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Actually copyright exists so that producers don't have to simply rely on contracts, and so that the people doing the copying have breached law and not just the

Actually copyright exists so that producers don't have to simply rely on contracts, and so that the people doing the copying have breached law and not just the person who breached their contract. The alternative is restricting access to copyrighted material via harsh contracts and supervised access. As a copyright producer of both music and software I really feel copyright protection is moral and just. The damages awarded for copyright infringement for personal use are clearly ridiculous and should be seriously limited. Also I think both copyrights and patents terms should be reduced and the originality threshold for patents has to be increased. Each patent term should be determined separately with reference to how expensive something has been to bring to market and how novel it is.

apotheon 19y ago
Your argument in favor of copyright amounts to "As someone who benefits from foo, I support it," or (rearranged slightly) "I support foo because I benefit from it."
- greendestiny 19y ago
  No that's just my context. The extremely abridged version of my argument in that comment is that the alternative to copyright law is some version of contract law and controlled access. You can't force producers to freely release their work, and I doubt you want to stop people entering into contracts with each other.
- davidw 19y ago
  If copyrights are a proper balance, everyone benefits, because more things are created. Without the ability to at least make a living by selling IP, lots of things we currently enjoy/find useful might not exist. That of course is not to say that the balance is a good one right now, still, it's not just the producers that benefit, it's the public who gets access to things the producer creates because he/she has a means to make some money from it.
  - Retric 19y ago
    I think you're over generalizing I don't listen to music so music IP does not seem to benefit me in any fashion. As to books Shakespeare freely coped from others works which breaks our concept of copyright and he lived without such protection. Yet he has been thought of as the greatest author the western world has ever known for a while. In my option IP law does little to promote the creation of quality works instead it promotes churning out low quality crap because you must pay before you can view. IMO you could produce a much more effective system by limiting the High Definition version of a movie while not protecting a standard definition copy of a movie. Thus you could watch any movie for free but you would need to pay to see it in HD or in theaters. You could do the same thing with books and movies. You're free to download a text file but if you want the pictures or fancy formatting you need to buy it. Ditto for low bit rate MP3 vs. lossless copies.

apotheon 19y ago

Your argument in favor of copyright amounts to "As someone who benefits from foo, I support it," or (rearranged slightly) "I support foo because I benefit from it."

greendestiny 19y ago
No that's just my context. The extremely abridged version of my argument in that comment is that the alternative to copyright law is some version of contract law and controlled access. You can't force producers to freely release their work, and I doubt you want to stop people entering into contracts with each other.
davidw 19y ago
If copyrights are a proper balance, everyone benefits, because more things are created. Without the ability to at least make a living by selling IP, lots of things we currently enjoy/find useful might not exist. That of course is not to say that the balance is a good one right now, still, it's not just the producers that benefit, it's the public who gets access to things the producer creates because he/she has a means to make some money from it.
- Retric 19y ago
  I think you're over generalizing I don't listen to music so music IP does not seem to benefit me in any fashion. As to books Shakespeare freely coped from others works which breaks our concept of copyright and he lived without such protection. Yet he has been thought of as the greatest author the western world has ever known for a while. In my option IP law does little to promote the creation of quality works instead it promotes churning out low quality crap because you must pay before you can view. IMO you could produce a much more effective system by limiting the High Definition version of a movie while not protecting a standard definition copy of a movie. Thus you could watch any movie for free but you would need to pay to see it in HD or in theaters. You could do the same thing with books and movies. You're free to download a text file but if you want the pictures or fancy formatting you need to buy it. Ditto for low bit rate MP3 vs. lossless copies.