QUESTION:

Mr. McCurry,

Thank you for the thoughtful email.  Since you mentioned it, I do have one question.  Where does the Libertarian Party stand on the issue of intellectual property and peer-to-peer file sharing for noncommercial use?  There has been some news coverage of this issue lately.  Many foreign governments have implemented “three strikes laws” which some here in the US would undoubtedly seek to emulate.  For your information, I have already changed my party affiliation with the Supervisor of Elections.  It feels good!

Best regards,

DB From Lynn Haven

ANSWER:

DB From Lynn Haven,

First, thank you for changing your registration to Libertarian! Personally, I did so myself in January 2005. I have not regretted one moment of it.

Second, the LP is a very strong believer in property rights in general and intellectual property rights in particular. By Jove, it's written in our Constitution! Patents, trademarks, and copyrights provide for exclusive 'commercial' enterprise.

However, commercial 'sharing' has been in existence as long as public libraries have been in existence. Libraries have been sharing copyrighted material for generations. There are not many people, Libertarians included, that advocate shutting down libraries on the basis that they share copyrighted material.

The one argument that I can think of that file sharing sites are in fact illegal is that the site users are in fact getting compensation for sharing files by getting access to other files. This amounts to barter which technically is compensation.

I had talked to an IP attorney on this very subject ( a t-shirt idea I had ) and he said that "patents, trademarks, and copyrights only give you the right to sue the parties performing the illegal actions." BTW, the fashion industry has no IP protection.

As you know already, it is very hard to enforce this outside of shutting down file sharing websites. The Supreme Court already ruled that VCRs could not be banned for their potential for illegal use because they had potential for legal uses as well. I would think this would apply to file sharing sites as well. I got this little ditty from http://www.john-wright.net/2004/05/06/file-sharing-a-libertarian-response/ (To not plagiarize, of course).

Then again, Libertarians believe the people should be able to do anything they want with their property as long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others. In this case, the IP owner has the right to sell his/her product. No one else has this right for that particular product. However, if someone has legally acquired a copy of the product, then there is nothing stopping (or should it) the person from sharing it as they please. Imagine if you couldn't share anything with anyone. What a miserable existence that would be!

From one possible economic perspective (but don't take this as 'Libertarian' as I was doing some free thinking), the market has told us that the price of an electronic file containing music is zero (Radiohead is a good example). Apple and others are able to charge for songs because they provide a service ( downloading songs virus-free from an easy-to-navigate marketplace, itunes.com ) for playing on their proprietary device, the iPod.

In my humble opinion from a common sense point of view because I am not an attorney, if a patent, trademark, copyright (PTC) owner were to sue someone who "shares too much", I believe the PTC owner would have to prove intent. What I mean is: "Is the person sharing the file (defendant) intending to infringe upon the PTC owners right to sell the product?" From what I can tell, this is a matter of scale as 'intent' is very subjective unless there is hard evidence like a statement or confession. Despite what Myspace and Facebook say, individuals don't really have 3,000 'friends'. Think of how many people you could possibly let borrow a CD or DVD in a year. I would say the maximum number of potential lendings is the number of minutes in a year divided by the duration of CD or DVD in minutes. I would say that is a "fair" number for our 'scale'.

In short, file sharing sites should not be shut down, but persons who share files need to share the responsibility of preserving the rights of PTC owners by not sharing to a scale that would infringe on the PTC owner's ability to sell the product.

I hope your not exhausted from reading this. 

JJ McCurry, Chair
LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF FLORIDA
P.O. Box 3012 Winter Park, FL 32790-3012
407-694-2038
www.lpf.org

If not you...whom?
If not now...when?