Aims:
Can we connect first basis principles to a legitimate claim to ownership?
To discuss what it means to ‘own’ a media file by an investigation into the artist’s labour and personality
If ‘file-sharing’ isn’t stealing off the original artist, who is it stealing off?
Do record labels successfully represent the artist’s intentions?
Project Outline
Distinguishing Features of Stealing and Copying
Which claim to property is most effective: Locke’s labour-mixing or Hegel’s embodiment of personality
The only claim to private property that is effective is Nozick’s entitlement to capital
Philosophers & Key Texts Used:
John Locke: Second Treatise of Government (1689)
Natural Right to Property
‘Labour-mixing argument’
Robert Nozick: Anarchy, State & Utopia (1974)
Entitlement Theory
David Hume: A Treatise Concerning Human Nature (1738)
Artificiality of Property
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Philosophy of Right (1820)
Embodiment of Personality
Karl Marx: The German Ideology (1845)
Critique of Capitalist values