"The debate about the provenance of copyright as property is not new, nor has the semantic sleight-of-hand the effort attempts gone unnoticed.At the end of the 19th century, Augustine Birrell wrote:
"...If your right to turn your neighbor off your premises to keep your things to yourself – was property, and therefore ex hypothesi founded on natural justice, he who sought to interfere with your complete dominion was a thief or trespasser, but if your rights were based upon some special concession made to you upon your own merits, you find yourself dubbed a monopolist … Monopoly is always an odious word. Property is still sacred one."But what if copyright is just a tort, as indeed courts refer to it as. Might that not lead to consideration of things in a different light, one that involves more of the balancing of interests one typically sees, say in, negligence actions, a Coase Theorem of copyright... academia aside, in the real world, one wonders whether the recent willingness of courts to decline issuing injunctions signals a shift toward a less property-oriented view."
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