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Written By Abdun Nur
“I met a man with a dollar. We exchanged dollars and we still both had a dollar.
I met a man with an idea, we both exchanged ideas and now we both have two ideas.” A variation of a George Bernard Shaw quote
“The genuine history of mankind is the history of ideas. It is ideas that distinguish man from all other beings. Ideas engender social institutions, political changes, technological methods of production, and all that is called economic conditions.” Ludwig Von Mises
The legal fiction of Copyright, or for physical monopolies patent, is an extension of the fraud of ownership, being the control and monopoly of intellectual ‘property’, used to extort usurious revenue (taxation/profit) upon the application or copying of the idea or design of the copyright holder, further imposing regulations upon another who uses the copyrighted goods, services or ideas, so dictating what someone can or cannot do with their own real resource to possess and use that resource.
These two types of possession, tangible possession and intangible possession are mutually inconsistent, if you trade your labours in natural equity you give full and complete possession over to the buyer, but in the fictional world of copyright/patent, you sell your goods and services yet claim you still retain them in full, and wish to be paid by everyone who uses the same idea, by holding a state granted criminal monopoly privilege (privilege means- a right to steal).
“The monopolies now understood as copyrights and patents were originally created by royal decree, bestowed as a form of favouritism and control. As the power of the monarchy dwindled, these chartered monopolies were reformed, and essentially by default, they wound up in the hands of authors and inventors.” Eric E. Johnson
Counterfeiting is not the same as piracy. Counterfeiting attempts to pawn off pirated products as those produced by the copyright holder, or branding corporation. Thus, a golf club that looks just like a Callaway driver but has a name like “Hallaway” is considered a pirate, whereas a copy identical to an original “Callaway” club is a counterfeit. Inherently counterfeiting is a wrongful act, a fraud, while what is labelled piracy is not a wrongful act in itself.
The World Customs Organization estimates that “counterfeiting” accounts for 5% to 7% of global merchandise trade, much of what is labelled counterfeit is in reality only appropriation of technologies, knowledge or the free dissemination of digital information. Counterfeiting doesn’t require any legislated copyright monopolies to stand as a wrongful act, it is, inherently. If however you created a copy of something, and it was clear to all it was a copy, not issued by the original designer, inventor, writer, or creator, you have committed no wrong.
China accounts for two thirds of all the world’s pirated and counterfeited goods. It is claimed 40% of all traffic on the internet is the downloading of pirated data, yet still the corporation make trillions annually.
Another fraud (an inherently wrongful act) that needs no monopoly privilege to be so, is to claim something was created by someone else in order to use the others reputation, or confidence of quality, to sell an inferior or worthless product:
“If you’re familiar with the Harry Potter novels of J. K. Rowling…“Harry Potter and Leopard Walk up to Dragon,” published for an enthusiastic public in China…. That’s because she didn’t write it. Apparently it’s a ripping yarn. Harry gets turned into a fat hairy dwarf, which for those of us who never cared much for the little wizard anyway isn’t such a bad result. But the book is a knockoff, written by a Chinese author to cash in on Chinese Pottermania.” Tim Phillips, Knockoff
Monopolists claim copyright is needed, as copies contain toxic ingredients, or inferior components or materials, or poor design. That could only be argued if originals never used toxic ingredients, inferior components or materials, or never had poor design (engineered redundancy), but all these elements are prevalent, if not fundamental, in corporate manufacturing. This means both originals and pirates that are toxic, or poor quality break the inherent duty of care incumbent on every soul, as a reciprocal onus, and any production of such is inherently a wrongful act.
Copyright has never been of net benefit to society and instead serves to enrich a few at the expense of creativity. Patent does not protect the inventor from their invention being stolen, as a patent belongs to the first to patent the invention with the corporate government mafia.
Copyright is invalid, because only your labour generates wealth, if you have physical resources they’re free, only the labour invested within those resources has value. Intellectual property is not scarce and is itself a resource, as knowledge builds upon knowledge, therefore to claim a monopoly upon the advancement of any knowledge or of ideas that themselves developed through an extension of existing unmonopolised ideas, is inequitable, and is a selectively applied legal monopoly fiction created by the owners of State mafia, imposed through their monopoly on violence, and applied only to limited and specified monopolies.
Copying never deprives the alleged victim of the original item, and so enforcement of copyright law constitutes aggression on the part of the State to impose monopoly and privilege.
In reality intellectual property is something you can trade, but not something you can rent out, in the case of copyright they demand rent on something they have sold, but we can only own what we ourselves create, and therefore all forms of rental are definitely usurious, since it is equivalent to selling your resource, then still demanding it is your own, selling anything is transferring in entirety a justification of use, in doing so you concede all fictional rights, and possession upon it. Two parties cannot possess one thing, each, in its entirety, that constitutes a fictional relationship of entanglement that cannot exist naturally.
It is claimed what is to stop someone else then taking my invention, story, song or discovery and claiming it as their creation?
Being the originator of an idea does afford you advantages, for example if you write a book, and I copy your book but claim I wrote it myself, that is fraud, and you can seek relief. But if I copy your book and leave it unaltered, crediting you with it creation, I’ve caused you no harm. An author can claim things a copier cannot, for example the author can claim the first edition, the original and authorized version The author can state clearly that their version benefits the creator of the work directly, whereas a copier could not, and those who enjoy the work of an author would seek out a copy that benefited the author, especially if they wished to read more of the authors efforts in the future.
These ideas of wrongs: counterfeiting, supplant the real creator, falsely claiming a new creation came from a trusted source when it did not, etc., could be protected if the ancient model of relief of wrongful acts was again applied, which is easy to achieve if people wanted it, free of hierarchy and legal fictions.
Those who support copyright monopoly claim the idea of plagiarism can only exist with copyright, which is utter nonsense. Plagiarism occurs when a writer duplicates another writer’s language or ideas and then calls the work his or her own. To avoid the charge of plagiarism, some writers take care to credit those from whom they borrow and quote, but in reality all authors use a universal pool of existing ideas, they just combine ideas in new ways, plagiarism in respect of taking credit for a written work that another wrote is a wrongful act inherently, it needs no corporate policy to make it so, it’s an innate axiom, to claim ‘falsely’ anything, to lie, causing a direct detriment to another, is a wrong, so could be disputed and relief established if equity existed, unfortunately instead of equity, the constructed fictions of a legal system are applied, which function of fictions, mainly on frauds, deception and lies.
Höffner compared the economic effects copyright law had on authors and publishing in the United Kingdom to those in Germany in the first part of the nineteenth century when in Germany such laws had not been instituted, and found that more books were printed and read in Germany where authors, in general, also made more money.
“The roots of copyright literally lie in censorship. It was easy for State and church to control thought by controlling the scribes, but then the printing press came along, and the authorities worried that they couldn’t control official thought as easily. So Queen Mary created the Stationer’s Company in 1557, with the exclusive franchise over book publishing, to control the press and what information the people could access. When the charter of the Stationer’s Company expired, the publishers lobbied for an extension, but in the Statute of Anne (1710) Parliament gave copyright to authors instead. Authors liked this because it freed their works from State control. Nowadays they use copyright much as the State originally did: to censor and ban books.” (N. Stephan Kinsella)
Electronic versions of written works cost almost nothing to copy and disseminate, there are advantages and disadvantages to electronic versions of written works, meaning the printed version will always have a dominant place, as it is an easier medium to access and to examine and digest the contents, more satisfying and interactive in many ways.
Electronic games and software is, in general grossly overpriced, generating obscene usury profits for corporate monopolies, often the majority of these games, or software programs are poor or low quality, dressed up and promising far more than they deliver. The true cost of software is pennies, development cost being small in comparison to the number of copies used, people would be happy to pay the true cost of pennies, not the corporate cost; even this would generate more rewards for the actual authors if they were free of corporation, than they could have ever earned through that fiction, and if the software was popular the pennies would far exceed earnings for the labour invested.
The ‘Stars’ of film, television, literature, sport and radio cry in outrage at those who copy the monopolised media of the corporations they represent, these elite Stars have millions in the bank already, yet their avarice is so insatiable they still can’t stop whoring themselves upon the corporate alter.
‘Patent’ a ‘title’ of privilege copyright
Originally patents were “open letters” granted by the monarch authorizing someone to do something, as patent title, of for example a monopoly to sell certain good in a certain area, or a land monopoly to homestead land in the New World on behalf of the crown corporation, or as monopoly copyright used by the corporations to prevent new technologies from entering the market to compete with the existing monopolies they presently enjoy. This retards natural competition, technological advance, created and maintained through State granted monopoly as a privilege of the corporations, and prevents those without financial backing from using their own creations and inventions.
In the case of the US, patents are administered by a huge federal bureaucracy that grants monopolies on the production and trade of various things, which means holders may ask the federal courts to order the use of force to stop competitors. But the competitors have not done anything that justifies force. They merely have used information to guide their actions with respect to their own resources.
“Russian authorities, with Microsoft’s approval, used IP law as a “pretext for seizing computers and other materials from political opponents of the government and news organizations.” (Engadget)
Another example: Alexander Graham Bell who is credited with inventing the telephone, stole the telephone patent of an Italian inventor Antonio Meucci claiming it as his own, although he had a design it was later proven never to have worked, the true inventor took him to court but died before the case was completed. In 2002 the House of Representatives Resolution 269 recognised Antonio Meucci as the true inventor of the telephone and stated “If Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell”
Bell went on to monopolise the telephone defending his stolen invention over 800 times in court from those who used the idea without his consent.
Nature and copyright
Shortly after the Declaration of Independence, Congress declared that natural substances, e.g. water or salt, were God’s gift to mankind and that therefore products of nature should be limited in their patent protection. While this was a noble declaration, it has actually been used against those slaves whose granted slave rights it would protect. It has forced private interests to synthetically alter natural substances — for instance the burgeoning biotech field of recombinant DNA technology, i.e. genetically modified organisms (GMOs) — done for the sole reason that it guarantees them ownership/patent rights.
In fact, a profit driven corporate medical system would be destroyed and/or be exposed as criminal in nature if non-patented, non-profit driven natural substances or therapies were employed in free competition with corporate patented unnatural products. Patent also results in so much collateral damage to those it purports to serve, that it could rightly be called a modern form of human sacrifice on a globalized industrial scale.
Those who want copyright claim counterfeit pharmaceuticals are the Snake Oil for the World, causing medical complications even death, these counterfeit drugs flow mainly from China, but in reality all pharmaceuticals are the Snake Oil for the World, the death toll and terrible suffering generated by pharmaceuticals if breath taking and criminal, since allopathic medical monopoly was imposed, and all true methods of healing were made illegal, or marginalized, the death toll has been many, many 100’s of millions, the avoidable suffering even greater.
The corporations involved in the movie, software, publishing, and music industries cry out for copyright protection. The monopoly protection afforded by the ‘legal’ system and the owners of the State Corporate mafias, allows the global, legalized theft of 100’s of billions annually, simply because all competition has been removed and the corporations are free to price gouge and extort without let or hindrance.
Copyright imposes artificial scarcity of innovation, invention, and creativity, as all knowledge builds upon existing knowledge, to monopolise that new knowledge stagnates, constricts and retards advancement; monopoly always has a stagnating effect, just as we see with government monopoly itself, or the banking monopoly, it’s an artifice that creates imposition, monopoly protectionism, vested interests, etc. As it exists against nature, only the threat or use of force can maintain the artificial scarcity of monopoly.
The corporations claim a loss of profits from those copying their monopoly copyright; profit is the monetary surplus added upon the cost of a product or service after accounting for wages, rent, cost of raw materials, etc., so corporate profit is added onto the actual cost of the created product or service to the end consumer, an invented amount, identical to the taxation added by the imposed State corporate mafias that themselves grants the monopoly through copyright protection.
Copyright and patent in effect, creates a massive global subsidy worth hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars, and gives great advantage to the four corporations that own 96% of all corporations globally. This allows price gauging, removes competition, restricts innovation, and maintains existing monopolies. All this extra extorted revenue is only possible through government mafia granted monopoly, at the detriment of none corporate businesses and all people.
The macro and the micro work alike, in the macro government mafias invade, either with military force or economic monopolies, a neighbouring fiefdom, and work to quickly destroy their economy, expropriating their most valued assets through war, or stealing them through corporation, in doing so, undermining their victims’ ability to counter.
