Do I have a right to use or enjoy someone else’s creation?
Only with the creator’s permission, which may or may not require a payment from me. And if the creator makes a deal with a third party assigning his/her rights to that party, so be it.
There’s only one exception, and one proviso.
The exception: If the creation becomes news, then naming or otherwise displaying the creation via news channels is legitimate. This includes "fair comment" in correspondence, reviews and, yes, posting in such fora as the Agora.
The proviso: I place creations into three categories.
1. Trademarks, corporate names and the like, including texts, images, figures, etc., created for a company’s use, where the creation of texts, images and figures is not the company’s principal business.
2. Artistic endeavors created only for esthetic or entertainment purposes, plus non-fiction texts written to inform or educate.
3. Devices, materials, manufacturing processes, software and the like that are pragmatic in function and useful to society.
The right to use a trademark, corporate name or other corporate materials should inhere to its owner in perpetuity. The Hudson’s Bay Company was founded in 1670, and remains in business to this day. Why should I ever have the right to trade under that name or otherwise use it?
The right to charge a fee for the use or enjoyment of artistic endeavors, including literature, educational materials, all manner of the plastic arts, dance and music should remain with their creators. Different countries provide for varying times of protection, and there is legitimate argument as to when copyright on such works should expire.
Pragmatic creations pose a different set of issues. Unquestionably, their creators should have the right to charge a fee for their use. Yet a moral issue creeps in: It may be acceptable to charge $25 per drug dose in a wealthy country, but how can such a charge be justified in the third world, where that sum might represent a month’s wages? In the developed world at least, pragmatic creations should be protected for a fixed term, one sufficiently long to provide a financial incentive to the creator, yet not so long as to dissuade others from providing healthy market competition. Here too there are legitimate arguments as to the appropriate length of such protection.
I believe that in recent years a number of companies have patented molecules. In my view, this should not be permitted because molecules are, at least theoretically, able to come into being entirely by natural causes. What should be patentable is the process by which the molecule is made. If someone else can figure out a different way to make that molecule, more power to them. And the same principle should apply to gene splices and the like.
