4 ms·

Ask HN: What are the biggest benefits of copyright for society?

4 points by OleLukoje 7y ago

hnarn 7y ago
The question seems somewhat biased, why is copyright assumed to be strictly beneficial? Of course it has benefits, but surely it can't have only benefits. Isn't a more honest question to ask: "What is the impact of copyright on society"?
- Konnstann 7y ago
  I think the point was that copyright is typically discussed in terms of its negative impacts. I, for instance, have never seen any discourse about the benefits of copyright. The benefits seem obvious but there's still a place, in my opinion, for this topic.
  - OleLukoje 7y ago
    > The benefits seem obvious They don't exist until I find them on Wikipedia
sarcasmatwork 7y ago
This is a good start imho: http://web.utk.edu/~kperkey/reporthtml/benefits.html http://web.utk.edu/~kperkey/reporthtml/benefits.html
- OleLukoje 7y ago
  > Having the assurance that a work is protected encourages developers and publishers to create more works Why is that though? Would the progress just stop without such "protection"?
  - luhego 7y ago
    Because people want to be rewarded by their work. If you remove the incentives, a great number of people will stop producing art.
    - muzani 7y ago
      Many artists don't need the incentives, but having other people easily claim and use it is a big turn off.
RugnirViking 7y ago
The fundamental idea underpinning copyright is that it allows people to make a profit from their work, be that recorded video, audio, a written computer program, or any other kind of intellectual property. If there was no such thing as copyright, if you recorded a music track and gave it to somebody, they could legally sell it themselves to other people, and undercut you or just give it away for free. (of course people still do on a person-to-person basis, but this would make it completely legal for even a movie theatre to show hollywood movies without paying any rights) Why is creators being able to make money in this way from their creations good for society? Well, previously, the method to make money from art before copyright was the patronage system, which involved wealthy individuals sponsoring an artist to create things on their behalf, with varying levels of interference in the process. This worked to some extent, but the fundamental idea underpinning copyright is that if everybody sponsors a small amount for a product then it will be better for most people, rather than catering to the specific tastes of a single wealthy individual. You see this kind of thing happening nowadays with platforms like patreon - it is possible to earn a living from a relatively small subset of the people that actually consume your content, and even while giving it away for free, simply because those people have a desire to see more of the same stuff. The problem with patreon is that it has to overcome a little bit of a tradgedy of the commons problem, whereby stopping your own individual contribution is unlikely to have much of an impact on the quality of art produced. Nonetheless, it seems to have found it's niche, and is only growing. What about if nobody pays for art? There are plenty of parts of our culture that nobody got any money for. Often things created by relatively nameless folk expecting nothing in return but the love of creating are some of our greatest cultural works, be them folk songs or open-source software. While I speak mainly about art and music in this piece, any kind of intellectual property that can be copyright works in mostly the same way. There is relatively little that is different in the grand scheme of things between monetising a song and monetising a coputer program - both are practically impossible to do without allowing the user to share it futher without your control.
- OleLukoje 7y ago
  > but the fundamental idea underpinning copyright is that if everybody sponsors a small amount for a product then it will be better for most people, rather than catering to the specific tastes of a single wealthy individual. Doesn't it work the other way around currently? Instead of sharing the intellectual property for the better of the most people we lock the property in the hands of a few. Probably as the time goes the wealthy will accumulate all of the IP in their hands eventually.
muzani 7y ago
Best case: There's an open source Quran app & site, done by people whose primary motivation is to use their tech skills as an act of worship. The more people use it, the more they benefit. The more people fork it, the more divine favor they get. A lot of people donate to the project, even though the team has no problem with server costs, etc. But it's protected with a GPL-3.0 license. You can't just clone it, build, and sell it. I think the base idea is that it's unfair for one person to spend years on a product and someone else to sell it. It's unfair for the people who have donated to the team that has built it. The sense of unfairness prevents people from contributing.
- bruce511 7y ago
  >> But it's protected with a GPL-3.0 license. You can't just clone it, build, and sell it. You absolutely can. You can absolutely rename it, re-brand it and sell it for whatever you like. Your interpretation is exactly at odds with the expressed wish of the GNU Project. (see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html) The GPL is about software freedom, not price. [As an aside I've heard arguments that it's "unethical" to sell a GPL program. Which is absurd since it gives the buyer more choices, not fewer. If I choose to compile a GPL program into a binary, and provide it to the market in a useful form (with source code of course), the market can then absolutely choose to pay me to do that. Red Hat is a multi billion dollar company built on completely this premise. To declare that "unethical" is like saying that selling food is unethical because everyone could just grow their own (ignoring the value added by picking, distribution etc.) The conclusion being that value is added at many points in the supply chain, not just the first one, and people are certainly free to pay for that value.] >> I think the base idea is that it's unfair for one person to spend years on a product and someone else to sell it. It's unfair for the people who have donated to the team that has built it. The team (or individual) that creates the product absolutely determines the license for that product. By _choosing_ the GPL license they are _explicitly_ allowing people to rebrand it and sell it. So, no, it's not unfair to do what _they_ have explicitly allowed you to do. By suggesting it is "unfair" you are asserting that either you are not aware of the actual provisions of the GPL, or the authors were too lazy to select a license that matched their actual intentions. If you want to prevent people from selling the work, then don't use GPL, instead use a license that prevents people from selling your work. >> The sense of unfairness prevents people from contributing. The license will absolutely determine how interested people are in contributing to your project. Of course, as you have shown, that doesn't stop contributors from being very unhappy when they think a license "means" something, and it turns out it doesn't. That is on the contributor though, not the project author. In summary, if you are going to care about what happens to your work after contributing, then please make sure you understand the actual license that project is using and don't just assume terms that are not in effect.

4 points by OleLukoje 7y ago

The question seems somewhat biased, why is copyright assumed to be strictly beneficial? Of course it has benefits, but surely it can't have only benefits. Isn't a more honest question to ask: "What is the impact of copyright on society"?

Konnstann 7y ago
I think the point was that copyright is typically discussed in terms of its negative impacts. I, for instance, have never seen any discourse about the benefits of copyright. The benefits seem obvious but there's still a place, in my opinion, for this topic.
- OleLukoje 7y ago
  > The benefits seem obvious They don't exist until I find them on Wikipedia

sarcasmatwork 7y ago

This is a good start imho: http://web.utk.edu/~kperkey/reporthtml/benefits.html http://web.utk.edu/~kperkey/reporthtml/benefits.html

OleLukoje 7y ago
> Having the assurance that a work is protected encourages developers and publishers to create more works Why is that though? Would the progress just stop without such "protection"?
- luhego 7y ago
  Because people want to be rewarded by their work. If you remove the incentives, a great number of people will stop producing art.
  - muzani 7y ago
    Many artists don't need the incentives, but having other people easily claim and use it is a big turn off.

RugnirViking 7y ago

The fundamental idea underpinning copyright is that it allows people to make a profit from their work, be that recorded video, audio, a written computer program, or any other kind of intellectual property. If there was no such thing as copyright, if you recorded a music track and gave it to somebody, they could legally sell it themselves to other people, and undercut you or just give it away for free. (of course people still do on a person-to-person basis, but this would make it completely legal for even a movie theatre to show hollywood movies without paying any rights) Why is creators being able to make money in this way from their creations good for society? Well, previously, the method to make money from art before copyright was the patronage system, which involved wealthy individuals sponsoring an artist to create things on their behalf, with varying levels of interference in the process. This worked to some extent, but the fundamental idea underpinning copyright is that if everybody sponsors a small amount for a product then it will be better for most people, rather than catering to the specific tastes of a single wealthy individual. You see this kind of thing happening nowadays with platforms like patreon - it is possible to earn a living from a relatively small subset of the people that actually consume your content, and even while giving it away for free, simply because those people have a desire to see more of the same stuff. The problem with patreon is that it has to overcome a little bit of a tradgedy of the commons problem, whereby stopping your own individual contribution is unlikely to have much of an impact on the quality of art produced. Nonetheless, it seems to have found it's niche, and is only growing. What about if nobody pays for art? There are plenty of parts of our culture that nobody got any money for. Often things created by relatively nameless folk expecting nothing in return but the love of creating are some of our greatest cultural works, be them folk songs or open-source software. While I speak mainly about art and music in this piece, any kind of intellectual property that can be copyright works in mostly the same way. There is relatively little that is different in the grand scheme of things between monetising a song and monetising a coputer program - both are practically impossible to do without allowing the user to share it futher without your control.

OleLukoje 7y ago
> but the fundamental idea underpinning copyright is that if everybody sponsors a small amount for a product then it will be better for most people, rather than catering to the specific tastes of a single wealthy individual. Doesn't it work the other way around currently? Instead of sharing the intellectual property for the better of the most people we lock the property in the hands of a few. Probably as the time goes the wealthy will accumulate all of the IP in their hands eventually.

muzani 7y ago

Best case: There's an open source Quran app & site, done by people whose primary motivation is to use their tech skills as an act of worship. The more people use it, the more they benefit. The more people fork it, the more divine favor they get. A lot of people donate to the project, even though the team has no problem with server costs, etc. But it's protected with a GPL-3.0 license. You can't just clone it, build, and sell it. I think the base idea is that it's unfair for one person to spend years on a product and someone else to sell it. It's unfair for the people who have donated to the team that has built it. The sense of unfairness prevents people from contributing.

bruce511 7y ago
>> But it's protected with a GPL-3.0 license. You can't just clone it, build, and sell it. You absolutely can. You can absolutely rename it, re-brand it and sell it for whatever you like. Your interpretation is exactly at odds with the expressed wish of the GNU Project. (see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html) The GPL is about software freedom, not price. [As an aside I've heard arguments that it's "unethical" to sell a GPL program. Which is absurd since it gives the buyer more choices, not fewer. If I choose to compile a GPL program into a binary, and provide it to the market in a useful form (with source code of course), the market can then absolutely choose to pay me to do that. Red Hat is a multi billion dollar company built on completely this premise. To declare that "unethical" is like saying that selling food is unethical because everyone could just grow their own (ignoring the value added by picking, distribution etc.) The conclusion being that value is added at many points in the supply chain, not just the first one, and people are certainly free to pay for that value.] >> I think the base idea is that it's unfair for one person to spend years on a product and someone else to sell it. It's unfair for the people who have donated to the team that has built it. The team (or individual) that creates the product absolutely determines the license for that product. By _choosing_ the GPL license they are _explicitly_ allowing people to rebrand it and sell it. So, no, it's not unfair to do what _they_ have explicitly allowed you to do. By suggesting it is "unfair" you are asserting that either you are not aware of the actual provisions of the GPL, or the authors were too lazy to select a license that matched their actual intentions. If you want to prevent people from selling the work, then don't use GPL, instead use a license that prevents people from selling your work. >> The sense of unfairness prevents people from contributing. The license will absolutely determine how interested people are in contributing to your project. Of course, as you have shown, that doesn't stop contributors from being very unhappy when they think a license "means" something, and it turns out it doesn't. That is on the contributor though, not the project author. In summary, if you are going to care about what happens to your work after contributing, then please make sure you understand the actual license that project is using and don't just assume terms that are not in effect.