So the recent struggles about network neutrality have led me to recognize something I hadn't quite seen before. And that something in turn makes more puzzling the debates that have been raised around network neutrality.
The something to recognize is that in a fundamental sense, fair use (FU) and network neutrality (NN) are the same thing. They are both state enforced limits on the property rights of others. In both cases, the limits are slight --the vast range of uses granted a copyright holder are only slightly restricted by FU; the vast range of uses allowed a network owner are only slightly restricted by NN. And in both cases, the line defining the limits is uncertain. But in both cases, those who support each say that the limits imposed on the property right are necessary for some important social end (admittedly, different in each case), and that the costs of enforcing those limits are outweighed by the benefits of protecting that social end.
So from this perspective, it is easy to understand those who reject FU and NN (who are they?). And it is easy to understand those who embrace FU and NN. What gets difficult is understanding those who embrace one while rejecting the other --at least when that rejection is articulated in terms of "government regulation".
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OH! YES!
Exactly so! This is brilliantly put.
It really helps me crystallize my own thinking, how adamant my defense of Fair Use has been for decades (as an educator-researcher-librarian type) - also it parallels my exasperation and growing concerns over advocates of the individual's privacy and choice for schooling and religion, but not for deciding to have a child or not in the first place, or for that child's right to make or not make them grandparents, without public interference.
And the reverse of course, those who are so pro-choice and pro-individual privacy EXCEPT when it comes to public schooling decided by the Village and not the parent . . .
The best help I found to understand such contradictions of thought and principle, was in Ronald Dworkin's book-length argument, Life's Dominion. I wonder if his way of thinking could apply in similar fashion to this?
Or maybe he's already written about it, does anyone know? hmmm . . .