Comment by Aerroon
1 day ago
Copyright isn't some natural state of being though, it's something that's granted to people by the government to "promote the progress of science and useful arts". If copyright hinders things then I think it's reasonable that exceptions would be made.
This analysis yields very different results under utilitarianism vs rule utilitarianism.
Under the former, you could argue, "What I'm doing is a science or useful art, so if copyright exists to advance those things then taking a more permissive interpretation of copyright to allow my efforts to succeed is in the spirit of the law."
Under the latter, you could argue, "Works get published because as a rule, researchers and artists know they have lawful recourse through copyright if the work gets used without their consent. The absence of that rule incentivizes safeguarding works by treating them as secret and each disclosure as a matter of personal trust, so the existence of that rule promotes the sciences and useful arts."