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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

by 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
IMO it's a very bad argument - it assumed most, or best, content is created in order to make money, whereas I believe that the best content is created by people who feel they have something to share, for the purpose of just it being out. It's strange how as a culture we started to believe creating is just an instrument to make money. Adults are insane; they lose understanding they had as kids, that creating something and/or solving a problem can, and should be, a terminal value in itself.
- chii 11y ago
  It's a fantasy that there's any large amount of content that will be altruistically produced. Must content people enjoy are the popular, highly commercialised kind. You mightn't like it, but it's the reality. Taking money for content is a validation that the content is valuable.
  - scotty79 11y ago
    Have you seen github?
    - throwawaykf05 11y ago
      Github (and indeed most open source) projects are not created out of a sense of altruism. How many people treat github as an online resume? These projects are meant primarily to show off people's coding capabilities in order to sell services, and are not the primary means of making money. These people get a full-time salary writing custom code for businesses. This approach does not apply to most artists. Nobody is going to pay an author a full-time salary to write new books just for them, or a musician to make new music just for them. The better option for most artists is to invest in creating the best work they can and sell it for commodity prices to a lot of people.
      - pvdebbe 11y ago
        "I like your music. Would you like to compose something for our movie/game?" Is this too far fetched?
nitrogen 11y ago
The best content on the original web was written by people doing it for fun, hosted on university servers and/or free webhosts with a single banner ad to pay for the servers. The writers all did it for the love.
kristopolous 11y ago
Fashion, dance, most of automobiles, and recipes don't have copyright protection. Are you honestly saying that fashion, choreography, dance and cooking is void of original unique things? That they lack creativity? Are you saying that nobody produces automobiles because they don't have a greater incentive of protections? I think you have a homo-economicus way of looking at the world. The reality actually seem to be something quite different. The premise for what copyright is supposed to do is based upon a view of the world that really doesn't seem to actually exist. It's a theory based on an elaborate fiction. That's a terrible way to run a society.
- graeme 11y ago
  >Are you honestly saying that fashion, choreography, dance and cooking is void of original unique things? That they lack creativity? Are you saying that nobody produces automobiles because they don't have a greater incentive of protections? No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying text is different. It's far simpler to replicate text than a dance. I'm not saying no text works will get produced without copyright. Just that a lot of things we take for granted or even things that are free now actually depend on copyright as part of their creation.
scotty79 11y ago
This argument flies in the face of plainly observable reality so much that it feels to be intended as sarcasm. No good stuff is created for fun? And the stuff that's created for fun is crap? Like that thing that Andy Weir wrote and self published for free on his website and only made 99cents Kindle version because people were bothering him about it?

by graeme 11y ago

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

IMO it's a very bad argument - it assumed most, or best, content is created in order to make money, whereas I believe that the best content is created by people who feel they have something to share, for the purpose of just it being out. It's strange how as a culture we started to believe creating is just an instrument to make money. Adults are insane; they lose understanding they had as kids, that creating something and/or solving a problem can, and should be, a terminal value in itself.

chii 11y ago
It's a fantasy that there's any large amount of content that will be altruistically produced. Must content people enjoy are the popular, highly commercialised kind. You mightn't like it, but it's the reality. Taking money for content is a validation that the content is valuable.
- scotty79 11y ago
  Have you seen github?
  - throwawaykf05 11y ago
    Github (and indeed most open source) projects are not created out of a sense of altruism. How many people treat github as an online resume? These projects are meant primarily to show off people's coding capabilities in order to sell services, and are not the primary means of making money. These people get a full-time salary writing custom code for businesses. This approach does not apply to most artists. Nobody is going to pay an author a full-time salary to write new books just for them, or a musician to make new music just for them. The better option for most artists is to invest in creating the best work they can and sell it for commodity prices to a lot of people.
    - pvdebbe 11y ago
      "I like your music. Would you like to compose something for our movie/game?" Is this too far fetched?

nitrogen 11y ago

The best content on the original web was written by people doing it for fun, hosted on university servers and/or free webhosts with a single banner ad to pay for the servers. The writers all did it for the love.

kristopolous 11y ago

Fashion, dance, most of automobiles, and recipes don't have copyright protection. Are you honestly saying that fashion, choreography, dance and cooking is void of original unique things? That they lack creativity? Are you saying that nobody produces automobiles because they don't have a greater incentive of protections? I think you have a homo-economicus way of looking at the world. The reality actually seem to be something quite different. The premise for what copyright is supposed to do is based upon a view of the world that really doesn't seem to actually exist. It's a theory based on an elaborate fiction. That's a terrible way to run a society.

graeme 11y ago
>Are you honestly saying that fashion, choreography, dance and cooking is void of original unique things? That they lack creativity? Are you saying that nobody produces automobiles because they don't have a greater incentive of protections? No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying text is different. It's far simpler to replicate text than a dance. I'm not saying no text works will get produced without copyright. Just that a lot of things we take for granted or even things that are free now actually depend on copyright as part of their creation.

scotty79 11y ago

This argument flies in the face of plainly observable reality so much that it feels to be intended as sarcasm. No good stuff is created for fun? And the stuff that's created for fun is crap? Like that thing that Andy Weir wrote and self published for free on his website and only made 99cents Kindle version because people were bothering him about it?