Copyright Cops on the Ooze

Libertarian types (such as myself) are generally sympathetic to "privatization" plans, as long as they don't represent blatant giveaways. The general idea being that the private sector can do many (but not all) things more efficiently, etc. because the profit incentive is not inherently evil; and that there really is something to this "invisible hand" thing.

One government function that is NOT appropriate for privatization is policing, as a rule. This is not to suggest that private firms might not be a good choice for providing security, say, at specific sites where public assets need protection. What I'm talking here is about actively seeking out and arresting criminals. Once again, we see signs of a trend whereby the government is effectively deputizing private citizens or organizations to enforce laws, in this case, copyright laws, and doing so at the behest of the recording industry.

Without rehashing the intellectual property debate in full, we obviously do need to respect copyright. But the current state of law has skewed heavily, ridiculously even, in favor of the big-monied copyright holders and away from traditional, constitutional limits on intellectual property protection. Now, we not only have big media writing the laws (with their bought-and-paid-for congress-people) but writing more laws to force colleges to police their draconian copyright laws.

Companies that we do business with are being forced to monitor our phone calls, scrutinize our finances, and who knows what else. Librarians are forced to watch our reading habits, and now schools are supposed to rat out their students for sharing files? This seems like some amoeba-like police state in progress, pseudopods oozing ever so gradually into more and more parts of our society.