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Piracy, Contracts, and the Market

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  1. 1 de 4nota aberta

    I just saw a post on Instagram about piracy. The author discussed the criminalization of the practice based on prices and access to culture.

    The second part doesn’t particularly interest me right now. What caught my attention was something else: the distorted view many people have about contracts, crime, and the market.

    I had already seen other content from the author and I know which framework she intends to attack. High prices appear as evidence of an injustice produced by the market, while piracy emerges almost as an inevitable or morally justified reaction to the difficulty of access.

  2. 2 de 4

    The Position They Assume We Defend

    As happens in almost every discussion about market practices, people project onto those who defend market economies the same moral view they themselves have of the market.

    Since they see contractual means as obstacles to access to culture, they assume that defending the market necessarily means defending those obstacles and the criminalization of any attempt to bypass them.

    The problem is that this position attributed to those who defend the market does not necessarily follow from the theories we actually defend.

  3. 3 de 4

    Copyright as a Contractual Relationship

    There is a great deal of liberal literature saying precisely the opposite. In Man, Economy, and State, Murray Rothbard, one of the main formulators of anarcho-capitalism, presents a conception of copyright based on contractual relationships between parties who have accepted certain conditions tied to a product.

    An author could sell a book, a song, or any other object under the condition that the buyer would not reproduce it commercially. If that buyer were to distribute or reproduce the material against the conditions they accepted, there would be a breach of contract and there could be consequences related to that violation.

    But this obligation belongs to the parties who accepted the contract.

    Someone who later receives or consumes a copy did not participate in the original agreement, did not accept its conditions, and therefore did not violate a contractual obligation. The existence of a law that classifies this consumption as a crime does not automatically turn the consumer into a party to a contract they never entered into.

  4. 4 de 4

    Refuting a Projection

    I am not saying that every defense of the market must accept this specific position of Rothbard. The point is precisely that there is no necessary relationship as is often assumed.

    Defending markets, property, and contracts does not oblige someone to defend any existing legislation on intellectual property, much less to treat every individual who consumes a copy as an aggressor.

    But this possibility is rarely considered by those who already start from a disdain for the market and for contracts. First, they construct a moral image of what the market represents. Then they attribute that image to anyone who defends it. Finally, they present their own projection as if it were the position they have just refuted.

    The social analysis of prices and access may seem appealing because it offers a simple moral conflict: on one side, people prevented from accessing culture; on the other, defenders of the market protecting contracts and criminalizing consumers.

    But this conflict depends on a contractual position that was assumed, not demonstrated.

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