5 ms·

Copyright as an idea is fine - as in, how it was described in the Constitution: "securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to thei

Copyright as an idea is fine - as in, how it was described in the Constitution: "securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries", emphasis on "limited times". It's our current batarnak of an implementation that's causing all the problems. Getting rid of copyright and instituting a copy-anarchy would mean that creatives would have no real incentive to publish (no matter how much you do for passion, you still need to keep the lights on and put food on the table) - but our current system, with lifetimes tied to the time since Walt Disney's death, is a bit of a mess too. Can there ever be a happy medium?

iamnothere 7y ago
> Can there ever be a happy medium? Short terms (15yr?) for unregistered or "implicit" copyright, renewable with registration and fees that increase year-over-year.
michaelmrose 7y ago
How about a combination of - free health care for all - universal basic income at a really basic subsidence level - voluntary patronage People define themselves by their art if they can live a reasonable life and produce they will do it.
- TaylorAlexander 7y ago
  Yes! I see a more complex socialism as being necessary versus UBI, but in either case eliminating the need for survival work would mean artists could create art and be copied without anyone losing their livelihood.
- CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
  I had this idea the other day that we should top this of with a type of “democratic” investment fund. Think pension funds, but structured to ensure a democratic representation of the public as owners, one share per citizen. The idea being to allocate to each citizen an equal share, for equal voting power, and equal right to dividends.
- vixen99 7y ago
  The concept of 'free health care' in the absence of infinite resources has to be heavily qualified and that's the tricky bit.
- ktaylor 7y ago
  Assuming people will create great works while living off a sustenance-level basic income is a bit of a stretch. And, it seems to ignore the extreme level of work, commitment, and persistence it takes to write books, publish science, etc. The issue is not whether people should be able to profit off their own work but whether a rent-seeking gatekeeper should be able to hijack others' work and profit off it.
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    A system designed to artificially limit supply impoverishes the world and most of the profit inevitably sticks with the middle men whose existence is only necessitated by the artificial scarcity. I specifically stated the sustenance level basic income plus patronage as I expect people must have enough to survive but ought to be incentivized to earn enough to live better. I've heard others, not you, express the nonsensical idea that if people had enough to barely survive they would all quite providing value to society until the whole pyramid balanced precariously on the backs of the few remaining working people collapsed. This is a basic mis-analysis of human nature. People would strive to produce both for reasons of self worth and desire for a better than basic life. I expect many to most writers with no readers and no earnings would eventually tire of the affair and move on to others. Others would find a way to live a better than subsidence level life via patronage or doing other work to finance their hobby. Do you really believe in a world without copyright that Stephen king wouldn't find any supporters?
TaylorAlexander 7y ago
I see it another way: bring about a true socialist society where people do not need to work to survive, and in that world people can do as they please with no concern for income. Creativity has many benefits other than income and eliminating profit incentives would allow us to pursue those other benefits more freely.
- natechols 7y ago
  Paraphrasing a comment I read years ago: if your hypothetical economic system depends on everyone in the society behaving in a way that humans have never behaved in all of recorded history, it's pure fantasy. Eliminating the daily struggle for survival via something like UBI is not intrinsically a bad idea IMHO. Eliminating profit incentives altogether is effectively impossible - given the chance, most people will always act out of self-interest without even pausing to think about it. Or do you think socialist countries are magically free from corruption and greed?
  - TaylorAlexander 7y ago
    a couple of things: 1) Much of what I advocate for is based on how many human societies have operated for millennia. Collective management on the tribal level seems pretty common historically. 2) Some innovation is possible. Our society every day does things we didn’t do for thousands of years. Technology definitely changes this, but for example we didn’t do very large representative democracies until recently. It stands that there still exist some unpopular ideas that would work better that what we have today.
    - natechols 7y ago
      There is a huge difference between "collective management on the tribal level" and abolishing the profit incentive in an advanced industrial economy. People who've never known anything other than prosperity have a tendency to idealize pre-modern societies - they vastly underestimate how miserable life was for most people, and how much violence was involved in organizing these societies. Imagine a typical homeless camp in the Bay Area, only more violent: sure, it's easy to forget about profit when you're engaged in a daily struggle to not die from starvation, disease, wild animals, bandits, or natural disasters, and close cooperation is the only thing saving your tribe from sudden extinction.

iamnothere 7y ago

> Can there ever be a happy medium? Short terms (15yr?) for unregistered or "implicit" copyright, renewable with registration and fees that increase year-over-year.

michaelmrose 7y ago

How about a combination of - free health care for all - universal basic income at a really basic subsidence level - voluntary patronage People define themselves by their art if they can live a reasonable life and produce they will do it.

TaylorAlexander 7y ago
Yes! I see a more complex socialism as being necessary versus UBI, but in either case eliminating the need for survival work would mean artists could create art and be copied without anyone losing their livelihood.
CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
I had this idea the other day that we should top this of with a type of “democratic” investment fund. Think pension funds, but structured to ensure a democratic representation of the public as owners, one share per citizen. The idea being to allocate to each citizen an equal share, for equal voting power, and equal right to dividends.
vixen99 7y ago
The concept of 'free health care' in the absence of infinite resources has to be heavily qualified and that's the tricky bit.
ktaylor 7y ago
Assuming people will create great works while living off a sustenance-level basic income is a bit of a stretch. And, it seems to ignore the extreme level of work, commitment, and persistence it takes to write books, publish science, etc. The issue is not whether people should be able to profit off their own work but whether a rent-seeking gatekeeper should be able to hijack others' work and profit off it.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  A system designed to artificially limit supply impoverishes the world and most of the profit inevitably sticks with the middle men whose existence is only necessitated by the artificial scarcity. I specifically stated the sustenance level basic income plus patronage as I expect people must have enough to survive but ought to be incentivized to earn enough to live better. I've heard others, not you, express the nonsensical idea that if people had enough to barely survive they would all quite providing value to society until the whole pyramid balanced precariously on the backs of the few remaining working people collapsed. This is a basic mis-analysis of human nature. People would strive to produce both for reasons of self worth and desire for a better than basic life. I expect many to most writers with no readers and no earnings would eventually tire of the affair and move on to others. Others would find a way to live a better than subsidence level life via patronage or doing other work to finance their hobby. Do you really believe in a world without copyright that Stephen king wouldn't find any supporters?

TaylorAlexander 7y ago

I see it another way: bring about a true socialist society where people do not need to work to survive, and in that world people can do as they please with no concern for income. Creativity has many benefits other than income and eliminating profit incentives would allow us to pursue those other benefits more freely.

natechols 7y ago
Paraphrasing a comment I read years ago: if your hypothetical economic system depends on everyone in the society behaving in a way that humans have never behaved in all of recorded history, it's pure fantasy. Eliminating the daily struggle for survival via something like UBI is not intrinsically a bad idea IMHO. Eliminating profit incentives altogether is effectively impossible - given the chance, most people will always act out of self-interest without even pausing to think about it. Or do you think socialist countries are magically free from corruption and greed?
- TaylorAlexander 7y ago
  a couple of things: 1) Much of what I advocate for is based on how many human societies have operated for millennia. Collective management on the tribal level seems pretty common historically. 2) Some innovation is possible. Our society every day does things we didn’t do for thousands of years. Technology definitely changes this, but for example we didn’t do very large representative democracies until recently. It stands that there still exist some unpopular ideas that would work better that what we have today.
  - natechols 7y ago
    There is a huge difference between "collective management on the tribal level" and abolishing the profit incentive in an advanced industrial economy. People who've never known anything other than prosperity have a tendency to idealize pre-modern societies - they vastly underestimate how miserable life was for most people, and how much violence was involved in organizing these societies. Imagine a typical homeless camp in the Bay Area, only more violent: sure, it's easy to forget about profit when you're engaged in a daily struggle to not die from starvation, disease, wild animals, bandits, or natural disasters, and close cooperation is the only thing saving your tribe from sudden extinction.