[...]Copying Is Not Theft? How About Forgery? Counterfeiting? Plagiarism? « J. Neil Schulman[...]…

Brian Singer:

Neil,
I was referring to this, “Remember: my first premise here is the libertarian premise of self-ownership. I own my name when it refers back to me, my biographical details, my resume, my accomplishments, my reputation, my personal expertise and taste.”

You caught me being sloppy, Brian. I’ve since gone back in and fixed it. Thanks for the heads up!

Brian Singer:

The one area that I would take exception with at this point is the idea that because you are a public figure, or because you earn your livelihood in creative pursuits, that you own your reputation. Your reputation exists in the minds of others solely. I have every right to stand up and publicly declare that I like your work, or that I don’t, and I can even go on to explain why. There is no difference between me standing up and saying J Neil Schulman is an awesome guy, or he’s a putz. Both are statements of my opinion. To say that you can claim some sort of property right in the thoughts of others holds no water.

Brian, reputation is what other people think of me. I don’t own that. Identity is the me they think of. I own that.

There’s no identity theft in unauthorized copying. Simply state that this is not an authorized copy — done. No possibility of confusion.

You could do the reverse and label the *authorized* copies as such, of course. We developed the Creator-Endorsed Mark for that purpose:

http://questioncopyright.org/creator_endorsed

Unauthorized copying is not fraud nor counterfeiting. This comment goes into detail:

http://questioncopyright.org/minute_memes/cint_release#comment-7187

Quoting from it:

“Fraud is different from copying. If you download a song and share it, there is no fraud — there may be copyright infringement, but no false claims are being made. On the other hand, if you remove the original author’s name from the song and put your own name there instead, that would be completely different — that would be fraud, of course (it would be plagiarism, which is a specific kind of fraud).

Likewise, if you make copies of my birth certificate, IDs, etc, and you keep them locked in a drawer in your house forever and no one else is ever confused by them, that’s actually okay. It’s not the copying that’s the issue there. But if you were to use that ID to open a bank account and cash checks meant for me, that’s different. It has nothing to do with copyright. The issue is simply that it’s lying.

No one here has ever advocated loosening laws that protect against fraud, or against medical privacy or things like that. But don’t confuse those issues with copyright.

Sometimes you’ll hear people say ‘Well, if copyright is so bad, how about I just start copying dollar bills! That would be okay too, right?’ Which is silly, of course — there’s a reason that no country has their copyright office policing counterfeit currency, and it’s that counterfeiting is fraud, not copyright infringement. A physical token of money is a claim on the issuing authority’s assets; to duplicate the claim token is just like duplicating someone’s birth certificate or ID: it is only useful to enable fraud, because all these tokens are indicators of value held somewhere else, rather than containing the value themselves. Thus when you make and circulate duplicates, you do not increase the total amount of value, and you actually decrease the amount of value per token (thus effectively stealing from everyone else who already has tokens, which is why counterfeiting is a crime). Contrast this with culture, where duplicating it does actually increase the total value in circulation, because more people are exposed to it.

Copying is not theft. It’s also not fraud. Fraud, on the other hand, may be enabled by copying certain kinds of things, but it’s not the copying itself that’s the fraud, it’s the subsequent lying, which the copies are merely used to bolster.”

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?created&&suggest&note_id=406258224817

And mirrored it more publicly on my blog:

http://humanadvancement.net/blog/index.php?itemid=250

It’s unhealthy to conflate the duplication of information with the theft of physical goods. That’s over-simplification.

It’s not identity theft. Nobody pretends to be you when they distribute your works illegally.

It is a contract violation. Most of the time, that contract is implicit to the buyer, and embodied in copyright law and judicial precedent. Sometimes, it’s made explicit when the author’s desires a contract substantially different from the implicit one. Creative Commons, GNU Public License, are examples of less restrictive, explicit licenses. Every time you install a piece of software or sign up on a website, you agree to a laundry list of conditions and terms of use that exemplify more restrictive, explicit licenses.

Most of these discussions revolve around what the body of existing copyright law is, isn’t, should, or shouldn’t be. But that cedes a lot of ground. Why let somebody else decide a huge chunk of terms for you. Why not set those terms for yourself, exactly as you want, in plain language that your customers can understand?

If you don’t think that’s possible, then I see two other options. [1] Wait for the government to “solve” the problem for you. For shorthand, I call this solution “wishful thinking”. Or [2] Acknowledge that information duplication is free and will happen, even when you really wish it wouldn’t. Predicate all your business decisions upon this fatalistic fact.

Some combination of custom licensing and fatalism is probably where most folks will eventually land.

Sure, but Mr Rolex could just go and buy one of the knockoffs himself, and now he *is* the aggrieved party. It’s still worth his while to address it because the misuse can undermine people’s trust in the real brand name, or simply as goodwill to potential customers. But there are ways to do it that do not involve prior restraint and demanding proof of innocence.

The point is that that *is* fraud, and whatever the details of who and how, it opens the door to legitimate enforcement in principle.

Your multitude of examples of people paying ludicrous amounts of money for “trash with cachet” is no argument either way on that issue, but rather illustrations of the maxim, “It’s morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money”.