Intellectual Property Rights: A Political Theory Perspective
E-International Relations June 23, 2011
4 Pages Posted: 6 Feb 2015
Date Written: June 23, 2011
Abstract
What, if anything, can political theorists contribute to debate on intellectual property rights? One thing they can do is to highlight the diversity and scope for conflict between people’s interests as the producers of ideas, as consumers of ideas, and as entrepreneurs in ideas (for example, as investors, publishers, theatre and movie producers). Some of us will fill more than one role and, in liberal democracies, people are not assigned at birth to one role rather than another. Still, this does not mean that we can assume people’s interests in ideas are essentially alike or that they are essentially harmonious, when different. As with more familiar theoretical debates on freedom of expression, our ability to find a morally persuasive justification of legal rights and public policies turns on our ability to bring politics into our accounts of morality – to paraphrase Theda Skocpol. We must therefore recognise that there is no democratic justification of rights publicly to speak our mind, to profit from our ideas, and to have access to life-saving medicines unless we accept that political procedures and choices matter to what we are morally entitled to do; and that the conflicts between our interests are as important a guide to political morality as the interests we have in common.
Keywords: intellectual property rights, political theory, democracy, public goods, copyright, patents
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