Some outraged Trackbacks characterize as "grotesque hyperbole" my comment that the idea of eliminating property rights and markets and financing IP through "'collective licensing or a media levy' is a euphemism for turning creativity into a socialist gulag."

I beg to differ. A tad hyperbolic, perhaps, but not grotesquely removed from the inevitable reality.

I would apply the epithet to any system in which creators and doers must beg government functionaries for permission to exercise control of themselves, their creations, or their property, and this permission can be granted or denied whimsically, according to the functionaries' views of "the public good."

If you consider carefully any of the proposals for systems of collective licensing based on media levies -- William Fisher's Promises to Keep is the most detailed -- they meet this test. They envision the creation of government bodies that will dole out funds collected through general levies to the creators of intellectual products.

Anyone who thinks this system will be clear of the corruptions of money, political connections, and political correctness is not living in the real world. Furthermore, anyone who thinks that such a system, even if totally pure, could effective allocate resources and produce results superior to a market needs to read about the history and economics of the 20th Century..

A classic philosophical statement says that "to will the end, you must will the means." In this case, a variation applies: If you will the means, you will the end.

For prior posts on the issue, see

Jonathan Zittrain on a Copyright Tax

Jonathan Zittrain Responds

Further Jonathan Zittrain Dialectic

A Tale of Markets

posted by James DeLong @ 10:15 AM |

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