Found a great post on lewrockwell by SEKIII about his view on the fallacy of copyrights. These ideas can be expanded to the current digital media debate with the RIAA. A novel take on copyright licenses that allows free use of someones work in the public domain, is called copyleft. This basically gives each person possessing a copy of the work the same freedoms as the author, including:

1. the freedom to use the work,
2. the freedom to study the work,
3. the freedom to copy and share the work with others,
4. the freedom to modify the work, and the freedom to distribute modified and therefore derivative works.

We practice this method on our site which is detailed in the footer at the bottom of every webpage.
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This originally appeared in The Voluntaryist, July 1986.

Samuel Edward Konkin III (1947–2004) was the author of the New Libertarian Manifesto and a proponent of free-market anarchism.

Having done every step of production in the publishing industry, both for myself and others, I have one irrefutable empirical conclusion about the economic effect of copyrights on prices and wages: nada. Zero. Nihil. So negligible you’d need a Geiger counter to measure it.

Before I move on to exactly what copyrights do have an impact on, one may be interested as to why the praxeological negligibility of this tariff. The answer is found in the peculiar nature of publishing. There are big publishers and small publishers and very, very few in between. For the Big Boys, royalties are a fraction of one percent of multi-million press runs. They lose more money from bureaucratic interstices and round-off error. The small publishers are largely counter-economic and usually survive on donated material or break-in writing; let the new writers worry about copyrighting and reselling.

Furthermore, there are a very few cases of legal action in the magazine world because of this disparity. The little ‘zines have no hope beating a rip-off and shrug it off after a perfunctory threat; the Biggies rattle their corporate-lawyer sabres and nearly anyone above ground quietly bows.

Book publishing is a small part of total publishing and there are some middle-range publishers who do worry about the total cost picture in marginal publishing cases. But now there are two kinds of writers: Big Names and everyone else. Everyone else is seldom reprinted; copyrights have nothing to do with first printings (economically). Big Names rake it in – but they also make a lot from ever-higher bids for their next contract. And the lowered risk of not selling out a reprint of a Big Name who has already sold out a print run more than compensates paying the writer the extra fee.

So Big Name writers would loose something substantial if the copyright privilege ceased enforcement. But Big Name writers are an even smaller percentage of writers than Big Name Actors are of actors. If they all vanished tomorrow, no one would notice (except their friends, one hopes). Still, one may reasonably wonder if the star system’s incentive can be done away without the whole pyramid collapsing. If any economic argument remains for copyrights, it’s incentive.

Crap. As Don Marquis put in the words of Archy the Cockroach, “Creative expression is the need of my soul.” And Archy banged his head on typewriter key after typewriter key all night long to turn out his columns – which Marquis cashed in. Writing as a medium of expression will continue as long as someone has a burning need to express. And if all they have to express is a need for second payments and associated residuals, we’re all better off for not reading it.

But, alas, the instant elimination of copyrights would have negligible effect on the star system. While it would cut into the lifelong gravy train of stellar scribes, it would have no effect on their biggest source of income: the contract for their next book (or script, play or even magazine article or short story). That is where the money is.

“You’re only as good as your last piece” – but you collect for that on your next sale. Market decisions are made on anticipated sales. Sounds like straight von Mises, right? (Another great writer who profited little from copyrighting – but others are currently raking it in from Ludwig’s privileged corpse – er, corpus.)

The point of all this vulgar praxeology is not just to clear the way for the moral question. The market (praise be) is telling us something. After all, both market human action and morality arise from the same Natural Law.

In fact, let us clear out some more deadwood and red herrings before we face the Great Moral Issue. First, if you abolish copyrights, would great authors starve? Nope. In fact, the market might open a trifle for new blood. Would writers write if they did not get paid? Who says they wouldn’t? There is no link between payment for writing and copyrights. Royalties roll in (or, much more often, trickle in) long after the next work is sold and the one after is in progress.

Is not a producer entitled to the fruit of his labor? Sure, that’s why writers are paid. But if I make a copy of a shoe or a table or a fireplace log (with my little copied axe) does the cobbler or wood worker or woodchopper collect a royalty?

A. J. Galambos, bless his anarchoheart, attempted to take copyrights and patents to their logical conclusion. Every time we break a stick, Ug The First should collect a royalty. Ideas are property, he says; madness and chaos result.

Property is a concept extracted from nature by conceptual man to designate the distribution of scarce goods – the entire material world – among avaricious, competing egos. If I have an idea, you may have the same idea and it takes nothing from me. Use yours as you will and I do the same.

Ideas, to use the ‘au courant’ language of computer programmers, are the programs; property is the data. Or, to use another current cliché, ideas are the maps and cartography, and property is the territory. The difference compares well to the differences between sex and talking about sex.

Would not ideas be repressed without the incentive (provided by copyrights)? ‘Au contraire’ the biggest problem with ideas is the delivery system. How do we get them to those marketeers who can distribute them? (Ed. note: most readers probably know the answer to this in 1996, this was written in 1986)

My ideas are pieces of what passes for my soul (or, if you prefer, ego). Therefore, every time someone adopts one of them, a little piece of me has infected them. And for this I get paid, too! On top of all that, I should be paid and paid and paid as they get staler and staler?

If copyrights are such a drag, why and how did they evolve? Not by the market process. Like all privileges (emphasis added), they were grants of the king. The idea did not – could not – arise until Gutenberg’s printing press and it coincided with the rise of royal divinity, and soon after, the onslaught of mercantilism.

So who benefits from this privilege? There is an economic impact I failed to mention earlier. It is, in Bastiat’s phrasing, the unseen. Copyright is a Big publisher’s method, under cover of protecting artists, of restraint of trade. Yes, we’re talking monopoly.

For when the Corporation tosses its bone to the struggling writer, and an occasional steak to the pampered tenth of a percent, it receives an enforceable legal monopoly on the editing, typesetting, printing, packaging, marketing (including advertising) and sometimes even local distribution of that book or magazine. (In magazines, it also has an exclusivity in layout vs other articles and illustrations and published advertisements.) How’s that for vertical integration and restraint of trade?

And so the system perpetuates, give or take a few counter-economic outlaws and some enterprising Taiwanese with good smuggling connections.

Because copyrights permeate all mass media, Copyright is the Rip-off That Dare Not Mention Its Name. The rot corrupting our entire communications market is so entrenched it will survive nothing short of abolition of the State and its enforcement of Copyright. Because the losers, small-name writers and all readers, lose so little each, we are content – it seems – to be nickel-and-dime plundered. Why worry about mosquito bites when we have the vampire gouges of income taxes and automobile tariffs?

Now for the central moral question: what first woke me up to the problem that was the innocent viewer scenario. Consider the following careful contractual construction.

Author Big and Publisher Bigger have contracts not to reveal a word of what’s in some publication. Everyone on the staff, every person in the step of production is contracted not to reveal a word. All the distributors are covered and the advertising quotes only a minimal amount of words. Every reader is like Death Records in Phantom of the Paradise, under contract, too; that is every reader who purchases the book or ‘zine and thus interacts with someone who is under contract – interacts in a voluntary trade and voluntary agreement.

No, I am not worried about the simultaneous creator; although an obvious victim, he or she is rare, given sufficient complexity in the work under questions. (However, some recent copyright decisions and the fact that the Dolly Parton case even got as far as a serious trial – means the corruption is spreading.)

One day you and I walk into a room – invited but without even mention of a contract – and the publication lies open on a table. Photons leap from the pages to our eyes and our hapless brain processes the information. Utterly innocent, having committed no volitional act, we are copyright violators. We have unintentionally embarked on a life of piracy.

And God or the Market help us if we now try to act on the ideas now in our mind or to reveal this unintended guilty secret in any way. The State shall strike us – save only if Author Big and Publisher Bigger decide in their tyrannous mercy that we are too small and not worth the trouble.

For if we use the ideas or repeat or reprint them, even as part of our own larger creation – bang! There goes the monopoly. And so each and every innocent viewer must be suppressed. By the Market? Hardly. The entire contractual agreement falls like a house of cards when the innocent gets his or her forbidden view. No, copyright has nothing to do with creativity, incentive, just desserts, fruits of labor or any other element of the moral, free market.

It is a creature of the State, the Vampire’s little bat. And, as far as I’m concerned, the word should be copywrong.

New single by Vinnie Paz from Jedi Mind Tricks, off his solo album ‘Season of the Assassin’. Song kicks ass and needs no introduction.

Today’s Sound-Off is a special May Day edition — as a salute to workers around the world.

[The title of this post is] a reference to a popular rallying cry of peasants and factory workers who were scared that the Bolsheviks would impose centralized authority over their autonomous farms, coops and seized workplaces. Of course in the most quintessentially cynical Russian move Lenin had his Bolshevik goons start using the anti-Bolshevik slogan, thus confusing the workers into supporting State Power when they thought they were supporting local autonomy. On the one hand this is reminiscent of the “zaxlebax” principle, which reminds us that the terminologies and definitions of left and right have shifted so drastically over the years that we should pay attention to the underlying ideas and not stop at false assumptions. On the other, it expresses the overlap of Rothbard’s call for the establishment of repossessed producer’s coops with the slogan’s original meaning.

— from Invisible Molotov, who has made a PDF of today’s essay selection available for download.

My love for electronic music started as a kid in the early 80’s, after hearing Afrika Bambaataa’s Planet Rock and Kraftwerk, who were the inspiration of the electro breakdancing sound. Once I reached 13, I picked up my first pair of turntables at a pawn shop, and a DJ was born.

The electronic sound progressed, until it hit a peak in the early nineties, with trance and techno taking off at underground rave scenes around the globe.

James Holden, and other DJ’s/producers at the forefront of the scene, quickly evolved from the trancey sound into a more eclectic progressive take on electronic music. Holden’s productions quickly transformed into a glitchy, minimal, unpredictable, electro tech sound, that was ahead of the electronic music scene at that time. DJing, he mixes in key harmonics, infusing melodic emotion to his shoegazing style.

In this 2010 interview at the Red Bull Music Academy in London, Holden sheds light on his production process, the perils of the music business, and not compromising on your creative expression. Holden explains how he operates outside the box, by incorporating mistakes he makes when using his analog equipment, into his diverse production soundscapes. Creating music in the moment, he doesn’t limit himself to perfect mixdown in big studio environments. He believes in the “bad mix”, which identifies the sound, giving it character outside the bounds of typical studio production.

Rebelling against traditional music labels, he started Border Community, in order to operate in complete freedom, and provide opportunities for other artists, without the commitment of churning out the next big tune.

This is a beneficial interview for anyone who is creating at an artistic level, and wishes to stay true to their expression, without limiting themselves due to success, or pressure from the business side of the project.

James Holden – Care In The (Border) Community

Red Bull Music Academy, London, UK

Border Community’s founding father James Holden is a man of many talents. Kicking off proceedings with the genre-defying melodic anthem A Break In The Clouds, before coming of age with his debut mini-album The Idiots Are Winning in 2006, he is a label boss, trend-setting producer and hugely in-demand remixer (ask Madonna or check Holden’s take on Radiohead). On top of all of this, he finds himself at the head of the pack of that very modern breed of DJ. Holden is exploiting new technology to the full in order to bring his vision of next-level music-to-dance-to to life by brazenly uniting tracks from music’s past and present, regardless of scene or status, confounding the purists and making club hits out of many an unwitting dancefloor virgin. His supreme and unrivaled command of the modern technology available to him allows Holden to go where other DJs fear to tread, consistently pulling off daring mixes on-the-fly which just wouldn’t be possible on a conventional two turntable set-up. And so distinct is the resultant sound that your average conservative dance music night can barely contain it. Crossing the border for sure…

James Holden Online
James Holden on Myspace
Border Community Online

Below are some of my favorite original Holden tracks, remixes.

James Holden – 10101

Nathan Fake – The Sky Was Pink (James Holden Remix)

James Holden & Julie Thompson – Come To Me (Last Version)

James Holden – Lump

James Holden – Idiot

James Holden – A Break In The Clouds

System 7 – Planet 7 (Holden Remix)

Radiohead – Reckoner (Holden Remix)

This is a mindset we should all have as we wake up to start each day in life. Mind over matter and the power of intention are concepts that we believe work. Therefore, we are focusing our energy towards this positive message during our launch day.

Lynne McTaggart, author of The Intention Experiment suggests:

The reason intention and mind-over-matter processes work relates to the subatomic underpinnings of our being, and all matter– on this level we’re all connected, and can access the farthest reaches of the cosmos.

You can hear more about her work on the subject in a Coast to Coast AM radio interview here.

Click here to hear Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan discuss everything from the Illuminati, HAARP and weather weapons to GMO foods, the elite depopulation agenda and the possibility for a genuine freedom movement in the United States.

Through interviews with DJs, excursions to perilous rooftops, abandoned naval gun-platforms, and secret studios; Matt Mason explores the history and impact of pirate radio — both past and present.

Part of that history now involves the Internet, and as one of the DJs puts it:

That’s what the internet’s given us — it’s given everyone pirate radio!

This little film paints a very inspiring picture of the human spirit triumphing over the monopolistic state stranglehold on mass-communication media. One generation has pirate FM, the next has the pirate Internet. Only time will tell what comes next; but we can rest assured that there will always be pirates.

This documentary, and others, appear to have been sponsored by Palladium Boots. Head over to their site to see more like it.

You can order Matt Mason’s book, The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism on Amazon. Your purchase helps to support JustLive.

As an aside, I’d recommend checking out the film, Pirate Radio (AKA, The Boat That Rocked), for an entertaining dramatization of some of the history discussed in the documentary.

• An interview with Mr. Sibley.
• Nick Sibley’s MySpace page.

The song shifts effortlessly between melodious vocal interludes and intense screams, without devolving into the “whine” that a lot of similar music seems to have these days. Some of their songs have a Dismemberment Plan vibe, at least to my ear, especially “Minuteman for the Moment.” (also available at the band’s Myspace link above).

My favorite lines from “Benevolesaurus Lex”:

Guys, this thing feels fixed
Can I have my money back?
There’s little chance that we can win
We didn’t read the manual…
…Time better spent making a sandwich.

To sum it up… kill your tv!

Source kl3z