It's a basic right, if you spend a year writing a book, you are the one who have the rights to sell it and thus make money from your work. Same with software, a GPL license would be worthless without copyright.
Right now, it's a right, yes (what exactly does 'basic' mean?). The question is whether it should be.
>Same with software, a GPL license would be worthless without copyright.
The GPL is just an hack, using copyright to achieve a goal. If you were rewriting IP law, you could very well institute copyleft without copyright.
>Lastly, a GPL license wouldn't be possible to enforce without copyright, or the concept of a copyright owner.
Yes for the GPL, no for copyleft. The GPL was simply a mechanism that Stallman et all found to enable copyleft without having the power to rewrite the law.
If you did have the power to rewrite the law - and if you were to eliminate copyright, you would - it'd be perfectly possible to add a 'copyleft right' without relying on copyright.
The problem is that in Common law all those rights are based to the Copyright concept, and that blinds people to assume that must be. Here in Europe, we have 'authorship rights' - such as attribution - and they are not based on copyright; copyright is just one of them. You could take it out without affecting other authorship rights.
Ug.. it's pointless to state how things currently work in a meta discussion about whether the current method makes sense.
I'm asking you to justify copyright, not explain it. I repeat, why do you think you should get to control what other people do with information?
> I don't think I get to control what other people do with information, but you should have the right to control what others do with your work.
And I say you shouldn't, so justify your belief. You should be able to control yourself, that's it; not the products of your labor when copied. Information is not property, you don't have less of it if I copy it and you should have no say over me copying it regardless of who produced it.
The interesting thing is that the same argument can in fact be made for property. How can you claim to own something at all? It's related to labor, having spent x amount of time working to buy something.
You're still assuming a world where copyright exists. Are you unable to think outside of those bounds? Do you not see that perhaps you wouldn't even attempt to do this in a world without copyright because you'd know up front you can't make money selling it?
> The interesting thing is that the same argument can in fact be made for property.
No it can't. Property is physical, if I steal your car, you no longer have it. If I copy your novel, you don't even know it happened. Physical property and intellectual property aren't at all the same.
> It's related to labor, having spent x amount of time working to buy something.
No, it really isn't.
Physical property is not different, your argument is: "it is" (in italic). But just to show you that a similar argument can be made that includes physical property I leave this Rousseau quote here.
"The first man who had fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody"
OK, if you're just going to be ignorant, goodbye.
Few writers make a living from writing, not because they are denied the opportunity, but because not enough people are willing to pay for it, or even interested in it! The same is true with other artists.