The US Constitution grants congress the power to give authors and inventors time-limited exclusive rights to their works/discoveries (Art1.S8.C8). This moots the 1st amendment argument.
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8...
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8...
I'm not saying that either of these situations are directly analogous to the distribution of copyrighted works (since among other things, I don't think there's any way to buy a TV without being able to freely give it to someone else), but that it's not immediately obvious to me that the illegality in distribution has to be symmetric, and that there might be a coherent legal argument that people having the right to _receive_ information isn't inconsistent with the only people with the right to transmit it refusing to allow it. The part of the Constitution (edit: Supreme Court opinion; not actually the Constitution itself) quoted above doesn't seem to say anything about the right to share anything, just to receive it.
In this situation, the noble does not own the painting, so much as they possess it and have only been granted a license to privately view it, not a license to show it to others, and further license only to reproduce it for their own personal archival purposes - Robin Hood did not have license to view the painting, and the genie did not have license to reproduce it
but now that the reproduction exists, does it carry the same license with it, and should the neighbor be held responsible for the original violation of the license, when all they’ve done is receive an illegally produced copy?
Should the owner if the original painting be held responsible for failing to prevent it from being illegally viewed and copied?
What is the point of making such an "analogy"? Might as well say the noble has a copy of Die Hard in their DVD collection.
Yes, forgery is a crime in many jurisdictions, and in some it does not matter whether or not you are transparent about it being such -- specifically for copyright/trademark reasons.
Interestingly, I think that the more direct analog to what we have today would be if the noble themself had the genie copy the painting and gift it to their friend Robin Hood. I do think the same logic I gave above ultimately applies to whether our current legal system would allow the artist to enforce exclusivity, but I find it a lot more compelling as an argument about whether it _should_ be allowed or not compared to the hypothetical you gave. In your version of it, it doesn't feel like allowing what Robin Hood did is particularly beneficial to society, but in the version where the noble is an enthusiastic participant in the copying, it seems a lot more like outlawing it would lead to some harmful dynamics (like you mention about whether the noble bears responsibility for protecting access to the painting based on obtaining it). In other words, having a system where the artist is allowed to enforce his exclusive distribution rights universally actually seems _less_ problematic to me at first glance than one that only applies to those who sign an agreement when purchasing the paintings.
To put this in terms of torrenting, my naive understanding is that right now, it's definitively considered illegal to seed protected content, and the question is whether it's legal to download it without seeding or not. I actually think that it would be worse to allowing downloading without allowing seeding as well, so the system that Meta is arguing for would be worse than if what they did is also illegal. However, I'm honestly not sure if they're actually right or not about what the law says, and that's why I brought up the hypotheticals I did. I also honestly don't feel confident in my feelings on whether I'd prefer to ban both seeding and downloading protected content or to eliminate the legal protections entirely and allow both, but it doesn't seem like that's actually the legal question at the heart of the current matter.
a more pertinent example to the main topic at hand
i download a file onto my PC. in doing so i have made a copy of that file onto my PC.
if that file is a copyrighted work, e.g. a musical work, i have reproduced the work by downloading it. i have copied it. streaming music is covered by copyright for the same reason - a copy is transferred onto your device because you clicked on a button. the act of copying, or reproducing, the work is the bit that matters.
the distributor (spotify/apple) just gave me access to their original copy to make my own, new, copy. distribution is covered, but slightly different as it is facilitating others to infringe copyright (if i’m pirating music).
in your TV example, a closer idea would be if i 3D printed a new TV based on a patented design. probably not allowed to do it (i don’t know patent law) but who’s gonna enforce it? no one knows about it.
if i start selling my 3D printed TVs, well, i should probably get a lawyer sharpish.
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also, isn’t knowingly receiving stolen goods a crime? so receiver of the TV in your example could be charged with a crime if it can be shown beyond reasonable doubt that they knew it was stolen?
It's even deeper than that. Legally, you are also making a copy when you load the file into RAM to play it.
In this specific example, probably yes.
> Does the answer change if Robin Hood were instead the owner of the mansion next door
Yes, it does. The main problem here is that Robin Hood is well known to obtain everything he has in the world by stealing it.
This gives you the right “to beat them up” but not the right to learn a secret. You can take a patent and build that thing in your house. The government can’t stop you, neither the inventor. It’s when you try to sell it that they can come after you.
I don't think that is correct. The patent act states:
>...Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent.
https://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-35-patents/35-usc-sect-27...
Note where it says "makes, uses". In practice, it is highly unlikely that someone would know about the infringement if it was just done for personal use, but that doesn't mean it isn't infringement.
It is. It's often called the "research exemption." You literally can only get into any kind of trouble when your intentions are commercial.
Thus, the 1A locks in speech rights as they existed in 1791. Because there was no right to slander, or threaten, or commit treason, or "share" in 1791, Congress retained the power to regulate.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose and intentions of the constitution. Slander and fighting words are exceptions to the first amendment that were determined through the legislative process.
Essentially the entire US constitution is negative rights - the right to X when X means government NOT doing something. Right to freedom of movement, right to freedom of religion, right to freedom of speech, right to privacy - these are restrictions on government to protect the liberties of the people. And then you come to the tenth amendment -
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
It seems abundantly clear from even a cursory analysis that the founders explicitly designed the constitution to limit and restrict the power of a centralized federal government, as treasonous, violent disregard for a powerful centralized federal government is quite literally the premiere founding principle baked into the US's history.
Congress has zero power whatsoever whenever they lack the consent of the goverened. The functional legitimacy of the entire federal government is near zero - we're living in the orwellian nightmare where the military industrial complex more or less runs the entire show from behind the scenes - something Eisenhower tried to warn us about over half a century ago.
The legislative process can't make exceptions to constitutional provisions. These were recognized as not covered by first amendment protections by jurisprudence, not legislation.
Which is why we immediately replaced a loose federation of Strong States with a new government built around an explicitly empowered and strengthened federal government?
The idea that the constitution was built around a very weak federal government is wrong. The founders built a weak federal government, immediately ran into problems with it, and immediately those same founders built a new government with a strong federal government with EXPLICIT and CLEAR authority and supremacy over the states on certain things.
For example, modern conservatives often decry how the federal supremacy on interstate commerce is used to regulate interstate commerce, but the commerce clause was built to tear down all possible protectionism and trade barriers states had erected amount themselves. The strong federal government was also built explicitly to be a single strong bloc for trade negotiations.
There were plenty of anti-federalists around during this time. They got to air their complaints and opinions. Nobody listened to them because the articles of confederation, and the loose, weak federal government it built was just that useless and broken. The founders literally tore up the government to make a new one without the authorization to do so because there was no stability, no long term hope for the existing one.
Nobody listened to them? I think most historians would agree that they were instrumental in getting the bill of rights added to the constitution. For example:
>...Anti-Federalists in Massachusetts, Virginia and New York, three crucial states, made ratification of the Constitution contingent on a Bill of Rights. In Massachusetts, arguments between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists erupted in a physical brawl between Elbridge Gerry and Francis Dana. Sensing that Anti-Federalist sentiment would sink ratification efforts, James Madison reluctantly agreed to draft a list of rights that the new federal government could not encroach.
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-anti-federalists-and...
Interpreted as an ordinary voter would have interpreted it.