rent a home, but all the property owners only want to sell, is the problem that you don’t have any bargaining power? No, it’s that there’s a mismatch between what you want and what others want to sell.”
This is a strawman. I didn’t say this. This implies that artist actually have a choice. Truth be told they don’t.
Mary said: “And why not? Because the publishers have access to stuff you don’t, and you want access to them.
It’s not like writers are doing publishers a favor by letting them.”
This is really not a good argument. It is emotional and actually doesn’t in anyway disproof of what I just said.
@ T Pelletier: Real quick — here’s a useful ebooklet on copyright for teachers in Canada:
http://www.cmec.ca/Publications/Lists/Publications/Attachments/12/copyrightmatters.pdf
The short version is, each province has a licence for its school systems to make copies, within certain limits.
@mie
Nobody has ever actually come with a system that would, inside a capitalist system, be able to support inventing ideas without copyright.
Are you certain of this? Leaving aside such labels as “capitalist” and “socialist”, do you mean to suggest that all the cultures in all the world refrained from “inventing ideas” before the advent of copyright? Did lack of copyright prevent Averroes from writing his treatises on optics? Did it prevent Avicenna from writing his treatises on medicine? Did it prevent Jean Buridan and the Oxford Calculators from writing on physics, or prevent Oresme from writing on mathematics? Did Plato and Confucius refrain from writing about philosophy because there was no copyright law? Did Augustine and Thomas Aquinas not produce any works of value because they weren’t given a monopoly on reproducing them? Or would the Medieval Middle East and Europe, Ancient Greece and Ancient China, all count as having non-capitalist systems?
It would seem to me that humans have always had the incentive to “invent ideas”, independent of any monetary incentive. In order to pass on knowledge to the next generation, men of all sorts have, since time immemorial, written books, and we see this reflected in everything from the histories of men like Thucydides and Josephus, to the mathematical and scientific treatises written by men like Euclid and Kepler, to the Fechtbücher of the German swordmasters. In addition to the desire to discover and pass on knowledge, men also have the desire to create innate in them. Human beings have always told stories and sang songs. The vast bodies of peasant folktales that come down to us from ancient days, and the great epic poems and sagas, are proof of this. People could have created such works because they desired only to tell a story. They could have also desired fame and the praise of their peers, which is also a sort of incentive. And truly great writers usually managed to secure a patron of some sort. So, that being said, I think it is false to say that “Nobody has ever actually come with a system that would, inside a capitalist system, be able to support inventing ideas without copyright” unless, of course, all the cultures of the premodern world were “non-capitalist”.
@Brian Walden
Randolph Carter, is it your position that copyright laws are intrinsically wrong or merely impractical/imprudent?
I think the existence of copyright law is intrinsically evil, yes. In so far as laws exist amongst men, they ought to serve the common good. All men have limits. So does the state. Laws protecting private property serve the common good. What a man possess he cannot be deprived of without just cause. This we call theft.
If a farmer grows turnips, not just anyone can be said to have the right to use them. This is because the turnips are scarce. If I eat the turnips, the farmer cannot eat the turnips. One turnip can’t exist in both our stomachs. And so, because material products are scarce, we permit people exclusive ownership of them. We say that the farmer, who has cultivated the turnips from the soil, has expended the time and effort to grown them, owns them to the exclusion of all others. Taking the turnips a farmer has grown without his consent deprives him of them, impoverishing him. So this is theft.
Copying the words in a book does not deprive the author of the book of anything. It doesn’t take the ideas contained in the book out of his head. It doesn’t even deprive him of his book. The only objection to copying the book the man could make would be that he never gave you permission to touch his book in the first place; but, if he has sold you the book, then it is your book, to do with as you please. We both have the idea and we both have the book that contains it and either of us intrudes upon the other.
Copyright law would attempt to restrict what you can do with your book. Yet there is no justification in doing so. For by copying the book you are not depriving the author of the book of anything. So there is no theft on your part. The author still has his ideas and his copies of the book. Thus any attempt to prohibit you from copying the book you have purchased represents unjustified aggression against you, the book’s owner. The Catechism, as quoted by Mr. Akin above, defines theft as “usurping another’s property against the reasonable will of the owner”. Commanding a man not to copy a book he has purchased, under penalty of being fined or imprisoned, despite the fact that doing so will bring no loss or harm to anyone, anywhere, certainly falls under the Catechism’s definition of theft. And theft is evil. And so copyright law is evil.
This is one of the primary objections to copyright law. There are others. Copyright law also effects a number of societal ills. But that is another story altogether.
@Sleeping Beastly
A question: If I recently came up with an idea for an application that would revolutionize the world of touchscreen cell phones, how can I release such an idea without it being snapped up by some cell phone manufacturer? Is there a way to make this idea universally available and prevent others from restricting its use? I can’t really afford a patent attorney right now. (I’ve looked into it.)
Unfortunately I have no idea if this is possible. I do know that in the realm of copyright there are things like the GNU and creative commons licenses, but patents are a different matter. I wish I could be of more help.
@Mary
He’s not free to infringe on the owner’s property rights. And neither are you.
Mary, you do a splendid job of evading the matter at hand. I asked you whether or not traversing a trail a man had carved out in a forest would qualify under your definition of “exploiting the fruits of someone’s labor”. You change the subject to presuppose that another person owns the forest, and went off on some tangent about property rights that had nothing to do with the original question I posed. You still have yet to define what you mean by “exploiting the fruits of someone’s labor”. I am mindful of your limitations as a woman, but when we men have arguments we like to use this thing called “logic”. And it is not possible for an argument to be logical unless all parties in the argument agree on the definition of terms. Now I have already asked you to define what you mean by “exploiting the fruits of someone’s labor”. I ask you again to please define this phrase. I will not respond to any of your other points until you do so. Stop avoiding the question.
@Bill912
My error. The only language I understand is plain English.
Do you think you’re being clever or something? Truly the only English you understand must be plain indeed. Perhaps you are afflicted by some acute mental deficiency that prohibits you from comprehending the meaning of the words I have written? You said in response to my post that “It’s good to know that Pope John Paul II, as quoted by Father Donahue, got it wrong.” But no part of anything I have posted here, in this combox, has in anyway, shape or form claimed that His Holiness Pope John Paul II was in error about anything whatsoever. But here I’ll give you a chance to prove your mental competency. Go ahead and quote the part of my post where I alleged that John Paul II “got it wrong” about anything. Either do so, or at least have the decency to apologize for speaking out on a matter that is clearly beyond your ability to comprehend.
Randolph said: “r would the Medieval Middle East and Europe, Ancient Greece and Ancient China, all count as having non-capitalist systems?”
Well the capitalist system and its theory being only about 200 to 600 years old it would seem likely (I would say it is 200 years old because on the first 400 years there is no real capital and only monarchy ruling over it). Most of those systems are monarchies where certain people like Sokrates, Plato and st. Thomas Aquinas can actually survive entirely without making any money which relieved them to invent. The point of the copyright is that it enables more people to actually invent and it also introduces a system where the inventor can gets his marginal costs to the level of marginal income. Please tell me another system as better than this?
Mary, sorry I misunderstood your point on: “If in a certain area, you want to rent a home, but all the property owners only want to sell, is the problem that you don’t have any bargaining power? No, it’s that there’s a mismatch between what you want and what others want to sell.”
But it is still a strawmana argument. Because in this case the market mechanism takes care that when enough people want to rent a home there will be renting homes available. Whereas the problem with the centralization of publishing companies and record labels is that the market mechanism stops working the way it is supposed to.
Randolph Carter,
While I like many of the points you make, I’d also like to ask you to please refrain from condescension and ridicule. In order to share ideas effectively, one must share them logically and courteously. Mary has been courteous to you since you first started posting here, and it costs you nothing to reciprocate. It also costs you nothing to refrain from escalating the snark war with Bill912. If I might be so bold as to suggest it, apologies are a little like intellectual property, in that handing a couple out would not impoverish you at all.
Our modern capitalist world is full of examples of people who cheerfully give their time, attention, and creative energy to projects that will not enrich them financially. I have seen poetry slams and music performances put on for free. I have seen public stair railings carved into beautiful sculptures by anonymous whittlers. I have seen thousands of open-source programs and applications run on free operating systems. I can point to a musician and a scholar who are both happy to make their works available online for free download.
Not only that, but I have seen many works of art and genius commissioned by private donors and provided for free to the public, including music festivals, fireworks displays, and private/public art galleries.
So yes, there are plenty of people willing to share the fruits of their minds with others for no monetary compensation, even in a capitalist society.
Sleeping beastly said: “So yes, there are plenty of people willing to share the fruits of their minds with others for no monetary compensation, even in a capitalist society.”
This is true. But it doesn’t mean that only relying on this one method is as effective as giving also the possibility for financial success. The system of no copyright would effectively rely only on this but it doesn’t enable anybody to do it full time. Another problem is that let’s say CCC would not have any copyright that would mean anybody could alter it, stamp it as official and sell it as the Catholic Church Catechism, without any possibility for legal consequences.
P.S. Sorry if I have sounded anyway rude on this blog. I do not mean to. If anybody feels like that please tell me and I will try to use different ways to express things in a nicer way.
[quote]I am mindful of your limitations as a woman, but when we men have arguments we like to use this thing called “logic”. [/quote]
And with that statement you have completely undercut any pretense to logic or reason you claim. Such a statement is obnoxious, offensive, and serves no purpose whatsoever except to be rude. Your inability to defend your position without resorting to insults speaks volumes about the validity of your opinion.
I think the existence of copyright law is intrinsically evil, yes.
Out of curiosity has the Church taught anything one way or the other about this?
You’ve said that a man can make an agreement with someone to publish his book so that he is paid for every copy. You’ve also said that the author, publisher, and people involved in selling the book can work together to make similar arrangements. Why then is it wrong for a society to apply this contract to all similar transactions?
You said: “The only objection to copying the book the man could make would be that he never gave you permission to touch his book in the first place; but, if he has sold you the book, then it is your book, to do with as you please.”
But he never did give you permission to do with it as you please. Living in a nation with copyright laws you implicitly agreed that you wouldn’t make copies of it and profit off of them when you purchased the book. Whether or not ideas can be owned is an interesting philosophical discussion, but I don’t think it really matters. The concept of ideas get in the way. When you buy a house, you can’t do whatever you want with the land. There legal restrictions on how high you can build a fence or how overgrown you’re allowed to let your yard get. Likewise when you buy a book there are restrictions on what you can do with it. If it’s not intrinsically wrong to limit what a man can do with his land, why is it intrinsically wrong to limit what he can do with a book or CD?
mie,
A society can have laws against fraud and libel without having copyright laws. Someone might reprint the catechism in a mangled form, but if they tried to pass it off as official Church doctrine, then the crime would have to do more with deception than with theft.
And, for what it’s worth, I don’t think you came across as rude in any way.
This implies that artist actually have a choice. Truth be told they don’t.
truth be told, they do. They just don’t like them.
No private citizen is obliged to give another choices that the other likes.
RANDOLPH CARTER, THIS IS A RULE 1 WARNING. YOU CANNOT SAY THINGS LIKE THE FOLLOWING WITHOUT IT BEING RUDE.
Randolph Carter, here’s a tip: don’t say anything to a woman that you wouldn’t say to your own mother — or the Blessed Mother.
“don’t say anything to a woman that you wouldn’t say to your own mother — or the Blessed Mother.”
Good advice-as far as it can go. After all, men have said and will say things to women that they wouldn’t say to their mothers. “Will you marry me” comes to mind. 😀
Sleeping Beastly said: “A society can have laws against fraud and libel without having copyright laws.”
You are right to an extent but actually I think this would be quite hard to implement in the case of CCC. The problem becomes which one is right and how to proof that for example the Catholic Church has the right to say its version is the official version. What if somebody else claims that their version is the official version of the CCC and that the Catholic Church is mistaken. Without copyright this is the same problem with any movie, book or a CD.
And I don’t think that saying just because the Catholic Church says so is really legally binding. Also saying because the Catholic Church published it first really relevant point without copyright. This to me is one of the biggest problems with the no copyright advocates policy. The other one being the cost issue.
I have heard good arguments that the existence of copyright law is against the universal destination of goods.
It is after all a created system of property that would not naturally exist without legislation to promote its existence. This would make it not directly based on the natural moral law. It is an artificially created shortage, when normally people would freely be able to access the largess without the legislation. Indeed, our very memories in a certain sense violate the copyright law.
I do not think abolishing copyright law would harm society, I believe it would overall benefit the common man. However in regards to the current state of things.
In the past we have even seen slavery as part of civil law and accepted by the Church, and I believe as Catholics it is traditionally understood we may not violate civil law without sin. . even the smallest civil laws. . . However unappealing this is to the American consciousness, and unintended by American legislation itself. It is very Catholic to be obedient.
Recently the Church appears to have been making more use of copyright law itself, too, however unfortunate this may be for those on the Internet who wish to share her texts.
I doubt we’ll have any Church pronouncements on the injustice of copyright law due to this. And so, without a definitive judgement of it being unjust, and the law being under pain of sin, it does not appear a Catholic can in good conscience take the risk of violating copyright law — however much one might wish it were not so.
Glad to hear if anyone can prove otherwise. But it would likely take an authoritative arguement (quoting the Church) not just some deductive reasoning to truly prove it.
I believe that the current copyright laws, as they exist in the U.S. give way too much power to the copyright holder and have effectively starved the public domain, contrary to the social justice principle of the universal destination of goods.
How did this happen? The Copyright Term Extension Acts of 1831, 1909, 1962-74, 1976, and 1998 increased the original length of the term of copyright from 28 years (in 1790) to 42, 55, 75, 94, and 115 years respectively! For a cool graph of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
I have similar problems with the way patents have been extended into domains with shorter product cycles (i.e. software) and reproductive mechanisms (i.e. plant and animal genes).
That being said, I don’t think the solution is to eliminate copyrights & patents wholesale. While it is true that many creative works can and have been produced without the need for copyright protection, there are some worthy works of large scale creativity that would be significantly hampered by the total absence of copyright protection.
For example, if the end product were freely distributable by anyone, it would be difficult to create the movie The Passion of the Christ. Even if you bound every link of the distribution chain by legal contracts, as soon as one person not bound by such contracts got a hold of a copy, they would legally be able to immediately distribute it widely for profit with no compensation given to the creators.
Producers of movies count on future revenue from literally millions of viewers (in theaters and on DVD) in order to recoup the costs of hundreds of artists and technicians working for months to produce the work.
For such works, I think a copyright with a term length of even 10 years would be sufficient to allow recouping of costs, while consistently putting a large amount of fairly recent content into the public domain, enabling access to those without the means to purchase. One could even get more nuanced with some copyright restrictions being released sooner than others, allowing copying of a movie after X years, while restricting the use of the characters for X+10 years, giving the original creator the opportunity to make a sequel, etc.
Fr. Donahue’s solution is, essentially, the same one I came to while thinking about this problem. Copyright law is not, as it stands right now, rational, in my opinion. One thing is for sure, current copyright laws were not written by poor people trying to make a living; they were written by rich people trying to hold onto an empire.
If one were to copyright mathematics, say, and charge a price for using a theorem, computers would not exist…hmmm. Something to think about.
The Chicken
Two questions: 1) Should the person in the original post carefully raise his concerns with his boss? Perhaps “I am made somewhat uncomfortable by the apparent copyright violations by some of the things I have copied for the teachers. Could we remind them in some way what we may and may not legally copy?”
2) I homeschool my children, so I am responsible for deciding what to copy or not. Some people make it easy – the work explicitly states that you may copy within a family or for classroom use. In other cases, it is cheaper to buy another book than copy it (160 page student book for $4.95). One gives the address to mail donations if you buy it used and the fee for copying for more than one classroom/family.
But some explicitly say it cannot be copied for use by more than one student. I assume I should hold myself bound by that (and not weasel out of it by covering the pages with sideloading sheet protectors and then erase them like someone once suggested on an e-list).
Does it make a difference if I would be willing to buy it, but they won’t sell it to me? Out of print is more common, but in one case, the company revised their worksheets. I want to use parts of both the old and new, but they won’t sell me the old ones anymore. I bought one set of the old ones before they stopped selling them, but I have 4 (and maybe more to come) younger children.
JW,
Certainly obedience to IP laws do not force us to break any of God’s laws, and so we ought to observe copyright and patent laws, just or otherwise.
Fr. Donahue,
While it is true that many creative works can and have been produced without the need for copyright protection, there are some worthy works of large scale creativity that would be significantly hampered by the total absence of copyright protection.
True enough. I just wonder whether they really outweigh the works that are stifled by such laws. Your compromise may be a good one, but I still wonder whether we would really lose much of value if we were to abandon IP law altogether. The Passion of the Christ is, in fact, a poor example. Gibson expected to lose millions on it, and produced it anyway as a labor of love and worship. The fact that the movie made a profit was a surprise to him. Were it not for copyright laws, I wouldn’t be surprised if the movie would have been made anyway.
RE:
>Certainly obedience to IP laws do not force us to break any of God’s laws, and so we ought to observe copyright and patent laws, just or otherwise.
Well.
I don’t know about that. I haven’t put my all into trying to make the case but I suspect a strong case can be made, it already has to a degree here above. Let’s take an example as directly parallel as we can think of it. Let’s say the printing press, before this, we cannot mass produce any books.
Get a patent on it, and give it the length of a current copyright. No one can use it, unless I sell it to you.
I sell the printing press to only a few people, and only a few people control the media in the world. They aren’t very moral either. So a flood of immoral writings, but nothing moral, and no recourse. Have to respect the law. But what if they were moral? It would still restrict all the moral content that no one else could reprint it.
This, on a smaller scale, is rather like what is done with copyright on a larger scale. The claim that what is copyrighted is original enough to deserve it is suspect too. We are not creators ultimately, we work with what is already there. And because someone legally writes a part of what is already there down in a particular arrangement, suddenly it is protected and no one else can — even if someone thought or wrote of it before, but simply didn’t copyright it.
It is artificial.. and.. artificial shortages.. are suspect.
If I gave all the water in the world to the control of a few people, and you could easily dig a well but I forbade it because it was ‘owned’ by those people, would that be just?
If I had a machine that whatever I popped into it, it copied, and so everybody could make an extra television — but televisions became copyrighted, so the machine forbidden.. would this be just and appropriate to the universal destination of all goods?
How about medicine? How about.. ideas?
That everytime I hear.. are copied in my head.. but I can’t put them down again to show anyone without breaking copyright.. Even if I have a perfect memory.
I can watch a show for free on the TV, screen out the commercials with a TIVO, and copy it to a tape for my own use.
But I can’t go download it on the internet and achieve the same exact result. A technicality. Not a directly moral law.
It is a very unnatural system, a case can be made it is unjust.. I just don’t know how strong a case..
We as worldly people think of authors, artists, and so forth as creating stuff and it is ‘their stuff’ because it is ‘their ideas’.. but the minute they share it.. someone else has those ideas too in that person’s head.. he wasn’t originally inspired with it but.. he didn’t sign a contract to seal off his memories either when he heard it..
And forcing him to do so is unnatural to say the least. All good inspiration is from God.. and there’s plenty evil from the opposite place..
Whatever we have isn’t truly our own.. the ownership is given for a reason.. for us to best care for it and distribute it..
If we don’t.. that can be quite immoral.. and there’s plenty to be said of the immorality of lovers of wealth in Catholic teaching.. though there’s also plenty said about private property being respected..
But is copyright something natural to private property or something artificial that is too much?
I have heard it is relatively new. Since it doesn’t have a long basis in tradition it can only exist properly antecedent to some other laws based in tradition.. but does it properly belong there.. What is the Church’s judgement? Shall I suspect she is just going with the flow, and hasn’t fully considered it yet?
In the end at least, we’re not talking about direct natural moral law ownership at all, only civilly created ownership, because copyright never existed for most of history, and is freely changed from no years, to ten years, to seventy years by governments and depending on where you are located either exists or doesn’t.
I suspect if enough Catholic thinkers wanted to make a strong moral case for taking down, they might succeed. Or might not. Because the Church’s history is replete with very stern laws we would not accept nowadays being long part of the civil law.
JW,
I wrote a rather long response to you, but didn’t really have anything new to say. An interesting question did come up, though.
My understanding of Catholic moral teaching is that we owe obedience to secular law, except where obedience to such laws would cause us to break God’s laws. Is there some sort of exception for certain types of unjust laws? For instance, if the law says I can’t sit in a certain area of a bus or use certain public facilities due to the color of my skin, is my civil disobedience to such laws justified? After all, I could quite easily choose to sit in the back of the bus or drink from the “colored” water fountain without breaking the moral law, couldn’t I?
What is the difference (if any) between breaking unjust segregation laws and breaking other types of unjust laws?
You do realize that no one asked the public what it thought about copyright extension? Congress, acting without mandate of any kind from the general public, but rather from big business, passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Extention Act. Greed, pure greed, dressed up as being helpful.
This is all unreal, in a way, since the original clause of the Constitution (Art.1 Sec. 8) says:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
How does copyright promote the progress of science? The Supreme Court justices, apparently, do not understand that the method of the, “Progress of Science”, discussed by the writers of the Constitution is not the method currently used. Back then, science consisted of, usually, single men working in isolation making discoveries from which they hoped to profit. If no one else could copy their data, they would have time to make something useful from their discovery.
Modern science relies on the availability of knowledge across the board, since, by the Duhem-Quine Theory, almost everything in science is now believed to be connected. To restrict the flow of knowledge prevents the progress of science. In my opinion, the Supreme Court has read something into the original intent of the law that was not there. The circumstances of the original law has changed and this is one rare instance where a strict interpretationalist will apply the law correctly. but, nevertheless, get it wrong.
For instance, I once wrote a musical work, a musical murder mystery, whose solution depended on being able to quote the melody of a standard (but old) Broadway song. The piece represented progress in the useful arts as defined by the Constitution, but I was unable to use the melody because ASCAP would not grant me permission. Clearly, the idea of the writers of the Constitution was not served.
I really think that the Supreme Court misunderstands that copyright is partially a sociological phenomenon and when society changes, the law must adapt. It has not. It is still stuck in the days of self-made science and art.
Oh, by the way…just got back from the conference…fifty-two hours on buses…little sleep. Any make of none sense might this.
The Chicken
TMC,
In my opinion, the Supreme Court has read something into the original intent of the law that was not there.
I am shocked! Shocked, I tell you!
Interesting story about the musical you wrote. I’m having similar problems trying to find a way to release my idea into the public without watching it get snapped up and restricted by some cell phone manufacturer. As it stands, the idea is languishing due to my not having the money to patent it or the knowledge to release it in a truly public fashion. Again, any thoughts would be welcome. It’s a revolutionary user interface for cell phones (and, I suppose, for computers as well) that I think makes touchscreen typing practical on a small surface. If I published the plans to my blog page, could I then use that to protect the public nature of the idea, assuming the page is published before anyone else slaps a patent on the idea?
The programming involved is fairly simple, and it shouldn’t take long to program different apps based on the design for use on Android, BlackBerry, and iPhone platforms.
I just came across this site which offers publication of ideas so as to enter them into the public domain, rendering them unpatentable. Does this look legit? It certainly looks affordable, but I’d be annoyed to send them an idea and a check only to find that they had patented the idea for private profit.
Sleeping Beauty,
This is not my area of expertise, and I almost regret posting lest I by entering into this discussion inappropriately encourage someone to regard something as not binding by law that really is, and so a sin. Anything I am saying I say with much disclaimer to my own ignorance.
I am still exploring this. It was a shock to my American nature to find out in the first place that Catholics are bound to civil law under pain of sin as a norm traditionally. Then again, America is hardly founded on traditional Catholic principles. And we are too casual about moral law generally, to even think of risking something that ‘might’ be sinful well, it is not a place you want to go in your conscience.
Still it startles me that civil law is like divine law and takes some getting used to. I understand the hierarchical monarchial view though, the Heavenly ordering of it all in authority. But to the subject..
There is an exception for unjust law. But.. in regards to -determining- whether it is an unjust law.. there appears to be a standard too, or at least for St. Thomas.. and that appears to be one where it isn’t the common person.
St. Thomas, whom in his Summa treats it here:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2096.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2097.htm
Article 6. Whether he who is under a law may act beside the letter of the law?
Since then the lawgiver cannot have in view every single case, he shapes the law according to what happens most frequently, by directing his attention to the common good. Wherefore if a case arise wherein the observance of that law would be hurtful to the general welfare, it should not be observed.
For instance, suppose that in a besieged city it be an established law that the gates of the city are to be kept closed, this is good for public welfare as a general rule: but, it were to happen that the enemy are in pursuit of certain citizens, who are defenders of the city, it would be a great loss to the city, if the gates were not opened to them: and so in that case the gates ought to be opened, contrary to the letter of the law, in order to maintain the common weal, which the lawgiver had in view.
Nevertheless it must be noted, that if the observance of the law according to the letter does not involve any sudden risk needing instant remedy, it is not competent for everyone to expound what is useful and what is not useful to the state: those alone can do this who are in authority, and who, on account of such like cases, have the power to dispense from the laws. If, however, the peril be so sudden as not to allow of the delay involved by referring the matter to authority, the mere necessity brings with it a dispensation, since necessity knows no law.
Now what does this mean for America?
Does the Vatican’s use of copyright law give it an imprimatur? Or might it in the future be condemned, rather like slavery or castrati?
We can’t risk sin. 🙂
Many people are no doubt tempted to break copyright because they want access to tons of worldly distractions in any case, when they would be better off putting it all aside for a more spiritual and less materialisitic life.
And many people may be too American and not enough Catholic in their manner of approaching how life and rules work.
JW,
My American sensibilities may be at the root of my confusion as well. And perhaps they’re what keeps me from being able to comprehend how disobedience to Jim Crow laws could ever be considered sinful.
I’d love to hear Jimmy’s take on this, especially since it seems to overlap some other questions I’ve had recently about law, justice, authority, obedience, and sin.
I confess that I understood very little of St. Thomas’ arguments. Perhaps I’m in greater need of sleep and prayer than of online discussion.
If I gave all the water in the world to the control of a few people, and you could easily dig a well but I forbade it because it was ‘owned’ by those people, would that be just?
If you were the only reason there was any water in the world — yes, certainly. For one thing, if we decreed you couldn’t sell the water rights, why would you go on making water?
In fact, sane people would laud and praise and load you with gifts because you are doing good stuff, not looking for a way to stop and discourage you.
Sleeping Beastly and J.W., your musings on obedience to civil law put me in mind of a distinction I learned in law school between two kinds of laws. Of course, I have forgotten the terms I was taught, but the basic division was between moral laws like not killing and not stealing, where intent is necessary for guilt, and statutory laws, like licensing and leashing one’s dog or not speeding, where it does not matter what your intent was. As I remember the discussion, the point was that the latter category were laws that governments had put into place for purposes of order/organization/consistency/whatever, with the understanding that these acts, such as failing to renew one’s car registration, were not inherently immoral (at least in the eyes of the law).
In other words, I wonder if our moral obligation to obey civil laws depends on or is related to this distinction in any way.
Where copyright fits in is not clear, to my mind. There is no question that some of the laws relating to intellectual property probably fall into the second category of things we must do not because it is necessarily morally right but because it was decided these laws were useful. On the other hand, there seems to be a moral element to stealing someone’s idea and profiting from it (or worse yet, presenting it as one’s own idea), especially if it affects the creator’s ability to use or enjoy or profit from that idea.
Dear Sleeping Beastly,
You wrote:
I’m having similar problems trying to find a way to release my idea into the public without watching it get snapped up and restricted by some cell phone manufacturer.
Easy as pie. Send your code to a publicly accessible code repository. Here is a discussion. Here is another. There are many other repositories. Other companies may write their own proprietary code that does what yours does, but the fact that the idea is out in the public forum allows others to use your code and reference it if they decide to change it.
The Chicken
Randolph Carter, I love you.