Reason for Liberty

Recently, one of my friend who enjoys calling himself an anarcho-capitalist, tried to oppose Copyright act by questioning whether violation of Copyright act is Legal or illegal.
He for doing so, tried to mull and blame and defy Ayn Rand whom he considers as the only supporter of copyright act.
This post is basically not intended to oppose him.
This post is intended to safeguard Ethics of Capitalism, ethics of liberty, and ethics of honest humanity.
I will start with Ayn Rand’s famous quote from Atlas Shrugged:
“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

That is the basic ethical line of every Capitalist irrespective of his political fervour is anarchocapitalistic or Miniarchist.
The whole argument of Intellectual property and copyright abolitionists stands on the basis of denying intellectual property as a true property. It seems genuine too because if someone steals your watch (that is, a tangible property) you will be devoid of it, you will no longer be able to use it. While, if someone steals your article, poem, music, idea, software programs, scientific formulas etc, you will still be able to use it because you are the creator. The problem is, although the original creator will have his copy, he will be robbed of the profits which he might have made by selling the goods he produced by his efforts. It will be unwillingly shared and distributed by the thief of his efforts.
Second thing is, copyright is a reward for the creator for his property. It is moral right that the labor of the creator must be rewarded with property. People won’t have any incentive to create if they won’t be rewarded. Copyright is not about promoting creative arts, it is about producing creative arts, it is about the labour involved. Many times the patent holders may never publish their copies because they just don’t want to publish it. Copyright has nothing to do with providing the public with creative arts; it is just for the creator for his efforts in creating.
Furthermore, denial of IP may lead to heavy losses. The case to be mentioned is about the INSLAW which created the programme Prosecutor’s Management Information System (PROMIS).
The justice department of America not only forced INSLAW to provide it the developed PROMIS programme (2003) free of cost to the government but it also caused bankruptcy of the INSLAW company because of the losses. And it is still being suspected that the security secrets were spied through PROMIS during that illicit use of force by the government over the INSLAW Company despite their IP copyright.
Some left liberalist also claims that copyright is against “free-speech” because according to right for free speech, you are free to express, speak anything. Now it is also similarly ridiculous analogy leftists have got. Free speech doesn’t mean to steal some other one’s greatest achievements and use it at your will. Free-speech is not parroting. Obviously all the arguments against copyright are related to the public common good syndrome, though it is quite clear that there is nothing like “common good”. Left liberalists will talk of rights of all and everyone, but will surely ignore the rights of that who created and originated it. It is not only anti-mind, but anti-individualist too. An artist, not only wishes to gain monetary benefits from his creative work for which he put up his efforts, but also he wishes that his creation may not be mutilated and degraded hence bastardized by others for as long as possible. And to try for that is the artists/creators inalienable right.
To oppose copyright or importance of Intellectual Property is nothing but moral bankruptcy. It is stealing and theft. It is like getting something without paying for it, without devoting efforts to earn it, without creating it. It is using other’s effort for your living, it is parasitic attitude and it is shamefully Marxist attitude.
Is Copyright an Anarchocapitalistic Idea?
Anarchocapitalism is an economic-political system propounded by Murray Rothbard, the Austrian economist and student of Ludwig Von Mises, the greatest of all Austrian economists.
Ludwig Von Mises himself was a Miniarchist, with a firm belief that there should be no interference of government in economic market, but socio-political sector including security, should be a democratic voluntary supported system in which Individual rights should never be harmed.
But Murray Rothbard further tried to put up the idea of total government free organised system based on reason which makes the ethical laws of Individual Freedom. Although, I do not agree with Rothbard on question of Anarchocapitalism ( which I opposed here AnarchoCapitalism) and I Strictly support Miniarchy yet, I would like to clarify that the basic Anarchocapitalist, Murray Rothbard himself was a supporter of copyright and Intellectual property.
In His book Ethics of liberty, he clarifies what actually is violation of copyright!
Violation of (common law) copyright is an equivalent violation of contract and theft of property. For suppose that Brown builds a better mousetrap and sells it widely, but stamps each mousetrap “copyright Mr. Brown.” What he is then doing is selling not the entire property right in each mousetrap, but the right to do anything with the mousetrap except to sell it or an identical copy to someone else. The right to sell the Brown mousetrap is retained in perpetuity by Brown. Hence, for a mousetrap buyer, Green, to go ahead and sell identical mousetraps is a violation of his contract and of the property right of Brown, and therefore prosecutable as theft. Hence, our theory of property rights includes the inviolability of contractual property.

A common objection runs as follows: all right, it would be criminal for Green to produce and sell the Brown mousetrap; but suppose that someone else, Black, who had not made a contract with Brown, happens to see Green’s mousetrap and then goes ahead and produces and sells the replica? Why should he be prosecuted? The answer is that, as in the case of our critique of negotiable instruments, no one can acquire a greater property title in something than has already been given away or sold. Green did not own the total property right in his mousetrap, in accordance with his contract with Brown—but only all rights except to sell it or a replica. But, therefore Black’s title in the mousetrap, the ownership of the ideas in Black’s head, can be no greater than Green’s, and therefore he too would be a violator of Brown’s property even though he himself had not made the actual contract.

Of course, there may be some difficulties in the actual enforcement of Brown’s property right. Namely, that, as in all cases of alleged theft or other crime, every defendant is innocent until proven guilty. It would be necessary for Brown to prove that Black (Green would not pose a problem) had access to Brown’s mousetrap, and did not invent this kind of mousetrap by himself independently. By the nature of things, some products (e.g., books, paintings) are easier to prove to be unique products of individual minds than others (e.g., mousetraps).1
http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/sixteen.asp
I hope the example of Mr Brown given by Rothbard will clarify why Readern had proper right to make readern metal and none else. He never sold copyright to anyone.
It is quite clear that, my friend while opposing copyrights, disagreed with reasonable basis of Murray Rothbard, the propounder of Anarcho-capitalism.
Obviously, he is not anarcho-capitalist, or he does not understand reason and ethics of Anarcho-capitalism properly and hence defies them.

He supports violation of copyright, which is predominantly supported by leftist marxists while Ludwig Von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, John Locke, John Reed, every single right liberalist, Libertarian, capitalist anarcho-capitalist fully supported the sanctity of copyright.
That doesn’t mean that I am against Mozilla firefox or Linux, or Wikipedia.
It is Individual’s freedom.
If a person innovates something or creates, and want it to be spread through in public via philanthropic voluntary charity system, it is his Individual right. It is Individual’s choice to offer his creation as under creative commons.
Others may applaud or criticize his charitable attitude, but it is neither anti-capitalistic nor anti-ethics of liberty.
Similarly, it is individual’s choice if he wants to copyright his creation. And if he chose to do so, then violation of his copyright is similar to theft of his property.
No law can bind an Individual from having copyright for his creative product, nor any law can bind an Individual for providing his creative product freely.
But if someone violates other Individual’s copyright, then it is certainly Illogical, illegal, Unethical, and immoral, because it is against the right of Individual freedom.
Ayn Rand’s speech on Intellectual Property and copy right:-

Part One
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwTpnWO7ea0
Part Two
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lBpF16Af8k
Author:~Unpretentious Diva/Freesoul~