7 ms·

The real tragedy is that even after having a new generation born and grown up entirely digitally and connected, we still can’t rethink copyright into something

The real tragedy is that even after having a new generation born and grown up entirely digitally and connected, we still can’t rethink copyright into something which actually makes sense based on the world we now live in.

mindslight 7y ago
Generation has little to do with it. It's not the librarians who promulgated those stern warnings around the photocopiers providing support for the way things are, but rather the huge companies that continue to rake in gobs of money by claiming to own pieces of our culture in perpetuity.
- delinka 7y ago
  I don't really get this "pieces of our culture" argument. I see it often in these discussions. Something "became part of our culture" after someone created it, after ownership was known, and 'we' allowed it to become meaningful to a large audience. Should that somehow transfer the ownership to those who find it more meaningful? Some brands are "cultural icons" (like it or not), but that doesn't mean the culture has any right to tell the brand owner what to do with their trademark.
  - amanaplanacanal 7y ago
    I don't know the history of copyright in other countries, but in the US copyright is explicitly to encourage the creation of artifacts that will then end up as public domain and part of our cultural legacy. If it isn't performing that function well, then it's probably time for a rethink.
andjd 7y ago
The notion that everything that can be digitalized should be free is a pernicious notion and trivializes the effort creators put into their work. Journalists, musicians, authors, and artists deserve to be able to make a living from their work, and they can't do that if their work is distributed for free.
- flatfilefan 7y ago
  This is patently wrong. But your problem is that you don’t supply any argument to support your statement so there’s nothing to discuss.
- rdlecler1 7y ago
  Maybe they just need a new business model. Google gives away plenty for free and they’re doing fine.
  - pound 7y ago
    they're doing fine not because of giving away plenty for free.
  - throwaway13000 7y ago
    The will also run into same problem, but they will be last man standing
  - bhhaskin 7y ago
    Google gives nothing away for free. If you're not paying for it, you're the product.
    - Iolaum 7y ago
      You can still be the product even if you are paying for it. Take smart TVs for example that monetize their customers post purchase.
  - buzzerbetrayed 7y ago
    It is surprising to me that someone on hacker news believes this.
- JulianMorrison 7y ago
  There is a vast gap between "able to make a living" and "able to stifle culture, censor citizenship, and lock up works for longer than a lifetime". TBH, it's probably better to create a post scarcity society where a living isn't dependent on holding something hostage. Some variation of a basic income, that would support artists to create. But we don't have to go that far to say, copyright as it stands now is over-mighty and should have its claws harshly trimmed.
JulianMorrison 7y ago
It's because step one is "overthrow the power of capitalism to control the political system to the despite of the public" and we haven't done that yet. Lobbying does exactly nothing when you are talking to the hand.
- nostrademons 7y ago
  That's a terrible first step. Usually when regions have done that, nothing replaces it, and you get a number of warring powers fighting it out for their vision of what the region should look like, which usually involves far more personal enrichment and domination than the corruption they had before. First step is to figure out what you want instead. The American Revolution had a century of Enlightenment figures thinking deeply about the rights of man and carefully observing revolutions and social developments that were going on in Europe at the time. Even so it took America 20 years to get it right, despite the revolution having been led by some of the most educated people in America. We desperately need a Locke, Smith, Rousseau, and Voltaire of this generation. Unfortunately it seems like many of the most vocal political philosophy voices of this generation are playing for the other team, advocating "Dark Enlightenment" or neo-fascist worldviews.
- ajmurmann 7y ago
  I think you are on to something, but are jumping the gun. We ideally would want as much in the commons and would want people to continue to the commons as much as possible. The problem is that our economy is based around the assumption that most resources are highly limited. Unfortunately that creates incentive to move resources from the commons to individual's balance sheets. Unfortunately our species had reached a point where this leads to potentially catastrophic consequences where resources are actually limited. At the same time the economy only works for resources that are limited as well. If you produce something that's naturally in the Commons like digital goods you cannot get access to the limited resources. Therefore we do these unnatural acts of constraining these resources so that people don't have to starve. As we automate more and we got the limit of our exploitation of limited commons we need to stop individual exploitation of those commons. Fortunately at the same time we are also teaching a point where shitty jobs are getting more and more automated. I think we need something like basic income to allow people to not exploitation the Commons to survive and at the same time use that gained free time from automation to instead contribute to the Commons at their own discretion. Capitalism thus would slowly be phased out as automation progresses. If we just abandon copyright overnight lots of people's work will go unrewarded. If we completely abandon capitalism right now, we end up back in Soviet communism because there is still too much shitty work left that's not automated yet.
DennisP 7y ago
We can rethink it, we just can't get legacy institutions that profit from the old system to go along with it.
- wavepruner 7y ago
  Many struggling artists I talk to want strong copyright laws. It's not just something rich corporations want.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - philipov 7y ago
    That's because they've been duped by the propaganda from those corporations into thinking they actually benefit from copyright.
    - azinman2 7y ago
      And they probably do benefit from it...
      - philipov 7y ago
        Not more than they are harmed by the looting of the public domain that media conglomerates are engaging in. Having a small public domain hurts everyone who can't afford a legal team to research and litigate for them. When you weigh the heavy costs against the slight benefits, it's a net loss.
        dogma1138 7y ago
        I know a few artists that suffered quite a lot of theft primarily in art assets and concept work including their work being used as concept art for commercial projects and textures and 3D models even shipping in with some. Even in such cases like bargain bin games which were made by a Russian and Chinese studios and were published in Europe by fairly large publishers and used stolen assets they had little to no legal recourse the Publisher didn’t care, the artists don’t have the money to fight a legal battle and even if they do win at best they’ll barely cover their legal fees if they even turn a profit and the game devs would just patch those assets out if they would even exist by the time the case is settled. From their point of view it’s not that the public domain is too small but that the current copyright laws are too lax and can only be used by those with large legal teams on retainers.
TaylorAlexander 7y ago
I mostly just want to abandon copyright. Everything I create lately - software, robots, and writing - are released with unrestricted licenses. CC0 or BSD in most cases. I tried copyleft briefly but all it seemed to do was limit other people. I don’t want to do that anymore.
- swiley 7y ago
  As a user I'm pretty thankful for copyleft. I probably wouldn't be able to run modern Linux on the laptop I'm using right now without it.
  - TaylorAlexander 7y ago
    Maybe, but that’s speculative. Unless you’ve got some good examples of the BSD style of license failing where GPL has succeeded (I’d be genuinely interested!). I know GPL has had some good wins, but more and more I feel like we need to fight this battle in our culture, not through lawyers.
    - swiley 7y ago
      I don’t know if it’s possible for that to happen since the licenses are mutually exclusive. There are plenty of situations where BSD (or similar) lisenced software is used and the changes are not published.
      - jimktrains2 7y ago
        Just to clarify, you don't need to provide changes to GPL software if you're not distributing said software and only using it internally. However, in case something ends up being distributed and because I don't believe that's been tested in the courts, many companies have blanket policies against the inclusion of copyleft licenses.
    - jimktrains2 7y ago
      The recent kerfuffles with elastic, redis, and mongo will be interesting to follow and may provide examples where a strong copyleft, e.g. agpl3, would have been better than the Apache or mit/bad style licenses initially chosen.
dingaling 7y ago
> a new generation born and grown up entirely digitally and connected The 'new generation' seems to want to sit on their collective arses and watch movies & music for free, but not contribute to the cost of their creation. I'm all ears as to why their selfish, immediate-gratification desires should be considered. 'The old business model is broken!' they exclaim. Well then, stop consuming its output and go out there and CREATE better content. But most of them decline to do so. Hypocrites.
- tuxxy 7y ago
  Unnecessary.
- lgrebe 7y ago
  With more than 100.000 millennials taking to the streets in parts of Europe alone [0], and many suggestions on how to do it differently and better, ignored by „the internet is a series of tubes“ politicians, your claim of „collective passive consumption arse sitting“ doesn’t sit right with me. [0] https://www.dw.com/en/eu-copyright-bill-protests-across-europe-highlight-rifts-over-reform-plans/a-48037133 https://www.dw.com/en/eu-copyright-bill-protests-across-euro...
- tomjen3 7y ago
  I don't think people have an issue with contributing to the cost of creation, at least enough movies etc are being made and paid for that they are still making money. As for changing the system, the current problem with copyright is that it mixes control and payment, leading to stupid things like HBO not being available unless you pay for a gazillon channels you don't need. I see a future where producers have to declare their prizes, but must offer the same deal to anybody who is willing to buy it. Any exlusive deal is automatically a violation of monopoly laws.
- tomhoward 7y ago
  That "new generation" seems perfectly happy paying for Netflix, Spotify, Apple Music, etc. They also seem happy to create content on Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, etc, with a handful of them becoming stars as big as the pop stars and TV/movie stars of earlier generations. Attributing simplistic traits to entire generations, comprising hundreds of millions of people spanning many different countries, cultures and classes, never really goes well. At any point in time, people just choose the most appealing and cost-effective options of those available to them. It's up to those offering products and services to make their economic model work, but the ability of the big content companies to generate big revenues, either via subscriptions or advertising, shows that there are various models that can work well.
Tsubasachan 7y ago
While you rethink it Disney is writing checks to politicians.

mindslight 7y ago

Generation has little to do with it. It's not the librarians who promulgated those stern warnings around the photocopiers providing support for the way things are, but rather the huge companies that continue to rake in gobs of money by claiming to own pieces of our culture in perpetuity.

delinka 7y ago
I don't really get this "pieces of our culture" argument. I see it often in these discussions. Something "became part of our culture" after someone created it, after ownership was known, and 'we' allowed it to become meaningful to a large audience. Should that somehow transfer the ownership to those who find it more meaningful? Some brands are "cultural icons" (like it or not), but that doesn't mean the culture has any right to tell the brand owner what to do with their trademark.
- amanaplanacanal 7y ago
  I don't know the history of copyright in other countries, but in the US copyright is explicitly to encourage the creation of artifacts that will then end up as public domain and part of our cultural legacy. If it isn't performing that function well, then it's probably time for a rethink.

andjd 7y ago

The notion that everything that can be digitalized should be free is a pernicious notion and trivializes the effort creators put into their work. Journalists, musicians, authors, and artists deserve to be able to make a living from their work, and they can't do that if their work is distributed for free.

flatfilefan 7y ago
This is patently wrong. But your problem is that you don’t supply any argument to support your statement so there’s nothing to discuss.
rdlecler1 7y ago
Maybe they just need a new business model. Google gives away plenty for free and they’re doing fine.
- pound 7y ago
  they're doing fine not because of giving away plenty for free.
- throwaway13000 7y ago
  The will also run into same problem, but they will be last man standing
- bhhaskin 7y ago
  Google gives nothing away for free. If you're not paying for it, you're the product.
  - Iolaum 7y ago
    You can still be the product even if you are paying for it. Take smart TVs for example that monetize their customers post purchase.
- buzzerbetrayed 7y ago
  It is surprising to me that someone on hacker news believes this.
JulianMorrison 7y ago
There is a vast gap between "able to make a living" and "able to stifle culture, censor citizenship, and lock up works for longer than a lifetime". TBH, it's probably better to create a post scarcity society where a living isn't dependent on holding something hostage. Some variation of a basic income, that would support artists to create. But we don't have to go that far to say, copyright as it stands now is over-mighty and should have its claws harshly trimmed.

JulianMorrison 7y ago

It's because step one is "overthrow the power of capitalism to control the political system to the despite of the public" and we haven't done that yet. Lobbying does exactly nothing when you are talking to the hand.

nostrademons 7y ago
That's a terrible first step. Usually when regions have done that, nothing replaces it, and you get a number of warring powers fighting it out for their vision of what the region should look like, which usually involves far more personal enrichment and domination than the corruption they had before. First step is to figure out what you want instead. The American Revolution had a century of Enlightenment figures thinking deeply about the rights of man and carefully observing revolutions and social developments that were going on in Europe at the time. Even so it took America 20 years to get it right, despite the revolution having been led by some of the most educated people in America. We desperately need a Locke, Smith, Rousseau, and Voltaire of this generation. Unfortunately it seems like many of the most vocal political philosophy voices of this generation are playing for the other team, advocating "Dark Enlightenment" or neo-fascist worldviews.
ajmurmann 7y ago
I think you are on to something, but are jumping the gun. We ideally would want as much in the commons and would want people to continue to the commons as much as possible. The problem is that our economy is based around the assumption that most resources are highly limited. Unfortunately that creates incentive to move resources from the commons to individual's balance sheets. Unfortunately our species had reached a point where this leads to potentially catastrophic consequences where resources are actually limited. At the same time the economy only works for resources that are limited as well. If you produce something that's naturally in the Commons like digital goods you cannot get access to the limited resources. Therefore we do these unnatural acts of constraining these resources so that people don't have to starve. As we automate more and we got the limit of our exploitation of limited commons we need to stop individual exploitation of those commons. Fortunately at the same time we are also teaching a point where shitty jobs are getting more and more automated. I think we need something like basic income to allow people to not exploitation the Commons to survive and at the same time use that gained free time from automation to instead contribute to the Commons at their own discretion. Capitalism thus would slowly be phased out as automation progresses. If we just abandon copyright overnight lots of people's work will go unrewarded. If we completely abandon capitalism right now, we end up back in Soviet communism because there is still too much shitty work left that's not automated yet.

DennisP 7y ago

We can rethink it, we just can't get legacy institutions that profit from the old system to go along with it.

wavepruner 7y ago
Many struggling artists I talk to want strong copyright laws. It's not just something rich corporations want.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- philipov 7y ago
  That's because they've been duped by the propaganda from those corporations into thinking they actually benefit from copyright.
  - azinman2 7y ago
    And they probably do benefit from it...
    - philipov 7y ago
      Not more than they are harmed by the looting of the public domain that media conglomerates are engaging in. Having a small public domain hurts everyone who can't afford a legal team to research and litigate for them. When you weigh the heavy costs against the slight benefits, it's a net loss.
      - dogma1138 7y ago
        I know a few artists that suffered quite a lot of theft primarily in art assets and concept work including their work being used as concept art for commercial projects and textures and 3D models even shipping in with some. Even in such cases like bargain bin games which were made by a Russian and Chinese studios and were published in Europe by fairly large publishers and used stolen assets they had little to no legal recourse the Publisher didn’t care, the artists don’t have the money to fight a legal battle and even if they do win at best they’ll barely cover their legal fees if they even turn a profit and the game devs would just patch those assets out if they would even exist by the time the case is settled. From their point of view it’s not that the public domain is too small but that the current copyright laws are too lax and can only be used by those with large legal teams on retainers.

TaylorAlexander 7y ago

I mostly just want to abandon copyright. Everything I create lately - software, robots, and writing - are released with unrestricted licenses. CC0 or BSD in most cases. I tried copyleft briefly but all it seemed to do was limit other people. I don’t want to do that anymore.

swiley 7y ago
As a user I'm pretty thankful for copyleft. I probably wouldn't be able to run modern Linux on the laptop I'm using right now without it.
- TaylorAlexander 7y ago
  Maybe, but that’s speculative. Unless you’ve got some good examples of the BSD style of license failing where GPL has succeeded (I’d be genuinely interested!). I know GPL has had some good wins, but more and more I feel like we need to fight this battle in our culture, not through lawyers.
  - swiley 7y ago
    I don’t know if it’s possible for that to happen since the licenses are mutually exclusive. There are plenty of situations where BSD (or similar) lisenced software is used and the changes are not published.
    - jimktrains2 7y ago
      Just to clarify, you don't need to provide changes to GPL software if you're not distributing said software and only using it internally. However, in case something ends up being distributed and because I don't believe that's been tested in the courts, many companies have blanket policies against the inclusion of copyleft licenses.
  - jimktrains2 7y ago
    The recent kerfuffles with elastic, redis, and mongo will be interesting to follow and may provide examples where a strong copyleft, e.g. agpl3, would have been better than the Apache or mit/bad style licenses initially chosen.

dingaling 7y ago

> a new generation born and grown up entirely digitally and connected The 'new generation' seems to want to sit on their collective arses and watch movies & music for free, but not contribute to the cost of their creation. I'm all ears as to why their selfish, immediate-gratification desires should be considered. 'The old business model is broken!' they exclaim. Well then, stop consuming its output and go out there and CREATE better content. But most of them decline to do so. Hypocrites.

tuxxy 7y ago
Unnecessary.
lgrebe 7y ago
With more than 100.000 millennials taking to the streets in parts of Europe alone [0], and many suggestions on how to do it differently and better, ignored by „the internet is a series of tubes“ politicians, your claim of „collective passive consumption arse sitting“ doesn’t sit right with me. [0] https://www.dw.com/en/eu-copyright-bill-protests-across-europe-highlight-rifts-over-reform-plans/a-48037133 https://www.dw.com/en/eu-copyright-bill-protests-across-euro...
tomjen3 7y ago
I don't think people have an issue with contributing to the cost of creation, at least enough movies etc are being made and paid for that they are still making money. As for changing the system, the current problem with copyright is that it mixes control and payment, leading to stupid things like HBO not being available unless you pay for a gazillon channels you don't need. I see a future where producers have to declare their prizes, but must offer the same deal to anybody who is willing to buy it. Any exlusive deal is automatically a violation of monopoly laws.
tomhoward 7y ago
That "new generation" seems perfectly happy paying for Netflix, Spotify, Apple Music, etc. They also seem happy to create content on Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, etc, with a handful of them becoming stars as big as the pop stars and TV/movie stars of earlier generations. Attributing simplistic traits to entire generations, comprising hundreds of millions of people spanning many different countries, cultures and classes, never really goes well. At any point in time, people just choose the most appealing and cost-effective options of those available to them. It's up to those offering products and services to make their economic model work, but the ability of the big content companies to generate big revenues, either via subscriptions or advertising, shows that there are various models that can work well.

Tsubasachan 7y ago

While you rethink it Disney is writing checks to politicians.