Ⓐ ROBINRIGHT: AN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LICENSE INSPIRED BY BASIC INCOME
PIRATES YES, CORSAIRS NEVER!
from book: What we learned from the practice of Basic Income — A compendium of Writings and Data (Translation by Monica Puntel, Leonardo Puntel, Carolina Fisher and Revison by Tracy Halls. Art by Júlia Cristofi.)
RobinRight is the intellectual property license that uses state and private power against its exploration. It is a free property license for individuals and protected against legal personnel, i.e. public domain to be copied, altered, even being able to be commercialized by individuals without previous authorization (provided they duly pay any previously established royalties), but completely reserved against legal personnel.
It’s the inversion of copyrights laws objectives: the discrimination of people and the regulation of corporations.
Piracy created by individuals ceases to be a crime — leaving to the author’s criteria, to charge (or not) his pre-established parts on the profits. On the other hand corsair piracy done by the state-private corporations, in fact, responds to property laws.
Robinright is in practice a free license for those who need it and pays for who can and need to pay. And even if the companies try to contour prohibition using individuals, those can also be charged by the author. On the other hand the author has no sufficient incentive to charge the people that work, let’s say, as hard as camels and don’t earn enough with piracy in order to pay the cost of the charges — on the contrary to gangs, companies and states.
Maybe the question is therefore why use the license to protect intellectual property (even if partially) if it shouldn’t even exist in the first place?
Every alternative protection license of intellectual property even if considered illegitimate the prerogative of state guarantee uses the principle to counter for his objective, not making use of the same means, but by its owns strengths and means to against the aggression. An intellectual jiu-jitsu.
If copyleft uses this prerogative so that nobody takes ownership exclusively of a creation set as public domain, or more precisely, take it to create commercial derivations. Robinright is worried in separating the wheat from the chaff, understanding that the process of appropriation of capital being natural or intellectual given by legal aid from the state, in the formation of corporate structures with similar rights to individuals.
Our concern (ReCivitas) is, therefore to prevent that legal personnel commercialize the authors work just like copyleft, but not its absence. And especially not prevent that poorest people that still live off piracy are subject to punishment or prevented in having economic gains in order to compete with those who already have capital. RobinRight is, therefore a license with piracy discrimination reasons and economic redistribution.
I don’t completely agree that intellectual property by not being natural property should not exist. I believe that all natural property is legitimate by nature, but the artificial properties — intellectual or not — are only legitimate socially when recognized through a peace agreement between all interested parties.
In nature there are three types of property: the one who is everyone’s but in reality is no one’s; the one who belongs to somebody; and the one who belongs to a few people — and that is while it’s in peace, because if it is possible in a strictly pacifist manner to take ownership of something and keep it in peace, violently it’s possible to take it and lose it. And in society created precisely so that nobody loses nor take anything away based on measures of force, there are also three types of properties: particular, public and natural. Natural property is also public property, but not to be his or theirs, but to continue to be everyone’s at the same time, in other words, belonging to nobody whatsoever.
In peace societies all property forms that can be consensually instituted without violence or anybody’s privation should be legitimate and protected. As well as those possessions or appropriation impediments which require violence or coercion, which should be terminally prohibited. Therefore intellectual property that doesn’t require violence to be recognized can be voluntarily constituted, but it doesn’t need to be protected with the use of violence.
Copies of publications happen. What a peace society want to guarantee is the information integrity, contents, or even provide financial repayment to the creators, in order for things like penalties or non-violent boycotts against those that do not accept or respect the social contracts, but the use of force or coercion to prevent a person who doesn’t agree with your terms is out of question, they have access to natural rights and liberty — property inclusive! In other words, penalties on intellectual property violations can never interfere with the natural resources and vital means access which composes the fundamental rights of the person.
Then why would societies based on free communion of peace adopt intellectual property?
I don’t know. There are definitely more interesting ways to encourage innovation without having to worry about profit, like for example, basic income systems and development funds based on equity crowdfunding, for example. But this is what I BELIEVE IN ECONOMICALLY. If free people wanted to voluntarily agree to pay and charge individually for each copy or take on non-violent penalties against who doesn’t want to participate in their society, even if no longer negotiating with them, it is a decision that belongs wholly with them, and they have no right to impose this on me.
This means that the intellectual or material property rights that a society possesses is composed of the sum of particular goods of all members and non-members, therefore all the applied penalties against an individual cannot imply in privation of his private properties nor the diffuse access to common good, artificial and illegitimate property of a group of supremacists against the segregated and dissidents.
Therefore I believe that in post-state societies the properties maintained with violence subsidy, both state and corporate, will fall into disuse on account of cost and benefit, being replaced by consensual and voluntary properties established in many different ways possible and established by social contracts and libertarian peace states.
RobinRight therefore is a license created for today and for us: servants and slaves, while prisoners of this model, in this state framework and its laws. It is just one of the keys to this program, a virus of this state system. Not the only but one of the disruptive strategies of assessment to who can’t escape and has to act inside this system, but does not want to be a mere robot or dumb servant.
RobinRight acts as a double side license, protecting the author and the user always against the same corsairs but in very distinct dilemmas:
To completely open the property to an appropriate corporation without costs as well as to prevent entirely the commercialization in the economic point of view of who does not have a place to drop dead is the same. And that is why that it isn’t uncommon to see many creators poor or from peripheral lands wanting “owners” or not finishing in order to “earn their daily crust” in the same companies of the ones that take ownership directly or not from their ideas or codes. This not to state the obvious: who takes ownership of them and not as creators, but as people who need it in order to win the everyday bread.
To keep all rights reserved as well as opening it for non-commercial usage, doesn’t guarantee that the creators will profit from their work neither does it prevent others from making a profit or exploit others using this “non-commercial” use of their works in their commercial ventures.
RobinRight is a license design against companies and corsairs and not against pirates. While there aren’t societies and alternative means of an artist or creator to support himself it is necessary to give ways for the creators so that they can fit into corporations, at the same time that all commercialization of their work is decriminalized for individuals that profit from selling their work in newsstands and hawkers. Yes, not every place on the planet has an internet connection for downloading pirated works, there are still places where the marginal cost of life nor of the reproduction isn’t zero and there are people that profit from and survive selling products unofficially.
In short, RobinRight does not prevent copy nor does it criminalize the commercialization as long as you are an individual, especially since the state was created to pursue people who do not have money in order to hide behind legal persons and their state bureaucracy.
RobinRight: free for people completely protected against the state and companies. Pirates yes. Corsairs no.
