6 ms·

That's not a sufficient answer. The claim assumes that copyright and patents are proven to be beneficial, measurably better than the prior situation. Are they?

That's not a sufficient answer. The claim assumes that copyright and patents are proven to be beneficial, measurably better than the prior situation. Are they? If so, how? Not to mention, is there any proof there's no better solution?

wtallis 10y ago
> The claim assumes that copyright and patents are proven to be beneficial, measurably better than the prior situation. It looks to me like he's only claiming that copyright protections mitigate a specific harm, not that they're necessarily a net benefit.
zaroth 10y ago
I think you're moving the goalposts quite a bit here! The original assertion does not assume that the current implementation and interpretation of copyright law is, as you say, "proven to be beneficial, measurably better than the prior situation." The complaint was that "that's not how facts work" but the statement in question was in fact verifiable. If you want to provide proof of a better solution, go for it. Proof that there does not exist a better solution is logically impossible, so clearly not a reasonable request. Were creative works shared, copied, and appropriated with impunity when it was perfectly legal to do so? Why, yes they were! Did the creatives lose out on monetary gains in those cases? Certainly. And copyright law evolved to solve that problem. You are perfectly free to believe it wasn't a problem in the first place, or that the medicine is worse than the disease, but I think you have to make the case for why creatives should not be paid for their work, or how else outside of market economies we should pay creatives for their work, if you believe that would be a better system.
- nightski 10y ago
  One could argue whether an API is a creative work however. Are you copyrighting the syntax or the semantics? If it is the semantics, then you are essentially copyrighting a mathematical entity (a type declaration). Are we allowed to copyright mathematics at this point? Forever unto me, the tuple (Int, Int) shall be mine.
  - Silhouette 10y ago
    One could argue whether an API is a creative work however. True, though I suggest a better alternative is that some types of work -- in particular, those necessary for effective communication or for interoperability -- should be explicitly exempt from copyright protection, regardless of any creative element. Copyright itself is an economic trade-off, sacrificing some freedom in the interests of promoting what is considered a greater good. In the same spirit, I would argue that the ability of different parties to communicate and work together effectively is a greater good than anything copyright incentivizes and should therefore take precedence. Curiously, the US legal system already recognises a similar principle in the way it treats typefaces. I submit that analogous treatment is appropriate for APIs, file formats, communications protocols, and the like.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    Oracle claimed that their copyright covered "Sequence, Structure, and Organization."
- metaphorm 10y ago
  > I think you have to make the case for why creatives should not be paid for their work you're moving the goalposts. post you responded to was not questioning the right of creators to be compensated for their work.
- loup-vaillant 10y ago
  > Did the creatives lose out on monetary gains in those cases? Certainly. And copyright law evolved to solve that problem. Problem? Are you sure this is really a problem? We assume by default that it is, but think of this for a second: on the one hand, monetary benefits for a few. On the other, a restriction on the liberty to copy and publish for everyone. This wasn't always the case: historically, only a few people had the ability to share or publish anything. Copyright wasn't so unbalanced then. Now however we have the internet. Given this asymmetry, the well being of creative people itself is secondary to the well being of everyone else. The real reason why creative people should be paid is because we want everyone else to be able to enjoy their creations. It's easy to get caught up in individualistic considerations, such as "I did, it so I deserve a reward", or the opposition between "the" artist and "the" consumer. This can reduce to ridiculous arithmetic errors, such as, the picture of "the" starving artist that lost significant income because "the" consumer didn't pay $5 for a song. We need to grow a sense of scale.
Silhouette 10y ago
Proving that there's no better solution is impractical. However, the size of the copyright-backed creative industries today, by any reasonable metric I can think of, is vastly greater than the size of the creative industries built around the alternative models that have been tried noticeably often so far. That seems to include all of volunteer-based, crowd-funded, mass donation-funded, traditional patronage where some wealthy benefactor funds an entire work, and pay-what-you-want models. Likewise, the quality of work produced with the economic incentive of copyright tends to be better, often much better, than what is produced based on other funding models or a voluntary basis, particularly in areas that aren't things anyone is likely to do just for fun. (Some people may disagree, but I consider this point so obvious by now that it's rarely worth engaging on.) That seems like decent evidence that no-one has found a reliably better way to incentivize creating and distributing new works so far, and it's readily falsifiable if anyone does in the future. Patents are a different matter. I suspect the pros and cons vary significant from one field of research to another, with the general trend that patents might be useful in fields where the cost of R&D really is prohibitively high without some reliable way to exploit any successful projects, while patents are probably doing more harm than good in fields where they are more often used for sneaky legal manoeuvres than to incentivize genuinely innovative, widely useful, but expensive work.
- Natanael_L 10y ago
  Market sizes isn't the same as societal benefit. Just like how a modern society built around horses and carts with all the overhead and work that would require wouldn't be an improvement. It seems to me that it is very very rare that it is the copyright enforcement and/or necessity (will) to stay within legal limits that itself is the reason any given copyrighted offer stays profitable. People pays because they want to pay for quality, in general.
  - Silhouette 10y ago
    Market sizes isn't the same as societal benefit. I'm arguing that copyright-supported creative effort overall produces and distributes significantly more and significantly better works than creative effort supported in other ways. If that doesn't imply societal benefit to you, what does?

wtallis 10y ago

> The claim assumes that copyright and patents are proven to be beneficial, measurably better than the prior situation. It looks to me like he's only claiming that copyright protections mitigate a specific harm, not that they're necessarily a net benefit.

zaroth 10y ago

I think you're moving the goalposts quite a bit here! The original assertion does not assume that the current implementation and interpretation of copyright law is, as you say, "proven to be beneficial, measurably better than the prior situation." The complaint was that "that's not how facts work" but the statement in question was in fact verifiable. If you want to provide proof of a better solution, go for it. Proof that there does not exist a better solution is logically impossible, so clearly not a reasonable request. Were creative works shared, copied, and appropriated with impunity when it was perfectly legal to do so? Why, yes they were! Did the creatives lose out on monetary gains in those cases? Certainly. And copyright law evolved to solve that problem. You are perfectly free to believe it wasn't a problem in the first place, or that the medicine is worse than the disease, but I think you have to make the case for why creatives should not be paid for their work, or how else outside of market economies we should pay creatives for their work, if you believe that would be a better system.

nightski 10y ago
One could argue whether an API is a creative work however. Are you copyrighting the syntax or the semantics? If it is the semantics, then you are essentially copyrighting a mathematical entity (a type declaration). Are we allowed to copyright mathematics at this point? Forever unto me, the tuple (Int, Int) shall be mine.
- Silhouette 10y ago
  One could argue whether an API is a creative work however. True, though I suggest a better alternative is that some types of work -- in particular, those necessary for effective communication or for interoperability -- should be explicitly exempt from copyright protection, regardless of any creative element. Copyright itself is an economic trade-off, sacrificing some freedom in the interests of promoting what is considered a greater good. In the same spirit, I would argue that the ability of different parties to communicate and work together effectively is a greater good than anything copyright incentivizes and should therefore take precedence. Curiously, the US legal system already recognises a similar principle in the way it treats typefaces. I submit that analogous treatment is appropriate for APIs, file formats, communications protocols, and the like.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  Oracle claimed that their copyright covered "Sequence, Structure, and Organization."
metaphorm 10y ago
> I think you have to make the case for why creatives should not be paid for their work you're moving the goalposts. post you responded to was not questioning the right of creators to be compensated for their work.
loup-vaillant 10y ago
> Did the creatives lose out on monetary gains in those cases? Certainly. And copyright law evolved to solve that problem. Problem? Are you sure this is really a problem? We assume by default that it is, but think of this for a second: on the one hand, monetary benefits for a few. On the other, a restriction on the liberty to copy and publish for everyone. This wasn't always the case: historically, only a few people had the ability to share or publish anything. Copyright wasn't so unbalanced then. Now however we have the internet. Given this asymmetry, the well being of creative people itself is secondary to the well being of everyone else. The real reason why creative people should be paid is because we want everyone else to be able to enjoy their creations. It's easy to get caught up in individualistic considerations, such as "I did, it so I deserve a reward", or the opposition between "the" artist and "the" consumer. This can reduce to ridiculous arithmetic errors, such as, the picture of "the" starving artist that lost significant income because "the" consumer didn't pay $5 for a song. We need to grow a sense of scale.

Silhouette 10y ago

Proving that there's no better solution is impractical. However, the size of the copyright-backed creative industries today, by any reasonable metric I can think of, is vastly greater than the size of the creative industries built around the alternative models that have been tried noticeably often so far. That seems to include all of volunteer-based, crowd-funded, mass donation-funded, traditional patronage where some wealthy benefactor funds an entire work, and pay-what-you-want models. Likewise, the quality of work produced with the economic incentive of copyright tends to be better, often much better, than what is produced based on other funding models or a voluntary basis, particularly in areas that aren't things anyone is likely to do just for fun. (Some people may disagree, but I consider this point so obvious by now that it's rarely worth engaging on.) That seems like decent evidence that no-one has found a reliably better way to incentivize creating and distributing new works so far, and it's readily falsifiable if anyone does in the future. Patents are a different matter. I suspect the pros and cons vary significant from one field of research to another, with the general trend that patents might be useful in fields where the cost of R&D really is prohibitively high without some reliable way to exploit any successful projects, while patents are probably doing more harm than good in fields where they are more often used for sneaky legal manoeuvres than to incentivize genuinely innovative, widely useful, but expensive work.

Natanael_L 10y ago
Market sizes isn't the same as societal benefit. Just like how a modern society built around horses and carts with all the overhead and work that would require wouldn't be an improvement. It seems to me that it is very very rare that it is the copyright enforcement and/or necessity (will) to stay within legal limits that itself is the reason any given copyrighted offer stays profitable. People pays because they want to pay for quality, in general.
- Silhouette 10y ago
  Market sizes isn't the same as societal benefit. I'm arguing that copyright-supported creative effort overall produces and distributes significantly more and significantly better works than creative effort supported in other ways. If that doesn't imply societal benefit to you, what does?