There is a cruel and hypocritical irony in the debate over intellectual property laws in the United States. Before we can discuss the propriety of laws defending intellectual property, we first need to examine who possesses the rights to such property, and this is where the problems first begin with laws like the DMCA (Digitial Millennium Copyright Act) or the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) that have been drawing such negative attention over the past few years. We must think far broader than these laws to get to the fundamental issue of whose property rights are to be protected, and whose interests such laws must, under equity, be designed to serve.

Let us first ask ourselves who creates intellectual property. This question is seldom addressed, strangely enough, in laws that are supposed to protect intellectual property. People create intellectual property. I will speak personally here as someone who is a fairly prolific creator of intellectual property. When I write a blog entry or a book or a play or a poem or a song, I am creating intellectual property. My creation sprang from my heart, mind, and it belongs to me. If someone creates an image, that is their creation and their property, just as my books and my creations are my property. It is the artist and creator who owns intellectual property rights by virtue of our creative action.

These fundamental property rights are routinely disregarded by corrupt companies and our corrupt legal system. I once worked for a company that sought to claim ownership of anything I did while I worked at that company, which was completely unacceptable. My mind belongs to me (and to my Creator), and anyone who pays me wages is only renting my mind for a specific amount of time per day and paying me for that privilege. A company may wish to license what I own, again, to rent my creations, and to pay me fairly for the privilege while also receiving a profit for marketing my creations to others, but the creations belong to the creator.

The worst violators of the property rights of creators are the same companies that are looking to shut down illegal websites and who have been suing their customers for years. Who is it that prevents artists from releasing their works because they deem it “not commercial?” It is big companies, specifically record labels [1]. Who is that steals the royalty rights that properly belong to athletes while they make billions of dollars per year on marketing these rights to video game companies and trading card companies? It is big companies like the NCAA [2]. Who is it that wishes for no more intellectual property to ever enter the common domain to be used and adapted by creative people? It is companies like Disney. Then they have the gall to accuse people like me for being thieves because I quote song lyrics (with attribution!) on my blog, or because I like to use a spunky Sonic The Hedgehog image for my personal icon. Where is the honor among thieves?

The same companies that seek to shut down others for violating their intellectual property rights are the same companies that routinely act as if creative artists, their researchers, and the creations of their employees and those authors and artists under contract with them are the property of the company, in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution (which forbids slavery, involuntary servitude). To claim ownership of my thoughts and my creations is to steal from me. To profit off of it, to deny access of it to others, and to act as if your rights are being violated by those who wish to share my works is a massively fraudulent claim. Such companies need to respect the property rights of others before their own financial interests are even remotely worthy to discuss.

Why don’t companies want to talk about their own institutionalized theft while they go on a rampage against those who seek to promote and spread, with full attribution, the artistic and intellectual creations of worthy artists and thinkers? Is there not a moral, if not legal, requirement that those who accuse others have clean hands themselves? After all, what artists and thinkers want above all is for their creation to be shared with others. I speak as someone compelled to create, and I am certainly not alone in that.

It is largely due to the stranglehold of large companies that it is so difficult for the creations of artists to be enjoyed by the general public. We are destroying our common spaces where people are free to create, free to share their works, and free to appreciate the works of others. Instead we are surrounded by monopolists who want to steal the property rights of others while pretending to be the defenders of property rights. Let us recognize that true intellectual property rights belong to creators, not to marketers, to thinkers and artists, not to lawyers and company executives. When we recognize the source of creativity in creators, we can properly show respect to it in ways that encourage open and free access and that provide proper payment and respect to those creators for their works.

There is indeed a massive problem with the thievery of intellectual property in this nation and around the world. But the largest share of that theft belongs in those who seek to appropriate the works and thoughts and creativity of people as their own corporate property without respecting the ultimate property rights of creators. Companies cannot compel others to respect their own secondary or tertiary property rights until they respect the primary rights of those creators whom they routinely cheat, rob, and defraud. Once these corrupt companies cleanse themselves from their own sins, and repent from their own theft do they have the moral sanction to go after the theft of anyone else. That is the real theft we should be seeking to stop with laws.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/college-athletes-the-ncaa-owns-your-likeness-forever/

[2] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/stones-of-sisyphus/