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User Profile — Chad Perrin

Personal Statement

I’m deeply interested in subjects like ethical theory, self improvement, and technological advancement, especially where they intersect. Books, computers, and opportunities to learn have always held very strong attraction for me. I have interests all over the place, really, but one day I realized there was a single thread running through most of it: philosophy, in the classical sense of the term.

As a philosopher (among other things), all it can take to get me to realign my thoughts on some matter of importance sometimes is to ask me an honest question. A great example of that was when a friend of mine, at the end of the very day we first met, asked me if there was any real, fundamental justification for copyright at all. Over the next several years, this question led me to examine the premises for basic concepts of ethics all over again, leading me ultimately to the fact that, no, there did not in fact appear to be any reasonable justification for copyright at all. Quite the contrary, in fact. I’ve elided the details here (for mostly for reasons of brevity) though I have elaborated on them elsewhere.

Business models that rely on copyright are, to me, pretty obviously nonstarters for those who wish to live an ethical life. In addition to that, though, the ultimate unenforceability of copyright in any meaningful, universal way indicates that the shrink-wrapped widget sales business model central to assumptions about the importance of copyright might in fact be the single stupidest, most unavoidably doomed business model currently in use for intangibles such as the writings of novelists, software developers, and musicians.