Some recent court rulings show that marriage is turning into a nice little earner for certain spouses, as Tim Worstall discusses on his blog. He pinpoints a key problem in English law that it is not possible to have pre-nuptial agreements recognised as valid, although pre-nups might influence a ruling (he goes on to discuss how things are a bit different in Scotland). It seems pretty basic to me: the State has no business legislating at all on marriage. The way in which persons choose to form long-term contracts with another is for the parties concerned and no-one else, period.
If a rich entrepreneur, or musician like Paul McCartney, say, wants to shield himself or herself from being taken to the cleaners by a wife or husband, then it should be within their rights to do so. Of course, it may not be terribly ‘romantic’ to have pre-nups, but let’s face it, if rich people fear they will lose a huge chunk of their money to a cynical spouse on the make, it will raise calls for no-fault divorce to be abolished. It could prolong the divorce process at the expense of children’s happiness, foster further cynicism about the institution of marriage, and erode respect for an important part of civil society.
In the interests of the institution of marriage, then, I call on politicians to let consenting adults get on with whatever arrangements they please. It really is that simple. (Which is probably why it won’t happen anytime soon).
By the way, I will be getting married to a lovely woman in just over a week’s time in Malta. Just thought I would mention that.
Congratulations! And while you are at it remember the state ordains that marriage invalidates your current will…
In fact, if the newlyweds had to explicitly promise to share a certain percentage of their assets and income with each other, for a specific time – none of this “till death us do part” nonsense – they might wake up and realize how ruinously unprofitable marriage could be. The way things are, you have to be a lawyer to quite understand the trouble you are getting yourself into. If marriage were a true contract, there would have to be a knowing, conscious meeting of the minds.
Keep your eyes wide open before a marriage; half shut afterwards. (Ben Franklin)
All references to marraige should be removed from the statute books and tax codes and any consensual contract should be recognised by the civil courts. End of story.
“By the way, I will be getting married to a lovely woman in just over a week’s time in Malta.”
Privately or through the state?
Have a great wedding.
Well, I’m not so sure about this.
If the law relating to marriage says that it overrides agreement such as pre-nups, then if you get married you are accepting marriage law as a ‘package’.
If you don’t want the package, draw up your own individual consensual agreement which includes something like a pre-nup. Nobody is stopping you.
It’s like choosing from either a pre-set menu or a la carte in a restaurant. You decide whether you want a package deal or a more individual mix and match choice. Where’s the problem?
Congratulations on your forthcoming marriage Johnathon. I hope it is as happy as mine has been and continues to be.
To be fair, Macca did refuse a pre-nupe even though his kids, as I hear it, tried to demand one.
Even then it wouldn’t have mattered.
It’s a tricky point of law.
In both of the cases, it’s hard to be all that sympathic towards the blokes.
You know we’ll want to see the photos, and have a great time with the wedding Jonathon.. well done mate.
Boy, talk about conflicted blokes …..
If people are going to insist that governments redistribute other people’s wealth, then shouldn’t the government (in the name of the people and it’s own survival) choose to favor those who are most likely to create *more* productive taxpayers?
As for the assertion that all references to marriage should be removed from tax codes, etc….. been there, done that, it’s called the welfare system. That’s why there is an attempt now to incentivize for marriage. If some lout wants a piece of my hard earned cash, then I want some strings attached, and encouraging marriage seems like a worthy experiment, since by experience it is proven the alternative *didn’t work*.
Its for this reason I’ve long supported bringing back the positions of “concubine” and “consort” as having legal status with minimal financial commitments after separation.
Now, it is clear that marriage is not about love, it is about property: it is a property deed to the womb of the wife by the husband (and theoretically to the sperm of the husband by the wife) for purposes of production of genetic heirs to the family estate. (See: IN THE MATTER OF DAVID G. BLANCHFLOWER AND SIAN E. BLANCHFLOWER, NH Supreme Court, 2003-050
As such, if there are no offspring, there should be no provision of estate to her. However, they do have a child, though she is not his first wife, he has older kids, so she really shouldn’t be entitled to half his stuff (did any earlier wives get half his stuff then?). She’s not mother to the family heir, or even the spare.
Uain,
encouraging marriage seems like a worthy experiment, since by experience it is proven the alternative *didn’t work*.
Huh?
Lots of people have all sorts of alternative arrangements and they work for them.
The point is personal choice. Jonathan (BTW Congrats!) got it right at the head of this thread – gov should butt-out and leave this as a contractual matter between the individuals concerned. Off course, by the same token, if it all ends in tears it shouldn’t be the PBTP&trade who picks up the tab. I’m with you on that.
I’ve recently started planning getting married to my girlfriend* and I’m shocked at the amount you have to pay for a marriage license – 30 quid each for a piece of paper and the cost of using the registry office – all going to HM Gov. I’m not being tight here, it’s the principle.
*Well, we both have. I just didn’t wanna type my girlfriend and I. Sounds like the queen.
Congratulations and very best wishes for a long and happy life together.
You know the end is near when the government licences love.
Just to steer this one back a little on course, is it really justifiable for one participant in a short marriage to walk away with a “settlement” amounting to huge proportions of the wealth the other party has accumulated over decades and to which they have contributed almost nothing?
Clearly, there is no natural justice at work here. Rather, we are seeing the result of the chosen career path of those 1960s/1970s statist/socialists who decided it was more effective to change society by entering the legal profession, rather than the more honest route of running for office.
In the light of both these two recent divorce rulings and some of the bizarre immigration judgements coming to light, this could quite possibly be the most important, and yet most neglected, question facing Britain today
Johnathan Pearce is, of course, right to say that the state has no business getting involved here.
He is also a very brave man, getting married in such a climate. I know many people (of both sexes) who simply refuse to countenance the idea of marriage, precisely because of the risks posed by the intervention of the Time Out generation in wigs.
Good luck, indeed, to Mr. (and the future Mrs.) Pearce. Let’s hope ( pace the sorely missed David Carr, late of this parish) that they can have a long and happy marriage, free from the predations of lawyers!
Uain
Tax codes = others take your money
Welfare = you take money from others
Consensual relationship ≠parents/child obligation
While a strong case can be made for the setting of standards regarding the creation and treatment of children, not so with government interference in adult consensual personal relationships. If child support is going to be paid to indigent parents, then certainly standards should be met. You’re confusing two separate issues.
If you want to be married, that’s between you, your partner and the rules and recognitions of your church and/or conscience. It’s not any of the IRS’s, etc business.
If you and your partner want a prenuptial, it’s not societies prerogative to over rule it.
There is an alternate viewpoint to this. From my experience of working with difficult and violent children, they all have one thing in common – an absent father. Whatever else you think of marriage, children turn out a lot less dysfunctional when raised by two adults.
Hence, every effort should be made to incentivise married couples to remain together e.g. through tax breaks, and every effort should be made to make divorce difficult.
The thought of losing 50% of your assets and possibly 50% of your future assets certainly focuses the mind on making the marriage work.
btw – many congratulations, Johnathan!
Mike Lorrey,
The David G Blanch flower in that NH case is surely not the same David G. Blanchflower, who is a professor at Dartmouth? And has, too, put forward some odd views on money and sex. What a small world, if it is.
“I just didn’t wanna type my girlfriend and I. Sounds like the queen”
The Queen has a girlfriend? Do you know how much the tabloids will pay you for proof?
Thanks for all the nice messages. I am really touched, I really am.
Uain’s comment perplexes me. (They usually do):
If people are going to insist that governments redistribute other people’s wealth, then shouldn’t the government (in the name of the people and it’s own survival) choose to favor those who are most likely to create *more* productive taxpayers?
I don’t really see a link between the lottery that marriage has become following these daft rulings and the redistributive state. What is happening now is simply that some people, being greedy and unpleasant, are treating marriage as a one-way ticket to wealth. There have always been cynical gold-diggers and there always will be. What has changed is that the means have become easier due to these rulings. I guess it may change behaviours going forward.
As for supporting marriage, the government does not have to do anything apart from get out of the way. If it wanted to encourage marriage, child-rearing and the like, well, we know the answer: slash taxes so that couples have enough income to be able to make a choice whether both of them should work full-time or not; remove some of the regulatory burdens that have made having children more expensive than in the past, etc.
with a “settlement” amounting to huge proportions of the wealth the other party has accumulated over decades and to which they have contributed almost nothing?
Firstly, as I understand the settlement it actually represents less than half of the _increase_ in the wealth of the couple during the period of the short marriage. Effectively the judge ruled that you can only consider wealth accumulated during the period in question. As a side note then, I’d like this guy as a fund manager if he pulled in over 10mil in the last 4 years.
Secondly you have to define what you mean by a contribution. She didn’t directly bring wealth, however, they would have to look at the role she played in his career etc…
The problem with these settlements is that it is enormously subjective as to what a spouse brings to a marriage in terms of wealth, opportunities, etc. If a wife forgoes a promising career in the City to marry, then one can take account of what she might have earned in the years leading up to divorce, but that begs the question whether she might have lost her job anyway, or moved up, or been demoted, or whatever. There is so much uncertainty. It is about as credible as tossing a coin.
This is tricky ground. First, I don’t think you can just say “the state has nothing to do with marriage” unless you’re prepared also to say that the state has nothing to do with society. For, after all, at the heart of getting marriage is the public acknowledgement and exchange of pledges. At its heart it is an essentially social declaration, and therefore a social institution. Adam and Eve couldn’t have a marriage in the Garden of Eden because there was no-one else there – there was, as it were, no choice and no witnesses.
So the promises made in a marriage are to one another, but they demand and presuppose the presence of a third party – society. Ergo, society has a role in endorsing and, I think, observing those vows.
Now to the case in point. If you make these vows, and make them seriously, then at least in the Christian ceremony, “all my worldly goods with thee I share.” End of story: it leaves no grounds for subsequent re-thinks.
The problem comes when one side or the other decides to break those vows – ie, the problem comes with divorce. It seems to me that the side prepared, or anxious, to break those vows must accept that if he or she does that, the other vows, including the “all my worldly goods” clause, will be nul and void too.
If you take the vows seriously, you can have no complaint. But then you wouldn’t get divorced.
Allowing divorce obviously undermines this equilibrium – the damage done to the institutions (and the concept of vows) is judged an acceptable price for the avoidance of unnecessary pain. Facilitating divorce – making it quick, easy, and as far as possible guiltless – however, radically undermines the concept of vows and promises on which marriage is predicated. If after that, you go further and seem actually to reward the breaking of vows . . . .well, you go one step further to actively discourage the making of vows in the first place.
This is what seems to have happened in this case, and obviously society must be weaker for it, and individuals more atomised and less trusting.
The answer to this is to hold up two fingers to these idiots, say your vows, mean them in your heart, and love and cherish your wife or husband all your life long.
The answer to this is to hold up two fingers to these idiots, say your vows, mean them in your heart, and love and cherish your wife or husband all your life long.
Nice sentiment but frankly, life ain’t like that.
I’ve been on the receiving end of divorce through an adultress wife who walked out to be with one of her boyfriends. Fortunately, we had no kids and the financial settlement was straight forward. However, marriages fall apart – people cheat on other people and then walk out.
Thankfully we were able to disolve things quickly and I was able to get her out of my life.
The problem with these settlements is that it is enormously subjective as to what a spouse brings to a marriage in terms of wealth, opportunities, etc. If a wife forgoes a promising career in the City to marry, then one can take account of what she might have earned in the years leading up to divorce, but that begs the question whether she might have lost her job anyway, or moved up, or been demoted, or whatever. There is so much uncertainty. It is about as credible as tossing a coin.
Weellll… yes…. 🙂
But that is rather the point of having courts and judges to rule on the settlement.
Frankly, marriage should be taken more seriously, it’s a contract, afterall, and there should be default punative settings for disolving the contract – unless, that is, alternative agreements have been reached.
That’s going to be a problem regardless of whether or not the state is involved.
As a side note then, I’d like this guy as a fund manager if he pulled in over 10mil in the last 4 years.
Really? Where are the customers’ yachts?
From everyone at AngloAustria (which, err…, is just me) best wishes and all the best on your forthcoming wedding. Boom Shanka.
OK, nasty side-comment coming up. . . .
Let’s face it, Paul McCartney couldn’t have become so absurdly rich in the first place if it weren’t for ludicrous copyrighting monopolies which distort the market and inhibit creativity. Bad laws channelled the money to him. Bad laws channelled it away from him.
AFAIK, IANAL, judges have effectively validated pre-nups by the back door, provided both parties knew what they were doing (ie: had adequate legal help before signing). What pre-nups can’t do in English law, is yank jurisdiction away from the divorce courts.
I’d personally say marriage needs to be split apart into contractual and ceremonial parts. The law’s only intervention should be to require the contract (effectively, a pre-nup), and require it cover a few standard topics, before allowing the ceremony.
Seperating the state (or anarchic legal equivalent) from marriage entirely is probably not possible. That’s because marriage necessarily impacts on child custody, inheritance, next of kin, shared ownership, and a few other things. So, basically the law/custom ought to require that these get touched upon in the pre-nup.
Soon enough, a boilerplate contract would evolve to cover reasonable, normal marriage.
Pommygranate,
You reaction is essentially collectivist. Since some people have children (with or without a legal relationship) all people must be treated as though they have children.
Please do not confound a relationship between adults with the creation and raising of children.
I implied in my first comment and state clearly here that child rearing is a different matter. That is essentially a three party contract with (at least) one party needing loyal representation.
To others who say we need to protect the sanctity of marriage for society’s sake, no. We need to protect the sanctity of voluntary contracts for society’s sake. If any adults want to enter into a long term commitment, their (voluntary) terms should be enforced. This applies whether it is an emotional or material relationship.
I implied in my first comment, and state clearly here, that the raising of children is a different case. It is essentially a three party contract where (at least) one of the parties needs loyal outside representation in the event of any changes in the relationship. And further, being in the relationship without their prior consent, children deserve privileged treatment.
So that’s where the missing paragraph went.
Let’s face it, Paul McCartney couldn’t have become so absurdly rich in the first place if it weren’t for ludicrous copyrighting monopolies which distort the market and inhibit creativity. Bad laws channelled the money to him. Bad laws channelled it away from him.
I personally would defend some form of IP, since how is creativity to be encouraged if it is not possible for the creators to have ownership over it? That of course leaves wide open the debate on how intellectual property rights might operate in a libertarian order. Let’s save that discussion for another thread.
No, let’s start the argument here and now. . .
Exhibit One for the prosecution is a band (or is it just a guy) called the Kleptones. A couple of months ago, the Kleptones released a double album, called 24 Hours, which is probably the finest album I’ve heard for, what, 10 years.
Now here’s the twist. It’s free for download from the Kleptones’ website. It has to be because it’s a “mashup” album, incorporating, reinterpreting and dialoguing with much of the music of the last 40 years. It’s an amazing achievement in my view – the “Dark Side of the Moon” moment for mashup. It’s also exactly what proper musicians have been doing for centuries: sampling, rearranging, dialoguing, commenting and incorporating the music that has formed their pasts. That’s one of the ways music achieves its emotional impact.
Under present copyright laws, the Kleptones can’t sell their music, because all the lawyers on gods good earth would drown them in writs.
This is ridiculous – absolutely ridiculous. In earlier centuries, the issue didn’t arise because, after all, a tune was just a tune, and you could note it down in musical notation. In our time, the advance of recording techniques and music production techniques means our heads are full of music sound-scapes. There’s no way of noting these down, or repeating them without . . . . actually repeating them. And if you do that, you pay.
It’s insane. It’s a direct affront to creativity.
In some ways, the proof of the argument is in the listening. I absolutely challenge you to listen to the Kleptones’ 24 Hours for a while and tell me, with straight face, that it’s anything other than the purest and most imaginative music making.
Now, back to the argument. Why on earth should Paul McCartney, or anyone, think it reasonable that his songs should have earned him 850m sterling? Yes, they’re great songs – great songs. But that being the case, he could have had a lucrative and entertaining career singing them to paying audiences. What’s wrong with that? If he’s a musician first and foremost, that’s what he shoudl be doing (cf Bob Dylan), not sitting back and clipping the coupons.
That’s what Eric Kleptone is doing, and I defy you to tell me he’s not a great musician.
A couple of weeks ago, Cliff Richard was on TV telling us how the fact that he’d had to sing “Living Doll” for his entire life to keep the thing alive, ought to entitle him to royalties for ever. He sat there with a straight face and made this claim. Now I grant you, you need to be compensated in some way for singing that little ditty more than once in a lifetime, but really Cliff, if it’s so painful to you (too), why not give it a rest.
So no – the pop music of the last 50 years are common property and shoudl be free to be sampled, repeated, commented on, reinterpreted etc etc by all. This wouldn’t impede creativity, it would just break up a “music industry” which all too plainly knows a great deal about “industry” and damn-all about music.
Power to musicians and artists, and to hell with the industry.
“the pop music of the past 50 years are common property”. I demur. This takes no account of how artists can be expected to make a living or recoup some upfront outlays for the creative process if they cannot have some form of copyright (like I said, I am not defending the existing system). I personally think that copyrights should last no longer than 10 years. Just as the Beatles, say, were influenced by others, so subsequent musicians might want to be able to use the work of the Beatles, the Stones make use of Chuck Berry, and so on. But straight copying without payment from the moment a work is conceived strikes me as fundamentally unfair. It is theft. The fact that it is intangible in the way that physical creations like a car does not alter the matter. In fact, in the IT age, it is more, not less vital that we get intellectual property right, rather than just resort to an anarchic free-for-all.
If you don’t want to involve the State why get married?
Indeed, why not a private ceremony without the State’s involvement? I’m sure any reasonable lawyers could draw up legal agreements as well. If you really want to privatise marriage, go ahead and do so on your own.
The state has involved itself whether we choose it or not. Are you saying that the the terms husband and wife are property of the state?
Common law, state ordained, palimony, … the state has its hands all over it already. Furthermore, when the state starts financially incentivising or disincentivising relationships, there is no “do so on your own.”
The State may end up getting involved in the relationship, but if the parties are really opposed to State sponsored marriage there’s no reason for them to make it easy for the State to intervene.
I tend to accept the terms husband and wife at face value by people that use them. I do know one married couple who for complicated bureaucratic reasons don’t have a state-sponsored marriage (they did have a private ceremony in their own non-mainstream religious tradition). I consider them just as married as those who’ve stood before a State representative.
I’ve read enough examples of libertarians who claim that ideally the State should get out of marriage that I’m curious why more don’t get out of State marriages and design their own.
Call yourself husband and wife if you like, call yourself anything you wish. Get married in your own ceremony if you want to. Why do you want to bring the State into it at all? You have a problem with this ruling – fine, ignore it.
I always thought there was no such thing in English law as a common law spouse. Someone could correct me on that.
I’ve been living with my partner for about 15 years and the closest we ever came to a State-ordained marriage was a passing thought of a joke, when we were in Las Vegas.
What’s the problem?
Marriage as it is today is not a relationship between a man and a woman. It is a relationship between a person and the state, with the terms set by the state, for the benefit of others, that is, the spouse and the children. The relationship between a man and a woman is called love.
I always thought there was no such thing in English law as a common law spouse. Someone could correct me on that.
There was such a thing but it effectively started to disappear in 1837 with the Registration of Births, Marriages & Deaths, which could be regarded as the first systematic attempt of the British state to monitor private life. It is more than a century since anyone could be said to have been married in England or Wales at common law. But the recognition of foreign irregular marriages amounts to marriage at common law, I’d suggest.
What doesn’t exist (and never did) is the “common law spouse” of tabloid jargon. No one currently gets recognised as formally married by mere cohabitation. A common law marriage entailed not just living together but an explicit or implicit declaration to and recognition of marriage by a community.
What you people are all denying is that married or not married has substantial consequences.
Example, laws vary by state but here is one example. A husband and wife live in a house they own together. One needs nursing home care. The other one may continue to live in the house.
Non married roommates live in a house they own together. One needs nursing home care. That person’s share in the house is put up for sale to pay nursing home bills. If the roommate cannot afford to buy the other half of the house, a sale is forced and half the proceeds given to the roommate not needing care.
They way you guys talk, that sort of thing doesn’t matter. I think people should be entitled to enter into the same mutual cooperation and care compacts whether they are married or not. You guys say, “Only if they’re married. Everybody else just pretend you’re married until it matters. Then tough luck.”
Guy Herbert,
Same David Blanchflower. What was so farcical about this ruling (especially for those of us who follow NH politics) is that it was written by a left bloc on the court (the “evolved constitution” faction) who deny originalism/constructionism as a valid constitutional theory, but this rule is the epitome of a constructionist argument, based ENTIRELY on the intent of the legislature and the basis of marriage and property law at the time the adultery law was passed in this state.
It was intended by Chief Justice Brock as a farcical attack on conservatives, saying “you want originalism? I’ll give you originalism”, along the lines of telling christian conservatives that if they want to legislate against abortion because the bible tells us so, that they also need to be legislating for the burning of witches, and all the other barbaric things the bible tells us to do. The result of the Blanchflower case is that it tells conservatives that if they deny the validity of gay relationships, they can’t use such activities as the basis of adultery. Worse yet, the ruling says that ANY sexual activity which cannot result in a pregnancy is not adultery. Wifey can give blow jobs to her boss, daddy can go party “on the down low” with his closeted boyfriends. It’s all good….
Stay single. Stay free.
As I understand it (in the UK at least) contracts for sexual services are illegal. Hence ‘private marriage contracts’ would be set aside by the courts because again in the UK. marriage seems to be about the exchange of sex for property…
As I understand it (in the UK at least) contracts for sexual services are illegal.
Only in the specialised sense of being unenforceable. There is a category of contracts deemed void for immorality, which includes wagers.
There is buried in English Law as elsewhere the old tribal view that survives explicitly in other parts of the world, that sexual access as family property which can only be offered through marriage and is not a matter of individual desires and choices.
Jonathan Pearce,
The question is not whether musicians should be able to make a living, it’s a question of what living they can make. The costs of creation of, say, “Living Doll” probably stretched into the hundreds of pounds back then. My guess is he could have recouped those costs busking on the Tube for a week. Why on earth should Sir Cliff expect to be paid more?
As for straight copying – well, that’s fundamentally uninteresting artistically. But that’s not what artists like the Kleptones are doing. Yes, they’re lifting some soundscapes, but given what they’re doing with them, only tone-deaf lawyers (eg, probably the sort of people who run the music industry) could call this copying.
Another point: suppose someone writes a song – “Living Doll” – which is, sadly, immediately stolen by someone. If that person doesn’t sing is as well as the writer then – who cares, since he’s not going to be heard. If he sings it better (and here I’m using “sing” as a catch-all for “arrange and perform”) then clearly the public has an immediate utilitarian gain. What’s lost is the writer’s career as a (relatively poor) performer. What’s gained, one must expect, is a better career as a writer than he could have expected in view of the inadequacies as a performer.
The difference would hardly matter, were it not for the perception that performers get much better paid than writers. But the reason for that is. . . because the music industry built on the back of unjustiable copyright protection, provides monopoly rents to performers. Make no mistake, we’re not dealing with a free market, we’re dealing with the enforcement of monopoly markets. Certainly, it’s nothing to do with the music.
Sorry for promoting an off-topic strand. . . personally, I think Samizdatans should bet interested in this topic.
The question is not whether musicians should be able to make a living, it’s a question of what living they can make. The costs of creation of, say, “Living Doll” probably stretched into the hundreds of pounds back then. My guess is he could have recouped those costs busking on the Tube for a week. Why on earth should Sir Cliff expect to be paid more?
That misses the point. The point is that a creator of work, however trivial or ephemeral one might think it to be, is entitled to come to whatever commercial arrangements he can establish to make as much money as possible from it. In a purely laissez faire market order, I very much doubt that we would have the sort of draconian copyright laws we now have, but it is equally naive to suppose that some artists would not be able to draw up enforceable legal contracts to derive a lot of money from their creations.
I am sorry, but a lot of the “free music” movement at the moment is little better than an apologia for thieving.
You are right that Samizdata writers, most of whom are pretty solid libertarian free marketeers, are interested in these issues. It remains a bone of contention.
Jonathan,
I don’t disagree. The point is that at present we have an institutionalised and aggressively policed monopoly which very clearly extracts extraordinary rents. As the headline put it: it beats working. My view is that we should fight against that monopoly because it inhibits musical creativity.
Which is where the Kleptones come in. They make two points: i) They are very clear that they do not own the music they make and therefore cannot, must not, and will not accept any payment for it but ii) they (he?) do it anyway because they’re in it for the music (art) not the business. They are, in other words, calling the industry’s bluff in the best possible way. And in doing so, they’re pointing out the absurdity of the current monopoly situation – that far from “protecting” musicians and “fostering creativity”, it is doing precisely the opposite.
But the proof of the pudding is in the eating – ie, in the quality of their work. And in this case (ie, 24 Hours), the work is, I think extraordinary. It argues its own case better than I ever could, and I urge you to give it a listen.
I think that once we get to this position, we are a very long way from it being “little better than an apologia for thieving.” Indeed, I’d argue that existing copyright laws and restrictions fit that description much better.
Rgds