Item — HN Reader

That an individual gets to decide how their own works should be treated is not the most important right, it's not a right at all. It's a limitation on other people's rights to imitate or reproduce things that they hear, read, or understand, that has within many legal systems been granted to various degrees in order to encourage the creation of new things. Freedom of expression is a civil right, and one which we may see fit to limit in order to encourage development.

Dismissing it as wanting "torrents of The Office [as] a civil right" is about as offensive to the people you're having the discussion with as dismissing the Catholic church as 'using a so-called mandate from God to get away with getting drunk' during Prohibition. People are having a real discussion about the limits of government, and you're dismissing it with hand-waving assertions of non-existent rights, and accusations of shallowness and greed towards anyone who would dare to find anything there to discuss.

The dedication of statues may be important to you, but it's as important to me as the record of the Windward Islands cricket team last year.

2 comments

My point about The Office is a legitimate one - and I did not mean to cause offense.

The language to support piracy is often couched in terms of civil rights - and I can understand that side of it. In practice though piracy is used for consumption that mirrors almost exactly what people consume in the 'un-pirated' world.

I won't use this fact to damn piracy. For me, it is a clear recognition that the 'pirate' model would flow quite naturally into a mutually-beneficial marketplace if given the chance.

The best way to get the government or governing powers out of the way is to support a legitimate marketplace of one's own. If that lower threshold can't even be met, the argument that a 'fairer' governing power exists falls on deaf ears.

By way of a more pointed reply to your specifics:

you express that an individual getting to decide how their work is treated is not a 'right' at all. You see it actually as a limitation on other people's right to use that work.

So, do you support a minimum wage?

An average worker has only their 'labor' to contribute; that is their basic, creative work. It is also fundamental to all sectors of the economy.

So, should laborers have a right to a basic level of recompense for their work?

Is their demand/desire for recompense such a limitation on those who benefit from their work that that desire for recompense is illegitimate?

Do I support a minimum wage? Yes. Do I think a minimum wage is a right? Only in the jurisdictions that recognize it as one.

Thank you for answering the question.

I too support a minimum wage. I believe successful societies work and thrive because they create more of those 'win-win' scenarios that I have referenced a few times here.

So would you support a period of time in which an artist can monetize their creation?