8 ms·

The problem is you're right, but you're not in good company. I want copyright too, and for pretty much the same reasons as you. But right now supporting "copyr

The problem is you're right, but you're not in good company. I want copyright too, and for pretty much the same reasons as you. But right now supporting "copyright" means you're taking the same side as assholes who insists on a term of 70 years after the death of the author, or more. Some people even at HN think copyright ought to have infinite duration. It means you're on the same side as those who want to send people to prison or put them in the poorhouse for putting a video on Youtube. The same side as jerks who want to deploy bots all across the web to indiscriminately take down content whether it infringes or not, and who wheel and deal with distribution channels when the draconian laws they bribe governments to pass aren't enough. Seriously, fuck these people. The political climate in much of the world eschews nuance on basically any issue you can name, and copyright is no exception. I want reasonable copyright terms of ten to twenty years from publication and to wipe my ass with the DMCA. If I can't have that, and if the choice is between copyright maximalists and those who would abolish copyright completely, I'll support shit-canning the idea altogether. It might not be the most fiscally or culturally sound solution, but it at least shows a basic understanding of how human culture even works, which I can't say for the maximalists.

graeme 11y ago
You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This comment in another part of the thread put it well. Do you have a response to the argument below? "If that happens, the web as we know it would cease to exist. Without a legal recourse to stop plagiarism and stolen content, people who are actually creating new content stop completely and move into other areas of work. Websites that produce original and unique content close up shop. Instead you're left with a bunch of low-quality rip off sites that have nothing original of their own. Then it the entire web stagnates over the years as very few new things get added to the net as a whole. And that's just the effect on the internet, that doesn't take into account real world publishing. I wish people would consider all of the consequences of these things before making statements like that. I haven't even begun to consider the consequences of eliminating copyright completely and just from what I can come up with off the top of my head makes it a non-starter." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10384178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10384178
- deciplex 11y ago
  I think that really overstates what the effect of copyright elimination would be. A lot of traditional methods of monetization would be harder to make profitable, but stuff like Patreon or Kickstarter would probably still work pretty well. At worst, we'd be left with people making content in their spare time and not for profit or to make a living. That would suck, no doubt, but I don't think it sucks as much as a copyright term effectively limitless in duration. It also ignores what we're missing out on now because of our copyright regime. Anyone should be able to make a Star Wars movie by now, or a Spiderman open-world RPG, or an epic poem detailing the later exploits of Meriadoc Brandybuck, or whatever the hell else. There is a shitload of derivative works we're missing out on because of onerous copyright restrictions, even on works where everyone involved with their creation has been dead for fifty years. Anyway, the main point of my previous post was not to support eliminating copyright. Mainly, it was to point out that if you support dramatically reforming copyright - twenty years and no DMCA would get nearly as much opposition from special interests as would eliminating copyright altogether - you've got a real uphill battle and no clear allies, despite having more in common, probably, with people who what to eliminate copyright rather than the maximalists. So I'm sympathetic to the view of "fuck it, let's just get rid of it, then" even if there would be some negative consequences to that. Finally, there is something to be said for taking an extreme opposite position even if it goes further than you would prefer. I think I'm more likely to see reasonable copyright happen in my lifetime if I support people who want to abolish copyright, than by trying to reason with people who want it to be limitless in scope and duration.
  - graeme 11y ago
    >Finally, there is something to be said for taking an extreme opposite position even if it goes further than you would prefer. I think I'm more likely to see reasonable copyright happen in my lifetime if I support people who want to abolish copyright, than by trying to reason with people who want it to be limitless in scope and duration. That's a good point. As a practical matter opposing all copyright is probably the most realistic way to get it back to a reasonable level.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago

graeme 11y ago

You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This comment in another part of the thread put it well. Do you have a response to the argument below? "If that happens, the web as we know it would cease to exist. Without a legal recourse to stop plagiarism and stolen content, people who are actually creating new content stop completely and move into other areas of work. Websites that produce original and unique content close up shop. Instead you're left with a bunch of low-quality rip off sites that have nothing original of their own. Then it the entire web stagnates over the years as very few new things get added to the net as a whole. And that's just the effect on the internet, that doesn't take into account real world publishing. I wish people would consider all of the consequences of these things before making statements like that. I haven't even begun to consider the consequences of eliminating copyright completely and just from what I can come up with off the top of my head makes it a non-starter." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10384178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10384178

deciplex 11y ago
I think that really overstates what the effect of copyright elimination would be. A lot of traditional methods of monetization would be harder to make profitable, but stuff like Patreon or Kickstarter would probably still work pretty well. At worst, we'd be left with people making content in their spare time and not for profit or to make a living. That would suck, no doubt, but I don't think it sucks as much as a copyright term effectively limitless in duration. It also ignores what we're missing out on now because of our copyright regime. Anyone should be able to make a Star Wars movie by now, or a Spiderman open-world RPG, or an epic poem detailing the later exploits of Meriadoc Brandybuck, or whatever the hell else. There is a shitload of derivative works we're missing out on because of onerous copyright restrictions, even on works where everyone involved with their creation has been dead for fifty years. Anyway, the main point of my previous post was not to support eliminating copyright. Mainly, it was to point out that if you support dramatically reforming copyright - twenty years and no DMCA would get nearly as much opposition from special interests as would eliminating copyright altogether - you've got a real uphill battle and no clear allies, despite having more in common, probably, with people who what to eliminate copyright rather than the maximalists. So I'm sympathetic to the view of "fuck it, let's just get rid of it, then" even if there would be some negative consequences to that. Finally, there is something to be said for taking an extreme opposite position even if it goes further than you would prefer. I think I'm more likely to see reasonable copyright happen in my lifetime if I support people who want to abolish copyright, than by trying to reason with people who want it to be limitless in scope and duration.
- graeme 11y ago
  >Finally, there is something to be said for taking an extreme opposite position even if it goes further than you would prefer. I think I'm more likely to see reasonable copyright happen in my lifetime if I support people who want to abolish copyright, than by trying to reason with people who want it to be limitless in scope and duration. That's a good point. As a practical matter opposing all copyright is probably the most realistic way to get it back to a reasonable level.
TeMPOraL 11y ago