This article refers to movements to abolish or diminish Copyright

Copyright

Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...

 restrictions on the flow of information.

Two economists at Washington University have said that copyrights and patents are a net loss for the economy because of the way they reduce competition

Competition

Competition is a contest between individuals, groups, animals, etc. for territory, a niche, or a location of resources. It arises whenever two and only two strive for a goal which cannot be shared. Competition occurs naturally between living organisms which co-exist in the same environment. For...

 in the free market

Free market

A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...

. They refer to copyrights and patents as intellectual monopolies, akin to industrial monopolies, and they advocate phasing out and eventually abolishing them http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm.

See also

• Public Domain
  Public domain
  Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
  
  
• Pirate Party
  Pirate Party
  The Pirate Party is a political party in Sweden founded in 2006. Its sudden popularity has given rise to parties with the same name and similar goals in Europe and worldwide, forming the international Pirate Party movement....
  
  
• Copyleft
  Copyleft
  Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work...
  
  
• Free Software
  Free software
  Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
  
  
• File Sharing
  File sharing
  File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information, such as computer programs, multimedia , documents, or electronic books. It may be implemented through a variety of ways...
  
  
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
  Electronic Frontier Foundation
  The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
  
  
• Creative Commons
  Creative Commons
  Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
  
  
• Cory Doctorow
  Cory Doctorow
  Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books...
  
  
• Copywrong
• Copyfraud
  Copyfraud
  Copyfraud is a term used by Jason Mazzone, an Associate Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, to describe the use of false claims of copyright to attempt to control works not under one's legal control.-Introduction:Mazzone describes copyfraud as:...
  
  
• Patent troll
  Patent troll
  Patent troll is a pejorative but questioned term used for a person or company who is a non-practicing inventor, and buys and enforces patents against one or more alleged infringers in a manner considered by the target or observers as unduly aggressive or opportunistic, often with no intention to...
  
  
• Fair Use
  Fair use
  Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders...
  
  
• Free Culture Movement
  Free Culture movement
  The free culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify creative works in the form of free content by using the Internet and other forms of media....
  
  
• Anti-copyright
  Anti-copyright
  Anti-copyright refers to the complete or partial opposition to prevalent copyright laws. Copyright is known as the owner's right for copies to be only made by the owner or with his/her authorization in form of a license....
  
  
• Criticism of Intellectual Property
  Criticism of intellectual property
  The societal views on intellectual property include both the positive criticisms and the negative criticisms of intellectual property.Critics of the term "intellectual property" argue that the increased use of this terminology coincided with a more general shift away from thinking about things like...
  
  
• Business ethics#Intellectual property