richlind33: My favorite quote from Political Economy...
JMich: Let me another one, since my taking of Rousseau's points is that he would support current copyright law, if not find it too lax.
Another more important difference is that since the children have nothing but what they receive from their father, it is plain that all the rights of property belong to him, or emanate from him; but quite the opposite is the case in the great family, where the general administration is established only to secure individual property, which is antecedent to it.
JMich: Hell, just do a search for any mentions of property, and you'll see that Rousseau says that property shouldn't be taken away, though the owner of said property may have to give the State its due. He also suggests heavily taxing luxury items (and I think games in general do count as luxury items), while he also suggests leaving industry untaxed (and the making of games could be seen as an industry).
So no, in my view, Rousseau does not disagree with copyright law, since he says that property should be protected. If I make a game and wish to keep it for myself, no one should be able to force me to give it to someone else. One could entice me to do so, but not force me.
I'm not implying that he disagreed fundamentally with property law, but rather, that he stressed emphatically that gov't must serve the general interest of society first and foremost, and that leaders above all others *must* be bound by it's laws without exception, for it is by their example that law earns the respect of a people. And he goes on to explicitly describe what happens in the absence of such leadership, and it almost perfectly describes what we see going on in our world today, The UN being a very good example, where law is only applied when it is to the advantage of one or more of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, and at all other times it is not applied at all.
