Jail Terms For Unlocking Cellphones Shows The True Black Heart Of The Copyright Monopoly

[shamu726]

The discussion around people’s banished right to unlock their own cellphones has been framed as an unexpected and unanticipated effect of the copyright monopoly. To the contrary, it shows the heart of the monopoly’s philosophy: killing ownership as a concept.

There is a weak copyright monopoly reform bill happening in the United States Congress at the moment.

This bill is not about the copyright monopoly at all, and at the same time, about everything that the monopoly actually is. It is the Unlocking Technology Act of 2013.

The bill, which was presented to the U.S. Congress three days ago, makes it legal to unlock devices such as phones that you own, and do what you like with them. Let’s take that again, because it is jaw-dropping: the bill reforms the copyright monopoly to make it legal to tinker with objects that you own. It has nothing to do with BitTorrent, MKVs, streaming, or what we normally associate with the activity of sharing culture outside of the copyright monopoly distributions.

The bill is about your ability to take your phone to a different wireless operator. Your own phone, that you bought and paid for. Your legal ability to bring your own property wherever you like, without breaching criminal law and risking jail. How on Odin’s green Earth did this come to have to do with the copyright monopoly?

Few contemporary discussions put the spotlight like this one on how the copyright monopoly is not about rewarding artists, but is a political war on property – on our ability to own the things we paid for. (I won’t say “bought”, as that implies we actually own them.) The copyright monopoly is dividing the population into a corporate class who gets to control what objects may be used for what purpose, and a subservient consumer class that don’t get to buy or own anything – they just get to think they own things that can only be used in a predefined way, for a steep, monopolized, fixed price, or risk having the police sent after them.

This is not a free market. This is the opposite of a free market. The copyright monopoly stands in opposition to a free market, and in opposite to property as a concept.

Some people insist on deceptively calling the copyright monopoly “property”, which is categorical nonsense every bit of the way. Two people can’t both own an object in full; this is part of the very definition of property. Obviously, the idea that you could own the jacket you’re wearing while I could own its color is both asinine and nonsensical, just like the idea that you can own a CD but I can own the laser-etched pattern of grooves carved into it.

Yet, the copyright monopoly maximalists insist on calling their monopoly “property” in continued and deliberate deception. When you press them on how this goes counter to every known definition of property, they usually fall back to a stupid statement along the lines of “property is whatever we define it to be”, which avoids basic statements of fact on the nature of property, and goes to reveal the true intent – redefining property to something that creates two new classes in society: the corporate masters who own property, and the citizen serfs who get to use things they pay for in ways that are strictly defined and constrained.

To illustrate the absurdity of this, imagine a carpenter that had the legal right to send you to jail if you used his chairs in ways he disapproved of, after your having bought those chairs.

This is what the copyright monopoly was always about. The phone-unlocking issue is not an oddity or an outlier; it lies at the very heart of the monopoly’s philosophy. The copyright monopoly was always about control over other people’s property, and always about preventing creativity and innovation that could threaten the incumbents.

The copyright monopoly hurts creativity, hurts our economy, hurts our entrepreneurs – and most importantly, it is an affront to the most foundational concepts in society, such as the right to tinker with your own property. It needs to be questioned, dismantled, and abolished.

Source: TorrentFreak

[ffi]

Even Murray Rothbard, a staunch anarchocapitalist did not have any problems with copyrights, unlike patents.

I am on a mobile device, maybe I could try to find one of his articles in which he defends the principle of copyright rights.

[VileTouch]

this effectively makes the law a joke. a mere suggestion rather than a rule....and if they're planning to enforce it, they better start building more prisions NOW!

there's another thing that irks me. the way "the cloud" is going is less about freedom of information for everyone, wherever they might be. and more about the same faux sense of ownership.--accessible anywhere you are, so you don't miss it, yes...as long as you pay a subscription--but nowadays you have less and less things, yet you pay for more and more things.it's akin to no longer being able to buy a hammer and nails. instead, every time you need one you point at a spot and pay someone to drive the nail perfectly for you.. sure it might work when all you want is to hang a picture to the wall, but if you're a carpenter, you start to see how ridiculous a principle this is.

[/rant]

[stylemessiah]

Meh, some vendors (notably Android vendors, HTC from memory is one i think) now actually support unlocking and provide tools, they see the value in people wanting to tinker with and improve Android...hard to do that without an unlock.

Theres always been a way to unlock phones and always will be, its a bit of a far reach to suggest that all of a sudden some shadowy figure is going to be going around to check to see if your phones unlocked....just sensationalism at work.

Everyone just take a chill pill and stay away from the KoolAid that the original source was drinking

[ffi]

here is Murray Rothbard http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap10e.asp#7._Patents_Copyrights on copyright, he calls infringing on copyrights theft and you cannot get anymore free market than Rothbard

"Let us consider copyright. A man writes a book or composes music. When he publishes the book or sheet of music, he imprints on the first page the word “copyright.” This indicates that any man who agrees to purchase this product also agrees as part of the exchange not to recopy or reproduce this work for sale. In other words, the author does not sell his property out­right to the buyer; he sells it on condition that the buyer not reproduce it for sale. Since the buyer does not buy the property outright, but only on this condition, any infringement of the con­tract by him OR A SUBSEQUENT BUYER is implicit theft and would be treated accordingly on the free market. The copyright is there­fore a logical device of property right on the free market...and this copyright would be per­petual, not limited to a certain number of years. Obviously, to be fully the property of an individual, a good has to be perma­nently and perpetually the property of the man and his heirs and assigns."

[Avitar]

The bill, which was presented to the U.S. Congress three days ago, makes it legal to unlock devices such as phones that you own, and do what you like with them. Let’s take that again, because it is jaw-dropping: the bill reforms the copyright monopoly to make it legal to tinker with objects that you own.

Is that bill so bad? I mean, it makes it legal to unlock your phone. I support the bill, unless there is something I am missing here...

[DKT27]

The bill, which was presented to the U.S. Congress three days ago, makes it legal to unlock devices such as phones that you own, and do what you like with them. Let’s take that again, because it is jaw-dropping: the bill reforms the copyright monopoly to make it legal to tinker with objects that you own.

Is that bill so bad? I mean, it makes it legal to unlock your phone. I support the bill, unless there is something I am missing here...

Few months ago, U.S. announced a ban on unlocking of mobile phones.