I've read ten on his list. I agree. The fellow is hosed when he gets caught.

To state the trivially obvious: Despite what the DOI says, rights are not unalienable. We get them to the extent that we are able to defend them or have them defended for us. There is no natural right to anything. I wish it were otherwise.

We think it is necessary to human happiness that we have property. Also, we believe that an increase of knowledge and culture will improve the human lot, so we have patent and copyright laws to protect "intellectual property." Surely it's a convenient fiction (as are all rights) - but it's a fiction we believe we need because we want to encourage people to participate in certain pursuits. We want people to make movies, to write books, and to invent things. If we have an environment that is conducive to this sort of creativity and discovery, we will get more of it. One way to make the environment more conducive is to guarantee the creator or discoverer exclusive access to the profits of his discovery for a small amount of time.

We can argue that a book and all its contents belong to the person who purchases it to do with as he pleases, but such a right is every bit as much a fiction as the rights conferred by patent or copyright.

We could argue whether the chain of reasoning is correct. For example, does granting exclusive rights really increase the act of invention. My gut feeling is that it does, but I'm uncertain.

We could argue whether the proper role of the government to promote human welfare, but our own constitution seems to make that quite clear.

We could argue that invention does not necessarily promote human welfare - and in fact it doesn't (not necessarily). But the creation of books - even trashy books - enriches culture. The creation of inventions leads to further inventions.

There are lots of arguments that one might make, but I don't know that any of them would get one very far.

OTOH, there is a strong tendency (it seems to me) to treat copyright as a natural right of some kind. Congress has extended the Disney copyright (and others) from 50 to 70 years. I'm not sure of the details of this, but it seems silly to me. (Extending the years of a patent would make a lot more sense to me, considering the amount of time that certain products require for testing and the huge investment required up front. But for copyright? 70 years after the dude is dead? This seems completely insane to me.)

k