> fan fiction is legal. You just can't make a profit from it, which I think is fair.
The term "fair" is intellectually imprecise.
In a policy context, appeals to "fairness" often serve as a rhetorical proxy for subjective preferences rather than an objective moral framework.
When centralized systems attempt to institutionalize "fairness" as a primary directive, the resulting information-calculation problems and rent-seeking often lead to catastrophic externalities.
Consider the extreme end of state-mandated equity:
- The Henan Plasma Scandal: In the 1990s, a government-backed "plasma economy" intended to alleviate rural poverty through "fair" compensation led to the pooling and reinjection of contaminated blood, infecting an estimated 1.2 million people with HIV.
- The One-Child Policy: A "fair" distribution of population growth led to forced abortions, mass abandonment of female infants, and a 30-million-person gender imbalance.
In the specific context of IP, the "fairness" of restricting profit from derivative works is a misnomer. US copyright law (17 U.S.C. 107) relies on Fair Use, which is a balancing test of market harm and transformative value, not a moral judgment on what an author "deserves".
Denying a creator the right to profit from their labor is simply a protectionist market intervention; calling it "fair" merely obscures the economic trade-off.
The term "fair" is intellectually imprecise.
In a policy context, appeals to "fairness" often serve as a rhetorical proxy for subjective preferences rather than an objective moral framework.
When centralized systems attempt to institutionalize "fairness" as a primary directive, the resulting information-calculation problems and rent-seeking often lead to catastrophic externalities.
Consider the extreme end of state-mandated equity:
- The Henan Plasma Scandal: In the 1990s, a government-backed "plasma economy" intended to alleviate rural poverty through "fair" compensation led to the pooling and reinjection of contaminated blood, infecting an estimated 1.2 million people with HIV.
- The One-Child Policy: A "fair" distribution of population growth led to forced abortions, mass abandonment of female infants, and a 30-million-person gender imbalance.
In the specific context of IP, the "fairness" of restricting profit from derivative works is a misnomer. US copyright law (17 U.S.C. 107) relies on Fair Use, which is a balancing test of market harm and transformative value, not a moral judgment on what an author "deserves".
Denying a creator the right to profit from their labor is simply a protectionist market intervention; calling it "fair" merely obscures the economic trade-off.