You are NEVER forced to steal bread. Don't want to participate in gathering seeds and wild fruits for free legally and choosing to steal bread, not ok, ever.
The UN declaration of human rights includes one sentence talking about the right to food, and many paragraphs talking about the right to participate in culture, community, communicate, and so on.
So if we judge by that, the right to participate in culture is more important than the right to food (or more likely, is simply more often challenged and disagreed with).
If the whole legal regime around copyright is having the effect of preventing people from participating in their culture/society, those laws are immoral and should be opposed.
Have you even read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Articles 23 and 25 are not supplanted by Article 27. In fact, Article 30 specifically states that you cannot interpret the UDHR in any way that would allow you to remove rights set forth in previous the articles. And, as surprising as this may sound, the UDHR doesn't specify order of importance based on word count.
Wait, are you implying that the UN has declared that stealing the results of someone's labor is justified because it's a "right"? We might as well declare anarchy and get it over with.
I also fail to see how copyright laws are preventing anyone from enjoying their culture.
It's sad times we live in when creating culture is labeled "labor", "work" and so forth... About the "stealing" part - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/06/lady-gaga-jack-whit... artists are more than happy to let anyone experience their art, it's the producers that have a problem with it.
I guess this is what you get when you allow business-minded people to define what being human is all about...
But if I use my culture as a basis for a song that I write and I wish to sell it to make money, then you're dang right I see it as stealing if someone takes it without my permission.
If an artist wants to share it openly, then that's excellent. But if the artist wishes to make money from their effort why is it your "right" to demand otherwise?
It's not about being business-minded, it's called having rights over your own property.
You don't think Mickey Mouse and other Disney properties are part of our culture? Copyright on those works would have expired ages ago, if the laws were enforced as they were written at the time. Disney continues to prevent people from participating in that part of our culture.
How do they prevent you from participating? Do they stop you at the doors of Disney World? Can you not watch Disney movies whenever you go to the theater? Oh, that's right, you just want it for free.
Although, I agree with you on the copyright laws, they shouldn't be extended like they have been. But that's an issue to complain to the people who write the laws, not the content providers who take advantage of them.
> But that's an issue to complain to the people who write the laws, not the content providers who take advantage of them.
that works when the law makers are ethical and neutral. When the "content providers" get in bed with law makers to create laws favourable to themselves, then what?
I want to participate in culture by creating a derivative work based on the disney micky mouse figure. But i m disallowed, because of the said laws, unless i paid disney some amount of money. Do you think disney deserves this money?
I'm not talking about piracy or passive consumption as "participation". I mean people who are making art, movies, music etc. can't create anything new with Mickey Mouse or Snow White or Bambi because they are owned by Disney. You can't even sell a ringtone of Alice saying "You’re mad, bonkers, off your head! But I’ll tell you a secret: all the best people are", even if you make your own version in your own voice. Because Disney decided they're not done wringing money out of a movie made before my father was born. I don't just mean wholesale copying, but using any of it as raw materials for something creative is prohibited.
By the rest of us I'm guessing a small number of people who have high ideals outside of reality? Your definition almost literally means no one has ownership over anything when it is your "right" to take it as you please.
How shall we define the act of taking property without due compensation that the owner of said property expects?
You seem to be acting intentionally dense. Surely you understand that the difference being discussed here pertains specifically to duplicable content, where the property involved is "intellectual property" and much more open to alternative interpretations than things like land or food.