Pirate Manifesto Second Amendment

List of arguments

I

• The German constitutional court once ruled that author's rights are at least some kind of property with limited constitutional protection. (Meaning not every aspect of the exploitation rights is guaranteed by the constitution) We are not sure if author's rights are derived from property in this case or they just became property because they were created but in any case we don't want to conflict with the Grundgesetz and therefore don't say "Author's rights are not property and never were". It is okay to critisize the term "intellectual property" since it doesn't exist in the German constitution and hasn't been mentioned by the constitutional court but we want to be careful about the property thing. That doesn't mean that my draft is the only possible way to solve this conflict but it is at least an attempt.

Amendment

Pirate Manifesto's First Draft would be modified as follows:

• 1st paragraph of About Author's Rights would have the following text:
  • The term "intellectual property" is most often used to mislead people, allowing the extention of author's rights. In no other field is a person's work still providing income to their descendants. Further, since it is not by its nature comparable to property on material goods, the notion of theft is in this context, utterly meaningless.

                                                             Hirschaid, Germany, 10th October 2008

Hoshpak (Piratenpartei Deutschland, ID 142)

(NOTE: Used bold style for double quotation marks) (NOTE: bold style removed as this amendment was confused with another one) (NOTE: bold style restored, actually double quotation marks are new in the new wording, thus they must be highlighted as they are a change from original wording) (NOTE: bold style applied to "intellectual property" as a whole, as in Fourth Amendment, an Amendment from the same author)