Rick Falkvinge (Piratpartiet) to pp.international

Quoting rms (Richard Stallman)
> I agreed with the explicit poimts of their declaration, and I told
> them so privately -- while asking them please not to buy into the
> "intellectual property" propaganda term.
>
>

One of the perks of my job is that I get to do a lot of original
research and connect-the-dots work, especially regarding the
justifications and history of copyright laws.

When copyrights were originally conceived on May 4, 1557, they were a
censorship mechanism, pure and simple. Seeing how France's ban on the
printing press in 1535 had failed spectacularly, Queen Mary I of the
United Kingdom decided to unite with a local printing guild in London
and gave them exclusivity for the lucrative printing market, in return
for getting to nix anything headed for the presses. This was part of her
attempt to restore Catholicism to the UK, a quite repressive part of her
regime that earned her the nickname Bloody Mary.

(She died one year later. Copyright didn't.)

The Lobby usually omits this part of copyright history and begins their
history on April 10, 1710. However, copyright laws had already been in
effect between 1557 and 1695.

Anyway, I usually chalk up the "intellectual property" term as the
Lobby's first legal victory. As the monopoly expired in 1695 -- the
parliament after the so-called Glorious Revolution refused to renew it
and chose to have it expire -- the Lobby panicked and set out on a holy
quest to have monopoly privileges restored.

In this quest, they claimed to speak on behalf of writers, while in
reality, the scheme would only line their own pockets (and the absence
of actual writers in their campaign was notable).

They managed to get their monopoly powers back in the so-called Statute
of Anne, enacted in 1709 and taking effect on April 10, 1710. One
particularly nasty item is that they managed to classify this monopoly
as property, with the target of strengthening its protection --
classifying it as property would put the bill into Common Law, rather
that Case Law, which any judge could nullify.

Thus, the reason it's called Intellectual Property today is because of
the Lobby's first lobbying victory in rewiring the legal system for
their own financial benefit.

As RMS says: we should really not agree to that playing field. Just
saying "copyrights and patents" instead nullifies the notion of
property. Before audiences who will buy the rhetoric, use the term
"monopolies" instead, as these mechanisms are actually encroaching and
reducing property rights.

Cheers,
Rick

I found one mention of 'property' in the statue, and it wasn't a direct claim that ideas are property, but rather a reference to ideas as such while discussing another issue. I'm not sure how much can be made of this. AFAIK common law is not set by legislation, so I'm not sure what's meant here.

From what I understand from Wikipedia:

In Millar v Taylor 1769, it was ruled that
1/ there was pre-existing copy-right provided by common law, and
2/ the Statute of Anne did not nullify this, but rather supplemented it

In Donaldson v Beckett 1774 this was overturned, but there is controversy over whether it was 1 or 2 above that was overturned. It seems to me that in Donaldson v Beckett the judges were asked an "Are you still beating your wife?" type question (i.e. which ever way you answer it, it can be concluded that you were previously beating your wife) and the response has been taken to suggest that there was a pre-existing copy-right provided by common law that was later nullified.

I just stumbled upon this site Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900) (linked) which, as the name suggests, contains documents relating to the early development of copyright. Here's an interesting quote from the site:

Here's more on the (Pre?-)History of Copyright (linked). I think it seems like a nice summary:

There are a couple of interesting things I've read elsewhere that aren't mentioned here. One is that the 'abuse of monopolies' refered to above were those considered injurious to the public good (i.e. if letters patent didn't have to advance the public good, they at least weren't supposed to harm it). The other is how the Statute of Monopolies, widely considered the beginning of modern patent law, fits in here. It didn't usher in the beginning of letters patent, but rather cut them back. It restricted such grants to, if I understand correctly, to 4 cases: novel inventions (for up to 14 years), grants made by act of parliament (as opposed to arbitrarily by the monarch), power of the courts, and powers of regional authorities and guilds. The last allowed the continuation of the monopoly granted to the Stationers' Company.

Hi James 9
Have you considered that licences of various kinds - for example driving licences incur 'penalties for infringement' of copyright? Are you aware that all commercial law which include the statues are administered under the rubric of maritime law? The development of this system is as you rightly say though the Royal Letters Patent and when we infringe the statues we infringe the terms of the use of our vessels .

Funny that you should mention the Stuarts who were well known for arbitrary use of power. The civil war was won by the way, by the commonwealth troops and then the Crown was whisked back by an army of Scottish Catholics - the Glorious Revolution 1688 restored a Crowned head in the person of William of Orange and so some believed the freedom of the people, the feudal system of landownership stayed in place however - we have inherited it in NZ though the British Crown and along with that came the 'divine right of Kings' to say that the Crown legally owns all the land and the sea lanes,in the Queen's name. I came to the Pirate Party hoping you had some ideas about using the Prize Rules to counter the tyranny of this system...

James are you are developing a system that cannot be hacked? What about protection from being 'bumped off ' the net altogether? The events of the last few days seem to indicate that it will be needed sooner rather than later.