Copyright laws are antithetical to the principle of free expression.

Regarding my opponent's most recent response on this topic: "I must confess a degree of personal incredulity regarding the claims of my opponent. My consternation originates, primarily, from two separate segments of their response. The first issue I have is with the idea that constitutional rights are not absolute. The second is with the relevance of the societal good of copyright. I will take these two issues in order of their presentation." Unfortunately, neither incredulity or consternation make for much of an argument - particularly when such appear to come from a significant degree of naivete and outright confusion regarding the laws of our country. To disagree with the notion that "constitutional rights are not absolute" is to display a rather amazing degree of ignorance regarding the basics of constitutional law. As I noted in my opening remarks, the non-absolute nature of these rights is very widely recognized, as even the most casual of research into the field will show. The right commonly thought of as "freedom of religion," for instance, will not protect you from prosecution for murder if you assert that your particular religion requires human sacrifice and act accordingly. That's a rather extreme example, but apparently my opponent missed the more common examples I gave originally. As I noted, it is quite clear that the right to "freedom of expression" does not mean that laws prohibiting libel, slander, disturbing the peace, or defacing property with graffiti are unconstituional. The "right to bear arms" does not mean that one can privately own nuclear weapons. The list of examples goes on and on, but it is clear from even the most cursory consideration that our Constitutional rights are not without limit and so are not "absolute" in that sense. My opponent goes on to say: "In regard to the absolute nature of constitutional rights; the vast majority of rights guaranteed by amendments to the constitution are treated as absolute. For example, the amendments protecting citizenship rights, allowing for income taxes, prohibiting slavery, and the like, are all interpreted quite literally, and in a rather absolute manner. We do not often hear people claiming that the government does not, for example, have an absolute power to tax personal income." This shows a rather serious degree of confusion between "rights" and other provisions of the law. The prohibition of slavery, for instance, is hardly stated in the form of an individual right, and what the enabling of the Federal income tax has to do with whether or not certain rights are "absolute" is beyond me; perhaps we will see a further explanation of this. But it should also be clear that simply because some rights are not considered "absolute" (and cannot be, in any practical system), this does not mean that there are not other "absolute" statements contained within the law. Whether or not this confusion was intentional or was simply a case of confusion on my opponent's part, I cannot say - but it clearly has no bearing on the question at hand. "I also take exception to the diversionary attempt at driving this to a conversation about societal good. This debate would not seem to have anything to do with the goodness of copyright, or the moral acceptance of the idea." My opponent may "take exception" to this, but it's hardly a "diversionary attempt." As noted, since we ARE forced to consider a balance between the protection of two conflicting rights - namely, the right to free expression vs. one's rights to personal property - societal and individual good become a key consideration. (In short - sorry, but you raised the question of law here. And what is a system of law about if not determining justice?) The benefits of assigning ownership to a particular expression are definitely NOT outside the scope of such a discussion, since it DOES come down to balancing the interests of these rights. My opponent then continutes with: "The tangent about the absolute nature of laws is also rather beside the point. Rather than arguing legal minutiae, we should perhaps focus back on the issue at hand--does copyright violate the *principle* of free expression?" Again, "arguing legal minutiae" was unavoidable, given that my opponent raised the question of copyright laws being "unconstitutional" in his opening remarks. But since it appears that there can no longer be a question of the constitutionality of such laws - they have repeatedly been found to be quite constituional, and the justifications for such findings have been clearly given - let's turn again to the "issue at hand" as my opponent states it. As I pointed out in my opening remarks, copyright protection is very widely recognized as actually being a means of PROMOTING free expression, as they put into place a system which provides considerable incentive to those who wish to express original thoughts. What it prohibits - and really, ALL that copyright law prohibits - is someone ELSE deriving undue benefit from the work of others. There is no prohibition under our copyright system of ANYONE expressing their own thoughts, ideas, and opinions - what there is is a prohibition against using someone ELSE'S expressions as your own. My opponent asks, "How can you freely express yourself, if there are certain ideas that you are prohibited from expressing simply because someone else lays a claim of ownership over them?" but completely fails to give any example of such a prohibition. You are clearly free to express any IDEA you wish - you simply have to come up with your own expression of those ideas. There are, for example, any number of books, articles, speeches, etc., which have been written, given, or published concerning the basic idea that, say, reducing air pollution is a good thing. They all express this same idea, but differ in how each individual author chooses to express that idea. Unless you can make a convincing argument that you must use someone ELSE'S words to express YOUR views on an idea, the proposal that copyright law somehow restricts your right to expression rings very hollow. Why should you have to steal the expressions of others if what you are arguing for is the right to express YOUR thoughts? The notion that "It is not a very free sort of expression if I have to secure the permission of someone else before expressing an idea. Especially if I have to pay royalties for the privilege." is both again confusing the expression of an idea with the stealing of someone else's work, and apparently denying the idea that such work can have value in the first place. You clearly do NOT have to secure the permission of anyone else to express an idea - what you have to get permission for is the use of THEIR expression of the idea. If you an incapable or unwilling to express that idea on your own, that is no one's fault but yours - on what grounds would you claim the "right" to benefit from their work?. And to object to the payment of royalties - does my opponent intend to claim that the forms of expression protected by copyright are completely without value? Again, if I put in the very significant amount of work required to produce these expressions, is it unreasonable to expect to receive fair payment for their use? And if such fair payment CANNOT be expected, is this not a significant DIS-incentive to the expression of such works in the first place, and therefore itself antithetical to promoting free expression? It must also be noted that like the "right to free expression," copyright protection itself is not absolute. U.S. law DOES recognize the right to "fair use" of copyrighted material, whereby such material may be used without either permission or royalty, so long as such use IS actually a part of what is itself a new expression. Those cases which do not fall under the "fair use" criteria are rightly called something else - the stealing of another's work.