A Copyright Debate

Copying Is Not Theft? How About Identity Theft?
« J. Neil Schulman

Response
Remember the scene in the movie The Net where Sandra Bullock’s character, Angela Bennett, arrives home to find her house empty and a real-estate agent selling it? The real-estate agent has a copy of the deed to the house with a copy of Angela’s signature on it. Hey, those are just copies — Angela still has the originals … somewhere. She wasn’t deprived of anything by the act of making copies, was she? Are you kidding? She was deprived of her house! The issue is not someone duplicating the rhetoric, prose, poetry, or unique writing style, plot or characters in the deed. The deed was forged to take possession of a building. The theft of her building is clearly theft. It has nothing to do with violating the copyright on the literary draft of the deed.

No private party could hold a copyright on a legal instrument, or else only the private party could convey property.
Let’s say you graduate from medical school and get a diploma, with additional certifications so that you’re entitled to put “MD, FACS” after your name. Now, anyone copying those diplomas and certifications hasn’t deprived you of anything if they perform surgery in your name and a few patients die in the O.R. right? Correct. You still have your diploma. You still have a license to practice medicine. The issue here is parallel to perjured testimony. Imagine someone in court lies about you and says you murdered someone. If I go to get surgery from Dr. Smith and Mister Jones poses as Dr. Smith, it's fraud and theft of my money. Copying a credential is not parallel to waitresses singing "Happy Birthday" in a restaurant.
Or for my last example — and you gotta love this one — you’re a scientist working at a lab that stores various viruses — weaponized anthrax, as an example — that if released could kill millions of people. Hey, you still have all your original security passes, ID’s, and clearances if someone clones your biometric data and uses it to go grab some anthrax and drop it into the Lake Mead reservoir, right? A credential is issued by an agency, not the individual who has the degree or security clearance. Here, the agency wants to protect its biological property. Leaving evidence to mislead police investigators is not a violation of "copyright" laws. It is not parallel to waitresses singing "Happy Birthday" in a restaurant.
Come on, Neil, now you’re just being arch, argumentative, and ridiculous. Get to the point — copying a book, or a song, or a movie.  
I never left the point. It’s exactly the same subject.  
I spend five years of my life writing a novel — go through eight drafts before I finally have it right. That’s a major investment of blood, sweat, toil, and tears.  
I put it up for sale on my website as a PDF file, or on Amazon.com as a Kindle file, or get it accepted for sale through iTunes for reading on the Apple iPad.  
The next thing I know, all these versions of my novel are free Torrent downloads for which I don’t get anything in return.  
Oh, Neil, you still have your original. Copying Is Not Theft. By making a copy I haven’t deprived you of anything.  
Except, why should anyone making a rational economic calculation pay me for something they can get for free? So people get the benefits of my five years of blood, sweat, toil, and tears, and my checking account doesn’t have money in it to pay for doctor’s visits and prescriptions needed to treat my Type-II Diabetes. This is a key economic question for every occupation. It is also a political question. It is the question, shouldn't the government compel people to pay me for something? A true libertarian, who does not believe in government coercion, must always be creative to figure out new ways to persuade people to give him their money.
Or, I spend four years of my life and a half million bucks of my family’s dough — including fourteen cuts in an editing bay — making a movie. Then I put it up for sale on Amazon.com as a Video on Demand. Someone with software to get by any copy protection Amazon.com has takes my movie and presses it into DVD’s for sale in kiosks in Hong Kong … and, once again, as a Torrent. This argument does not answer the claim of the video: that copying/duplicating is not theft.
Now before I even get the chance to sell my movie for commercial distribution — which might get me back the cash, talent, and time invested in making this movie so I can afford to make another one — people are getting the benefit of my blood, sweat, toil, tears, and cash … and I am prevented from self-financing my next movie.        Maybe "self-financing" is not good business economics. That does not justify government intervention and coercion.
       This is a problem of marketing, distribution, and investment. A prudent creator would make sure that if they invest money, blood, sweat, and tears on a project, that there will be some ROI - return on investment. Failure to do so does not, tragically for the creator, justify government coercion.
If I invent, compose, or craft something original, it’s part of me. It’s part of my identity.        To say an invention, composition, or craft is "part of me" is a metaphor, not a legal or moral description.
       If I'm a laborer working for a landowner and I plant seeds, pick the weeds, and harvest the crop, the crop doesn't necessarily belong to me, no matter how much it can be said to be a part of me and my identity.
       Despite all the work I put into planting, weeding, and harvesting, if I don't make arrangements with truckers and distributors to move the harvest from my farm to the market, I won't make any money.
       Writers have to forge economic relationships with printers and distributors to get a return on their investment of writing efforts, just like agricultural laborers. Musicians need the infrastructure to create a market for their song, in a way that the market is willing to remunerate. They need to make rational plans to be compensated in some way, such as being paid in advance to write the soundtrack for a film. If they don't have that marketing structure, they won't make money for their work. If someone takes a tomato out of your truck and sells it, they have stolen from you. But unlike tomatoes, if someone sings your song, they haven't stolen your song from you.
The basic libertarian principle of liberty starts with self-ownership. Preventing me from owning the sole right to offer copies of things that are part and parcel of my personal identity — preventing me from owning the exclusive right to make copies of what I make as part of my personal identity — is the destruction of my life and liberty … and quite literally could end up killing me. It kills you only if you are not a prudent investor, marketer, or businessman.
Think about it. Please. None of this is theoretical for me. This is how I make my living. This is how I survive … or not. Special pleading does not determine the question of morality. If you made billions on your first creation, your case should not be any different for subsequent creations. It is immoral to steal from the rich as well as the poor.
Postscript:  
I’m going to publish this general statement both here and on Part II:  
The questions of how copyrights, trademarks, and patents are currently defined and enforced by States are an entirely separate issue from the arguments I have been making since the 1980’s about property rights in identity and information objects.  
For now I would be entirely satisfied if libertarians and anarchists recognized my property rights in the things I create and respected my right to license copies, using no other enforcement mechanism than social preferencing.  
If we ever get there, I would only sign a General Submission to Arbitration with an arbiter whose legal code recognized my property rights in name, brand, identity, and information objects I create. First you have to establish the moral basis for property rights in an idea.
But if libertarian/anti-statist writers and organizations continue to deny property rights in Identity and Personal Brand — both violated by unlicensed copying of created works — the libertarian movement fails to be an effective defender of the right to self ownership — the center of all libertarian thought — and belongs in the dustbin of history along with all other failed forms of socialism that treat the individual as a slave to the wants and needs of their brothers. The irony here is that socialism of a form (statism, coercion) is being advocated and defended under the guise of libertarianism.
Neil  
   

Go to Part II

  
The comments below are found on Shulman's blog:
 

 

#1 written by Brad Spangler
June 28, 2010 - 7:55 am
 
  As you know, I don’t find your position convincing. Right at the moment, though, I’m not sure how interested I am in debating the actual issue of IP with you. It seems like a more positive discussion would revolve around how to best monetize what you have done under the circumstances you describe.
  Nobody can take away from you the reputational benefits of the magnificient accomplishment of having written Alongside Night. You’ve made a plausible claim to having co-created agorism along with Konkin and he’s not around to contradict you. Within the libertarian movement, the star of agorism is ascendant. You are poised to realize profts, it would seem, regardless of IP. You recently wondered about people hanging out a shingle as arbitrators. I don’t know that the market demand for specifically agorist arbitration professionals just yet is all that large, but it seems likely that time will come. Of course, that eventuality doesn’t address your current needs. I don’t know. It just seems to me as if there ought to be ways to profit from your fame, with or without IP.
 

 
 

 

#2 written by jesse
June 28, 2010 - 10:59 am
  Neil, I bought “Alongside Night” and “The Rainbow Cadenza” at a used book store. You didn’t get a dime from the sale. I theoretically could borrow them from a local library. How are these different than grabbing a .PDF from the Pirate Bay?
 

 
 

 

#3 written by ESV
June 28, 2010 - 12:31 pm
  I partially, respectfully disagree. Copying information is not the same act as theft of a physical thing. It sometimes has similar effects, but not always.
  First, the facts: The cost of copying information has dropped to near zero. It won’t rise ever again.
  What are the implications of free information duplication? Not all copying results in lost wages for the author. Some of it results in increased income; surely you agree as you’ve been re-publishing your books here. Time shifting of performances and media shifting of text/audio/video by an individual clearly involve the duplication of information. And not every person that downloads a song illegally would have purchased the song otherwise.
  On the other hand, the duplication non-costs for information can help the author. The cost of duplication and delivery is very low and not every author/artist needs a publisher/label. How do we, as writers and artists, come to terms with the fact that DRM frequently makes the experience much worse for our lawful audience than it is for “pirates”? For non-technical folk, the restrictions are often baffling. This creates an even stronger economic incentive to copy against an author’s wishes, not a lesser one. And ultimately, all DRM schemes fail at some level.
  As authors/artists what we really want is for people to respect the license under which we distribute our works. Whether a book with a traditional copyright or software like Linux under a “copyleft” license, we really just want our terms to be respected. Breaching those artist-dictated terms is the problem we lament.
  As free-marketeers, we need to find ways to come to terms with these difficult facts, turn a tidy profit, and not resort to coercive copyright-enforcement regimes to redress our grievences against our own prospective customers. This is a long, hard growing-up process that many industries (movie, music, book, news, software) face together. We haven’t and won’t sort it out overnight. I don’t think it’ll be as cut-and-dried as “this is stealing” or not.
  Personally, I’ve purchased three of your books and I’d love to watch Lady Magdalene’s, but Amazon’s DRM is too much for my taste. I want to control media that I have purchased and own, just as I do with your books.
  Your customer,
ESV

Part II

Copying Is Not Theft? How About Forgery? Counterfeiting? Plagiarism?
« J. Neil Schulman

Response
The argument of “Copying is Not Theft” is that by copying a novel, a song, a movie, the owner is still in possession of the original and therefore by making a copy nobody is doing anything to deprive the owner of the original of anything of value.  
Clever. Very clever.  
But wrong. Very wrong.  
In my article earlier today I made the case that copying is not merely theft, it is Identity Theft.  
I wrote:  
The basic libertarian principle of liberty starts with self-ownership. Preventing me from owning the sole right to offer copies of things that are part and parcel of my personal identity — preventing me from owning the exclusive right to make copies of what I make as part of my personal identity — is the destruction of my life and liberty … and quite literally could end up killing me.  
Now I’m answering those who commented that all my examples of identity theft had the additional element above and beyond mere copying of being fraudulent or enabling additional crimes.  
Kyle Bennett (presumably no relation to the fictional Angela Bennett I referred to in the movie The Net) wrote in a comment on my Facebook wall this morning:  
All of your examples are of fraud or trespass secondary to the copying. There’s a difference between my selling a copy of “Lady Magdalene’s by J Neil Schulman,” and selling a copy of “Lady Magdalene’s by Kyle Bennett,” or a copy that has different content than the buyer was led to believe it was.  
Kyle admits that someone making a copy of “Lady Magdalene’s by J Neil Schulman” and selling a copy of “Lady Magdalene’s by Kyle Bennett” is committing the fraud we call “plagiarism.” Putting your own name on someone else’s work product without their authorization and distributing that mislabeled product as your own is misrepresenting the pedigree and provenance of that product to the end users. It is claiming someone else’s accomplishment as your own. It’s cheating. It is the consumer that is harmed, not the original author.
So let’s look at the cases where you make copies of something I made and still keep my name on it. That is no longer plagiarism.  
It’s now a different form of fraud, which in the art world is called “counterfeiting” and in the world of other commercial products — such as designer clothing or luxury watches — is called “forgery.” This is true only if it is the case that the connection with the creator's name is part of the product and its value. If a consumer wants to by a watch that is actually made by Famous Party A, then if Unknown Party B creates a knock-off and represents it has having been created by Famous Party A to the consumer, it is the consumer who is being defrauded, not Party A, the creator of the original.
Remember: my first premise here is the libertarian premise of self-ownership. I own my name when it refers back to me, my biographical details, my resume, my accomplishments, the proprietary artifacts I’ve used to generate my reputation, my personal expertise and taste. All of these are elements that when attached to my name make it a personal brand. Someone else using my name — my identity — for things not owned or authorized by me is committing identity theft — and I gave examples of that in yesterday’s article. Again, the theft is against the consumer, not Party A, the original creator.
But let’s say I write a novel and put my brand — my author’s name on it: J. Neil Schulman. The first claim of authorship of something I write is my byline attached to the writing. In a novel this is on the cover and title page. I write a dedication and acknowledgments, giving the work a purpose and a pedigree. On the copyright page is a claim of ownership — in land terms the posting of a “No Trespassing” sign, to stake out the boundaries of ownership. The parallel with land is inexact. If I steal your land, I deprive you of your use of it. If somehow I could duplicate your land -- create an entirely new parcel of land exactly like yours -- I would not be depriving you of your use of your land.
Often I will personally affix an additional brand enhancement — my signature. This is called an inscription or an autograph. That takes the particular copy from merely being authentic — authorized by its author — to being an object of memorabilia and gives it additional trade value in the marketplace. If the author is particularly noteworthy then under the right circumstances a personal signature can make an authorized copy many times more valuable than a copy that has merely the original commercial brand authorization. Again, a forged autograph defrauds the consumer, not the author.
You see this all the time in designer clothing lines, or perfumes, or celebrity photographs, or luxury watches. All of these products have enhanced market value by affixing a known celebrity brand. Again, a forged autograph defrauds the consumer, not the author.
The celebrity brand tells the buyer that the celebrity had personal input into the design, quality control, and manufacturing conditions of the product. The celebrity is risking his reputation if the quality control of the copy fails to meet top standards. This is an argument I made in another of my recent articles — What’s Your Bible? — when I argued:  
As a professional writer whose name is his commercial brand, I can no more allow someone else to rewrite me as they like and put my byline on it than the Walt Disney Corporation can allow someone else to publish cartoons of Mickey Mouse buggering Donald Duck.  
In a comment in reply to a challenge from a reader, I further wrote:  
No true craftsman allows someone else to ruin their work and keep their name on it. A license that allows unlimited rewriting but keeping the original writer’s name on it is an abomination to anyone who gives a damn about the integrity of their work. Deal breaker. … I have contempt for people in any field of human endeavor who don’t care about maintaining the quality of their work product. If that makes me a snob, so be it. I call it having standards.  
I have sat next to celebrities at conventions while the star signed personal memorabilia, taking cheaply manufactured objects — photographs of themselves, shirts, objects memorializing their career accomplishments — and charged up to several hundred dollars to sign it for a buyer — with lines around the block for them to do it.  
Auction houses and auction websites make markets out of common objects that would be trash except for a celebrity having owned or used or once touched it.  
A set of golf clubs or a box of golf balls is worth far more in a pro shop if the brand name “Tiger Woods” is on the label, because by affixing the name of the golf legend the buyer is being told that Tiger Woods had personal input into the quality of the products.  
Anyone who copies that box of golf balls with the Tiger Woods label on it — without proper authorization — is committing an act of forgery. It is the consumer who is being defrauded, not Tiger Woods.
Anyone who copies something I make without my license to make authorized copies is committing Identity Theft against me and some form of fraud against the person to whom they’re providing the copy: either plagiarism if they substitute their own brand or forgery and counterfeiting if they keep my brand name on it.  
Sell knock-offs of Tiger Woods label Nike shoes to the wrong person and don’t be surprised if you get capped upside your head, mutha!  
Postscript:  
I’m going to publish this general statement both here and on Part I:  
The questions of how copyrights, trademarks, and patents are currently defined and enforced by States are an entirely separate issue from the arguments I have been making since the 1980’s about property rights in identity and information objects.  
For now I would be entirely satisfied if libertarians and anarchists recognized my property rights in the things I create and respected my right to license copies, using no other enforcement mechanism than social preferencing.  
If we ever get there, I would only sign a General Submission to Arbitration with an arbiter whose legal code recognized my property rights in name, brand, identity, and information objects I create.  
But if libertarian/anti-statist writers and organizations continue to deny property rights in Identity and Personal Brand — both violated by unlicensed copying of created works — the libertarian movement fails to be an effective defender of the right to self ownership — the center of all libertarian thought — and belongs in the dustbin of history along with all other failed forms of socialism that treat the individual as a slave to the wants and needs of their brothers.  
Neil  
 
 

 

#1 written by Jonathan Bailey
June 28, 2010 - 2:11 pm
  I have to be honest and say I hadn’t thought of non-plagiarized copyright infringement as a form of identity theft. Though I think it’s a bit of a stretch, considering I don’t think anyone visiting torrent sites believe torrents are actually endorsed, I have to say I like the big idea that you should be able to approve and authorize everything that carries your name.
  I’m very pro-copyright myself (I work as a copyright and plagiarism consultant) but I do think that there are legitimate problems with the current system.
  That being said, I get frustrated when I see people who pirate content say it isn’t their responsibility to pay for content, it is the creator’s job to come up with a new business model. Yes, new business models are a part of the solution, but piracy is not.
  To those who talk about business models, as the commenter on your previous post did, I would say this. Rather than pirating content and being a part of the problem, why not support, with money, the business models you actually want to work? Content creators will follow the money, period.
  I sympathize with your situation and let me know if there is any way that I can help.
  Best of luck to you!
 

 
 

 

#2 written by Kyle Bennett
June 28, 2010 - 2:16 pm
  Simple solution, I publish “Alongside Night, written by J Niel Schulman, published and printed by Kyle Bennett”.
  The content is word for word, letter for letter what you wrote, so no plagiarism. And there is no claim that you had any input into anything but the words.
  See, the thing the internet has brought to the fore, that has always been able to be overlooked before, is that the information and the form it is presented in are different things, with different legal and moral status.
Response to Kyle's Comment by KC:

There are two separate issues here.
• The first is whether it is immoral to duplicate someone's work, specifically, do I steal by making a copy.
• The second is how we respond to a thief: punishment or other coercive action by "the government," or some non-violent community action on a non-governmental basis.

 I do recognize your moral ownership of Alongside Night, as an abstract work, and so I would not do what I proposed above. But you do not, and cannot, have any legal ownership over copies of the informational portion of the work, once you have allowed even one copy of that out into the public. There is no basis in natural law for it, and, more importantly, there is no way you can enforce such a legal right without prior restraint or a duty for people to prove themselves innocent, either of which is a gross violation of natural law.
  The only way the moral right can be enforced is the honor system, or social sanctions. Those are, ultimately, the only things that keep the legal system running anyway, so why not cut out the middle man.
 

 
 

 

#3 written by jesse
June 28, 2010 - 2:17 pm
  I’ve read and considered in many places that the crime of plagiarism or knock-off merchandise is between the consumer and the seller, not the original author/creator. If I buy a cheap knockoff paperback of Alongside Night that you don’t earn royalties on, and you eventually refuse to autograph for me, I am the victim, not you. It was up to me, the consumer, to make sure I was buying the real thing. It is up to me to go back to the seller and demand restitution for misrepresenting what he sold me. It’s not up to you to go off and shut him down because he’s competing with your publisher.
 

 
 

 

#4 written by bud
June 28, 2010 - 2:27 pm
  Since I have no skin in this game, I’m going to let the original proponent(s) argue copy/theft, but…
  Your multitude of examples of people paying ludicrous amounts of money for “trash with cachet” is no argument either way on that issue, but rather illustrations of the maxim, “It’s morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money”.
 

 
 

 

#5 written by Kyle Bennett
June 28, 2010 - 2:43 pm
  “the crime of plagiarism or knock-off merchandise is between the consumer and the seller,”
  Sure, but Mr Rolex could just go and buy one of the knockoffs himself, and now he *is* the aggrieved party. It’s still worth his while to address it because the misuse can undermine people’s trust in the real brand name, or simply as goodwill to potential customers. But there are ways to do it that do not involve prior restraint and demanding proof of innocence.
  The point is that that *is* fraud, and whatever the details of who and how, it opens the door to legitimate enforcement in principle.
 

 
 

 

#6 written by ESV
June 28, 2010 - 3:50 pm
  @Jonathan Bailey: I couldn’t agree more: piracy is some kind of violation, even if we can’t all agree on exactly on the nature of that violation. I vote with my dollars every chance I get. Nine Inch Nails, Cory Doctorow, Pioneer One. And of course J. Neil Schulman. Personally, I try to avoid paying for an experience that’s worse than what I’d get if I were a “pirate”.
  It’s unhealthy to conflate the duplication of information with the theft of physical goods. That’s over-simplification.
  It’s not identity theft. Nobody pretends to be you when they distribute your works illegally.
  It is a contract violation. Most of the time, that contract is implicit to the buyer, and embodied in copyright law and judicial precedent. Sometimes, it’s made explicit when the author’s desires a contract substantially different from the implicit one. Creative Commons, GNU Public License, are examples of less restrictive, explicit licenses. Every time you install a piece of software or sign up on a website, you agree to a laundry list of conditions and terms of use that exemplify more restrictive, explicit licenses.
  Most of these discussions revolve around what the body of existing copyright law is, isn’t, should, or shouldn’t be. But that cedes a lot of ground. Why let somebody else decide a huge chunk of terms for you. Why not set those terms for yourself, exactly as you want, in plain language that your customers can understand?
  If you don’t think that’s possible, then I see two other options. [1] Wait for the government to “solve” the problem for you. For shorthand, I call this solution “wishful thinking”. Or [2] Acknowledge that information duplication is free and will happen, even when you really wish it wouldn’t. Predicate all your business decisions upon this fatalistic fact.
  Some combination of custom licensing and fatalism is probably where most folks will eventually land.
 

 
 

 

#7 written by Kyle Bennett
June 28, 2010 - 4:21 pm
  I started writing a response to Neil’s “general statement”, but it got long, so I turned it into a Facebook note:
  http://www.facebook.com/note.php?created&&suggest&note_id=406258224817
  And mirrored it more publicly on my blog:
  http://humanadvancement.net/blog/index.php?itemid=250
 

 
 

 

#8 written by Brian Singer
June 28, 2010 - 6:20 pm
  The one area that I would take exception with at this point is the idea that because you are a public figure, or because you earn your livelihood in creative pursuits, that you own your reputation. Your reputation exists in the minds of others solely. I have every right to stand up and publicly declare that I like your work, or that I don’t, and I can even go on to explain why. There is no difference between me standing up and saying J Neil Schulman is an awesome guy, or he’s a putz. Both are statements of my opinion. To say that you can claim some sort of property right in the thoughts of others holds no water.
 

 
 

 

#9 written by Karl Fogel
June 29, 2010 - 8:47 am
  With digital data, if you make a bit-for-bit copy, it really is exactly the same thing. It’s not like the author is exercising any quality control at the point of copying.
  There’s no identity theft in unauthorized copying. Simply state that this is not an authorized copy — done. No possibility of confusion.
  You could do the reverse and label the *authorized* copies as such, of course. We developed the Creator-Endorsed Mark for that purpose:
  http://questioncopyright.org/creator_endorsed
  Unauthorized copying is not fraud nor counterfeiting. This comment goes into detail:
  http://questioncopyright.org/minute_memes/cint_release#comment-7187
  Quoting from it:
  “Fraud is different from copying. If you download a song and share it, there is no fraud — there may be copyright infringement, but no false claims are being made. On the other hand, if you remove the original author’s name from the song and put your own name there instead, that would be completely different — that would be fraud, of course (it would be plagiarism, which is a specific kind of fraud).
  Likewise, if you make copies of my birth certificate, IDs, etc, and you keep them locked in a drawer in your house forever and no one else is ever confused by them, that’s actually okay. It’s not the copying that’s the issue there. But if you were to use that ID to open a bank account and cash checks meant for me, that’s different. It has nothing to do with copyright. The issue is simply that it’s lying.
  No one here has ever advocated loosening laws that protect against fraud, or against medical privacy or things like that. But don’t confuse those issues with copyright.
  Sometimes you’ll hear people say ‘Well, if copyright is so bad, how about I just start copying dollar bills! That would be okay too, right?’ Which is silly, of course — there’s a reason that no country has their copyright office policing counterfeit currency, and it’s that counterfeiting is fraud, not copyright infringement. A physical token of money is a claim on the issuing authority’s assets; to duplicate the claim token is just like duplicating someone’s birth certificate or ID: it is only useful to enable fraud, because all these tokens are indicators of value held somewhere else, rather than containing the value themselves. Thus when you make and circulate duplicates, you do not increase the total amount of value, and you actually decrease the amount of value per token (thus effectively stealing from everyone else who already has tokens, which is why counterfeiting is a crime). Contrast this with culture, where duplicating it does actually increase the total value in circulation, because more people are exposed to it.
  Copying is not theft. It’s also not fraud. Fraud, on the other hand, may be enabled by copying certain kinds of things, but it’s not the copying itself that’s the fraud, it’s the subsequent lying, which the copies are merely used to bolster.”
 

 
 

#10 written by J. Neil Schulman
June 29, 2010 - 10:07 am

  
Brian Singer:
  
The one area that I would take exception with at this point is the idea that because you are a public figure, or because you earn your livelihood in creative pursuits, that you own your reputation. Your reputation exists in the minds of others solely. I have every right to stand up and publicly declare that I like your work, or that I don’t, and I can even go on to explain why. There is no difference between me standing up and saying J Neil Schulman is an awesome guy, or he’s a putz. Both are statements of my opinion. To say that you can claim some sort of property right in the thoughts of others holds no water.  

Brian, reputation is what other people think of me. I don’t own that. Identity is the me they think of. I own that.
  
 

 
 

 

#11 written by Brian Singer
June 29, 2010 - 10:50 am
  Neil,
I was referring to this, “Remember: my first premise here is the libertarian premise of self-ownership. I own my name when it refers back to me, my biographical details, my resume, my accomplishments, my reputation, my personal expertise and taste.”
 

 

 

#12 written by J. Neil Schulman
June 29, 2010 - 11:33 am

  
Brian Singer:  
Neil,
I was referring to this, “Remember: my first premise here is the libertarian premise of self-ownership. I own my name when it refers back to me, my biographical details, my resume, my accomplishments, my reputation, my personal expertise and taste.”		  

You caught me being sloppy, Brian. I’ve since gone back in and fixed it. Thanks for the heads up!