The right is that of copyright, one that is granted by the public to incentivize the creative arts. Disney and other rights holders need to hold up their end of the bargain, so it's reasonable for the public to require wider dissemination of their works.
Disney still gets paid if their works are shown on Netflix; they choose exclusivity to build a moat around their streaming service, regardless of the quality of the service, which is a form of consumer abuse (albeit a mild one in the big picture).
Disney still requires you to disclose your age and gender to use the service, last I checked. This is concerning, and would be punished by a competitive streaming market were it not for exclusivity.
There's some precedent for this: Back in the 40s, the movie studios were forced to sell their stake in theaters due to antitrust issues around exclusivity. Streaming services owning studios feels like the essentially the same situation.
> The right is that of copyright, one that is granted by the public to incentivize the creative arts. Disney and other rights holders need to hold up their end of the bargain
Are you contending that Disney isn’t producing new content because they are permitted to control dissemination of their works? That doesn’t square with either reality or incentive.
Besides, there's nothing in the Constitution that says that on top of advancing the "Progress of...useful Arts" that unlimited dissemination is required to promote that goal. On the contrary, the Constitution allows Congress to provide authors the "exclusive Right to their respective Writings" -- which directly contradicts your argument.
Copyright is not a property right. It is a state granted monopoly that is supposed to provide incentives. It should therefore be designed to maximise incentives.
In any case lots of property rights have limitations and exclusions. Land might be subject to other people having rights to enter it (so you cannot exclude them), or mineral rights might be owned by someone else. There are legal restrictions in many places on what you can do with it. You can require a license in own some things (e.g. guns on most places).
As an attorney who specialized in IP practice in law school, I can tell you that your understanding of what a property right is is absolutely wrong. If you told a judge that copyright is not a property right, they’d stifle a laugh and advise you to come back with a lawyer, and your lawyer would, in turn, advise you to keep your legal opinions to yourself.
Both are rights to exclude enforced in law, which is the essence of what property law is. As the owner of physical property, you can exclude others from occupying or using it (with the violation being trespass). As the owner of intellectual property, you can exclude others from copying it, making derivative works, etc (with violations also enforceable in law).
Yes, both types of property rights are subject to limitations, either by law or by contract (as in the easement and mineral rights examples you gave). But that doesn't change the essence of what they are.
Legal definitions are often not the same as plain English, and wording used in legislation is often politicised.
The nature of copyright is that it is a monopoly right. It is almost indistinguishable from letters patent (e.g. in the case of the KJV Bible in the UK). I am less familiar with US law but I believe US copyright law is based on a clause in the constitution giving the federal government the power to grant monopolies?
A monopoly right and a property right are the same thing with different names. As a landowner, for example, you have the right to kick people off (evict from) your property. You have both a de facto and de jure monopoly to exploit your land.
The US constitution confers to Congress the power to grant copyrights and patents in Article I, Section 8:
"The Congress shall have Power ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"
The operating word here is "exclusive" which, yes, is a monopoly right. But again, it's not different in essence from a property right, which is also a monopoly right.
Music has mandatory licensing: you can play any songs on your radio station as long as you pay the fixed, standardized fees. And yet the music industry is still alive
Not strictly true. An artist can refuse to license their work to a given station. That never happens in practice, but politicians being refused use of music has happened.
> An artist can refuse to license their work to a given station.
Via what means?
First, radio stations in the USA aren't required to pay royalties to a recording artist, only to the songwriter via a Performing Rights Organization (PRO) like ASCAP or BMI. It follows that recording artists don't even have a say in whether their recordings can be played on the radio.
Second, songwriters don't have any control over public performance once they've licensed their work to the PRO. It's all or nothing. Songwriters can withdraw their works from the PRO, but then they have to negotiate with public performers through some other means. Radio stations don't have the means to enter separate negotiations with every songwriter, so they'll likely forego it, which practically means no airplay for artists who haven't submitted to the PROs.
> politicians being refused use of music has happened
