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I'm not sure I agree with much of anything you said.

>With a capitalist economy certain elements of culture are effectively reserved for the wealthy. [...] The democratisation of media particularly through availability of music and film - which are so central to our cultural experience

There is always going to be a culture. And there are always going to be things off-limits to the non-wealthy that would totally be part of the larger culture if made free. So? I don't think it's particularly important for music or film to be part of the larger, central cultural experience. If those things aren't available then something else will take their place. To the best of my understanding society had a culture 5, 50, 500, and even 5000 years ago.

I don't think I have a fundamental right to access or own things created by other people. I think people pirate because it's safe, easy, and free. I think most people's participation in piracy can be summed up as "selfish asshole". I think DRM is a blunt, ham fisted enforcement of the copyright deal and I'm curious as to why you think it breaks and should nullify the contract.

And on top of all this the maintainers of Pirate Bay are not benevolent Robin Hood's trying to give culture to the poor. They're making money. Megaupload network generated $175,000,000 in revenue. I don't think there's a damn thing honorable about any of these lot.

> To the best of my understanding society had a culture 5, 50, 500, and even 5000 years ago.

The current availability of books published last century is actually smaller than the current availability of books published before that. So there is actually a bit of a cultural hole from the 1900's because of materials are still in copyright and not published by their owners. Often it isn't even known who is the current owner of a material. There might come a time where people know more about culture 500 years ago than 100 years ago.

> I don't think I have a fundamental right to access or own things created by other people.

I think we've lived with the concept of copyright and patents for so long that we've forgotten what an artificial construct that it is. We're basically giving exclusively ownership to ideas. There is a good argument for doing that, which is why copyright exists, but it's not a universal truth. Locking way and preventing the sharing, modification, and remixing of ideas has a deep cultural cost now and future generations.

Not having documentation on what culture was X years ago is different from there being no culture X years. I don't think your first example is relevant.

Copyright exists to serve the public. I think it largely achieves that goal. There are fair arguments to be made as to when copyright/patents stop serving the public interests. I don't think DRM as an enforcement of the copyright laws nullifies the protection already given. When it comes to copyright the following quote is long but largely sums of my thoughts.

"A distinguishing characteristic of intellectual property is its "public good" aspect. While the cost of creating a work subject to copyright protection—for example, a book, movie, song, ballet, lithograph, map, business directory, or computer software program—is often high, the cost of reproducing the work, whether by the creator or by those to whom he has made it available, is often low. And once copies are available to others, it is often inexpensive for these users to make additional copies. If the copies made by the creator of the work are priced at or close to marginal cost, others may be discouraged from making copies, but the creator’s total revenues may not be sufficient to cover the cost of creating the work. Copyright protection—the right of the copyright’s owner to prevent others from making copies—trades off the costs of limiting access to a work against the benefits of providing incentives to create the work in the first place. Striking the correct balance between access and incentives is the central problem in copyright law. For copyright law to promote economic efficiency, its principal legal doctrines must, at least approximately, maximize the benefits from creating additional works minus both the losses from limiting access and the costs of administering copyright protection." from An Economic Analysis of Copyright Law, http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/IPCoop/89land1.html

> Copyright exists to serve the public. I think it largely achieves that goal.

Even if it didn't, how would you measure it? There is no measurement to determine that this arbitrary definition of property in fact serves the public more than not having it -- which makes me curious. Without this evidence, why did central planners believe copyrights would serve the public? I'm more inclined to think legislators had a financial interest in upholding these protectionist laws than any good will towards "the public".

I'm not talking about "documentation". I'm talking about the actual culture: the books, the movies, the songs, and so on from that period. Look at Disney's Frozen, a huge movie based on the out of copyright story, The Snow Queen. Here's some culture from 1800's reproduced in 2014. The same cannot be done for most culture in the early to mid 1900's. Some things you literally cannot read, watch, or hear from that era. You certainly cannot adapt it in a new way. Not unless you want to break the law. That is the situation we are in.

I, however, agree that copyright serves the public and largely achieves that goal. But I think it did so better in it's original incarnation. Big money interests have shifted copyright in absurd directions. And I honestly don't care if Disney retains the rights to Mickey Mouse forever but in lobbying for that right they've dragged along everything else. So now it's impossible to reproduce other completely unrelated works.

A big one personally for me is old video games. I grew up in arcades and I love going through MAME and playing obscure titles that I often don't even remember until I start it up. Sure, if you want to play Pac-Man there are lots of legal options but outside of that a huge part of 80's culture is illegal to own.

>society had a culture 5, 50, 500, and even 5000 years ago //

Society like now used story and music as central elements of cultural expression. 500 and 5000 years ago that was freely shared. 500 years ago in my country (UK) there were poets and playwrights making a living without copyright (though minstrels had closed guilds at at least one point). If you heard a song then you were free to sing it to your friends, make performances of it or whatever.

On the DRM point, the works that are "protected" can't freely enter the public domain. The copyright deal is that the people will - via the government - grant you a monopoly on reproduction/modification (and associated actions) on your work for a limited period in exchange for the work entering the public domain. In order to enter the public domain a work should be free to be enjoyed by all without let or hindrance (beyond that inherent in the format). The point of the DRM is to ensure that the work is never able to be freely used/copied etc., it can't enter the public domain unless it is side-loaded in some way and I can't see any current media corp paying for archiving of all works DRM free and then releasing them at the appropriate time to ensure they keep their end of the bargain. Such a guarantee would be necessary, eg lodging copies with a sort of escrow, for DRM-ed works to be able to provably uphold their end.

>I don't think I have a fundamental right to access or own things created by other people. //

I'm not being as terse at it may seem, but, food? Do you have a right to be fed? If you're not a food producer and don't have the means to produce food, do you still have a right to be fed?

Some will say that one dies without food. I'd argue our form of humanity dies without shared culture - you may find that a good thing?

I'd be interested to know your status, are you wealthy, do you enjoy the arts. I'm poor and work in art & craft primarily.

>Do you have a right to be fed?

No. If I do not have food I do not have the right to demand you give me your food.

This has actually come up with a few times with respect to water. No, you do not have a right to water. If you live in the middle of nowhere you do not have a right to water. If you are not given water no one else is responsible or punished. If I can not afford to pay a local utility company for their water access services they are not required to give it to me for free. A city or town can not force a private individual or company to give them water.

Many people are likely to disagree with me here. That's fine. If you think "water is a right" or "food is a right" then quite honestly your sentiment is hollow and void of meaning. You can call something a right all you want but if there is no accountability then it's not much of a right.

The US Bill of Rights is a fantastic document because it largely protects rights, as opposed to giving them. Free speech isn't a right given by the government. It's a natural right that is explicitly protected from being taken away by the government. It's a key difference that is related to food/water rights.

>No. If I do not have food I do not have the right to demand you give me your food. //

You do have that right, if I have plenty you have a right to a share of it. When the Earth was created no man had ownership of any of it. I think it was Thomas Jefferson who wrote quite persuasively on this point. Sure if I take my food and waste it then that right is diminished accordingly.

>If I can not afford to pay a local utility company for their water access services they are not required to give it to me for free. //

So why should you give them the right to take it in the first place. They don't have the right to the water any more than you. Less probably.

How would you consider this as a question of moral obligation, would you say that if you have lots of food and someone else has none that you're morally obligated to give from your plenty?

As an addendum, do you have plenty?

We've been speaking of rights in the legal context. And laws != morals.

I think there are certain rights to access natural resources. For example the beaches of California are strictly public property. I think there are rights to fair access to natural resources such as water. However I do not think that if I spend considerable resources to build a distribution network for that water that other people have a right to access that network.

I do have plenty. More than I need. Food, water, and shelter. There are people who do not have enough of them. There are many people who have no shelter. We call them homeless. I have more rooms in my house than required to thrive. Does someone who is homeless have a right to enter my home and make use of the excess shelter that I have?

I think this is a very important conversation for us to be having and I don't claim to have anywhere near all of the answers.

However, I do think that your first sentence kind of dodges the question here. The rest of this comment thread was discussing what rights people should have, not what rights they do have.

If we approach this from a legal viewpoint the conversation is over before it starts: Piracy's illegal, you don't have a right to content. You don't have a right to food.

However, when we start looking at it from a moral perspective things are much more open ended: Should we have a right to content? Should we have a right to food?

I think these are more interesting questions and that falling back on the rule of law kind of kills the discussion.

I guess at the end of the day I don't know the best way to handle copyright, but I do know we should have a conversation about it, and that we should come at it from a morality perspective.

>I don't think I have a fundamental right to access or own things created by other people.

You do have such a right, because it is intimately related to the fact that you are human -- a social creature who essentially _requires_ things created by other people for your very survival.

You may not agree that you should have immediate or non-negotiable access, but the mere fact that you are a producer of content and information yourself means that you are in fact paying for that culture.

Just look at how valuable 'being popular' is. It is extremely valuable, and all that value is produced a group of people who are labeled as "consumers", even though they obviously contribute. They "produce" essentially all the value of popularity.

Gimme all your shit

You can have all my digital shit. I'll still have it.

You can have my thoughts for free. They're far more useful and valuable than anything else I have.

> The actions of media corporations, the use of DRM, these things (amongst others I'm sure) act to prevent entry to the public domain. DRM in particular breaks the copyright deal, if we the people aren't going to get our side of the copyright bargain why should we uphold the side that suits those financial interested in media production?

This is the first time I've ever seen a pro-"piracy" argument that really made me stop and think about whether I was actually opposed to it. I think the copyright system is clearly broken (and more beholden than ever to corporate interests), but somehow never made the connection. Thank you.

> Moreover, copyright was initially set up with a view to ensuring that eventually the wealth locked up in shared experience, cultural introspection, confrontation with new ideas and different aspects of the culture would be freed in to the public domain.

That's not the only theory of copyright. In Europe, copyright has traditionally been viewed in terms of the moral rights of creators to control their work. In many European countries, authors have perpetual rights to, e.g., prohibit alterations of their creative works.

So it becomes a question of whom copyright is supposed to protect – I like what the U.S. system _used_ to be, in that it was protective enough to allow creators to reap the economic benefits of their work, but was liberal enough that there was less nonsense about "estates" controlling intellectual assets for decades after the creator's death.

I think there should be a clearly delineated point that a work is given to the public, but I can see how that might sound like a radical notion, especially to people who want to make money off of it.

The Statute of Anne which is widely held to be the first iteration of copyright gave authors/printers 14 years exclusive right, then works were to enter the public domain. On application before the end of the first period a further period of 14 years could be granted. The public domain was protected by the legal deposit scheme ensuring that a work could always (barring disaster) fully entertain the public domain.

The Statute of Anne was a compromise as publishers were being refused the reapplication of previous laws as those laws gave them too much power and control of publication preferencing them over the public and the authors.

Moral rights are an important part of copyright too; the right to be named as author being enshrined in the Berne Convention, for example. Nonetheless if the Statute of Anne represents the fore-runner of copyright under English Law traditions then I think my statement is objectively true (within jurisdictions based on English Law).