4 ms·

Thirty years? Why have copyright at all? I've yet to hear a good argument that doesn't boil down to "because my business model deserves to be profitable." Inte

by jan888 7y ago

Thirty years? Why have copyright at all? I've yet to hear a good argument that doesn't boil down to "because my business model deserves to be profitable." Intellectual property isn't a scarce resource. I look forward to the day we all exploit that. We'll find new business models, ones that take advantage of being able to build on all proir human knowledge, and we'll all be more productive because of it.

thereisnospork 7y ago
>"because my business model deserves to be profitable" Why have authors? Or poets? Or scientists? Or SWEs? we don't work for free. Or would you prefer to drive the aforementioned out of business.
- mc3 7y ago
  Yep without copyright Google can gobble up most of the web!
- clarry 7y ago
  > Why have authors? Because someone needs something written, and they hire you to do it. Or because you want to write, and then others discover that they like what you write, and they want to help you write more. None of this requires copyright, and in fact copyright make some works illegal to author, therefore it restricts authorship. > Or poets? As above. > Or scientists? Someone needs research done. Someone wants to do research. Someone wants to fund research. None of this requires copyright. > Or SWEs? "Hey I need this software, can you write it for me? Here's how much I'm willing to pay for it." Copyright has never been relevant in my career as a software developer. If anything, developers giving up their exclusive rights via free software licenses has been a massive boost for the entire field and everyone is building products atop someone else's work. That's a good thing! I only with copyright didn't restrict our field so much. > we don't work for free. Indeed, someone needs my labor and they pay for it. Pretty simple. > Or would you prefer to drive the aforementioned out of business. Strawman. GP argued against particular business models that are reliant on copyright. That's not an argument against these entire fields, and indeed most of them would continue to exist without copyright. But yes; I'm ok with letting people with poor business models go out of business. Abandoning copyright would enable other business models that are currently difficult or impossible to conduct legally. I think the status quo is bad, because there are many services I can think of that would benefit end users (and which I would pay for) but which are not going to happen because of copyright.
  - thereisnospork 7y ago
    >Because someone needs something written, and they hire you to do it. Or because you want to write, and then others discover that they like what you write, and they want to help you write more. None of this requires copyright, and in fact copyright make some works illegal to author, therefore it restricts authorship. How many authors have you hired recently? Should I go hire an author next time I want to read a book, and pay him/her a living wage for the 1000 hours or so it takes to write a good novel? Hire a trope of actors, director, SFX team next time I want to watch a movie? If I am unsatisfied with the waterproofness of my jacket I am supposed to contract GORE to provision scientists and a lab to research a better membrane? I'm sorry but this isn't passing the sniff test - none of those activities scale without IP protection. >Strawman. GP argued against particular business models that are reliant on copyright. That's not an argument against these entire fields, and indeed most of them would continue to exist without copyright. Your assertion that I am making a strawman is silly. Those fields rely in their entirety on IP protection - books, science, engineering. Pagerank becomes open source and what is google.com? Just a commodity - never would have got off the ground. Those fields exist[0] because of defensible IP. > Someone wants to fund research No one wants to fund research, people want to sell the things research brings. >Indeed, someone needs my labor and they pay for it. Pretty simple. No one needs my labor (or yours) if they can't sell the output (unless you wait tables or lay bricks). How does one sell intellectual output without IP protection? Patreon is not a valid answer. [0]At any level that can be described more intensive than 'hobby'. And I don't know about you, but I'd like there to be a way for the the people working on vaccines to be working on vaccines as their day job. To say nothing of media I've enjoyed consuming.
- diffeomorphism 7y ago
  Why do you think copyright is necessary for that? The entirety of federally funded research in the US shows just how wrong that idea is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_the_federal_government_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_t... It all by law is public domain, i.e. copyright free (+legalese).
  - thereisnospork 7y ago
    How much federally funded research becomes a product you (or anyone can use) that isn't protected by some intellectual property? Hint: its not a lot. Because people don't work for free, chemicals don't buy themselves, research and development needs to be paid off. If you want to upend capitalism and the market economy, fine, but figure out a sensible way to do that before trying to break the current system by removing the mechanism the creators and inventors and commercializers of new and novel things are able to do that. I am talking about IP-protections more generally than 'copywrite' alone per parent's discussion. Moving copywrite more in line with patents would be a sensible change.
  - C1sc0cat 7y ago
    But US maps are not as good as the Ordinance survey ones in the UK
    - jfk13 7y ago
      It's Ordnance Survey. (This message brought to you by Nit-Pickers 'Я' Us.)
      - C1sc0cat 7y ago
        Ordnance, I though that got privatised as we can no loger design our own pistol or a rifle :-)
baby 7y ago
Patreon is actually changing a lot of that. Kurzgesagt did a video a while back explaining that content copying was bad for their business model, that was before they join patreon. I give every month to them and I never donate besides this and wikipedia. So I’m betting they are making tons of $ through patreon.
jtolmar 7y ago
> Why have copyright at all? You need some amount of copy protection so that people/companies with large platforms can't immediately rip off independent authors and sell their work before the author's version can get any word of mouth. (Where "sell" probably means "distribute with ads" since there's no copy protection.) 4-5 years of copy protection would prevent this, and that's on the very safe end.
- teddyh 7y ago
  You’re assuming that we still want the “sell-with-ads” model to be the model to make money from producing works. I’m not sure this is what we want; we now see what ad-optimized media looks like.
Noos 7y ago
Why pay programmers at all? Your labor should be free too, and I'm sure we can make some awesome business models if you get paid five bucks an hour or less. You can go make money getting people to support you on patreon.
- teddyh 7y ago
  > Why pay programmers at all? Your labor should be free too No it shouldn’t, because labor is scarce.
ZoomZoomZoom 7y ago
I don't want my painting to end up on a cigarette pack or a garbage truck or NSBM album cover at least until I die.

by jan888 7y ago

thereisnospork 7y ago

>"because my business model deserves to be profitable" Why have authors? Or poets? Or scientists? Or SWEs? we don't work for free. Or would you prefer to drive the aforementioned out of business.

mc3 7y ago
Yep without copyright Google can gobble up most of the web!
clarry 7y ago
> Why have authors? Because someone needs something written, and they hire you to do it. Or because you want to write, and then others discover that they like what you write, and they want to help you write more. None of this requires copyright, and in fact copyright make some works illegal to author, therefore it restricts authorship. > Or poets? As above. > Or scientists? Someone needs research done. Someone wants to do research. Someone wants to fund research. None of this requires copyright. > Or SWEs? "Hey I need this software, can you write it for me? Here's how much I'm willing to pay for it." Copyright has never been relevant in my career as a software developer. If anything, developers giving up their exclusive rights via free software licenses has been a massive boost for the entire field and everyone is building products atop someone else's work. That's a good thing! I only with copyright didn't restrict our field so much. > we don't work for free. Indeed, someone needs my labor and they pay for it. Pretty simple. > Or would you prefer to drive the aforementioned out of business. Strawman. GP argued against particular business models that are reliant on copyright. That's not an argument against these entire fields, and indeed most of them would continue to exist without copyright. But yes; I'm ok with letting people with poor business models go out of business. Abandoning copyright would enable other business models that are currently difficult or impossible to conduct legally. I think the status quo is bad, because there are many services I can think of that would benefit end users (and which I would pay for) but which are not going to happen because of copyright.
- thereisnospork 7y ago
  >Because someone needs something written, and they hire you to do it. Or because you want to write, and then others discover that they like what you write, and they want to help you write more. None of this requires copyright, and in fact copyright make some works illegal to author, therefore it restricts authorship. How many authors have you hired recently? Should I go hire an author next time I want to read a book, and pay him/her a living wage for the 1000 hours or so it takes to write a good novel? Hire a trope of actors, director, SFX team next time I want to watch a movie? If I am unsatisfied with the waterproofness of my jacket I am supposed to contract GORE to provision scientists and a lab to research a better membrane? I'm sorry but this isn't passing the sniff test - none of those activities scale without IP protection. >Strawman. GP argued against particular business models that are reliant on copyright. That's not an argument against these entire fields, and indeed most of them would continue to exist without copyright. Your assertion that I am making a strawman is silly. Those fields rely in their entirety on IP protection - books, science, engineering. Pagerank becomes open source and what is google.com? Just a commodity - never would have got off the ground. Those fields exist[0] because of defensible IP. > Someone wants to fund research No one wants to fund research, people want to sell the things research brings. >Indeed, someone needs my labor and they pay for it. Pretty simple. No one needs my labor (or yours) if they can't sell the output (unless you wait tables or lay bricks). How does one sell intellectual output without IP protection? Patreon is not a valid answer. [0]At any level that can be described more intensive than 'hobby'. And I don't know about you, but I'd like there to be a way for the the people working on vaccines to be working on vaccines as their day job. To say nothing of media I've enjoyed consuming.
diffeomorphism 7y ago
Why do you think copyright is necessary for that? The entirety of federally funded research in the US shows just how wrong that idea is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_the_federal_government_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_t... It all by law is public domain, i.e. copyright free (+legalese).
- thereisnospork 7y ago
  How much federally funded research becomes a product you (or anyone can use) that isn't protected by some intellectual property? Hint: its not a lot. Because people don't work for free, chemicals don't buy themselves, research and development needs to be paid off. If you want to upend capitalism and the market economy, fine, but figure out a sensible way to do that before trying to break the current system by removing the mechanism the creators and inventors and commercializers of new and novel things are able to do that. I am talking about IP-protections more generally than 'copywrite' alone per parent's discussion. Moving copywrite more in line with patents would be a sensible change.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  But US maps are not as good as the Ordinance survey ones in the UK
  - jfk13 7y ago
    It's Ordnance Survey. (This message brought to you by Nit-Pickers 'Я' Us.)
    - C1sc0cat 7y ago
      Ordnance, I though that got privatised as we can no loger design our own pistol or a rifle :-)

baby 7y ago

Patreon is actually changing a lot of that. Kurzgesagt did a video a while back explaining that content copying was bad for their business model, that was before they join patreon. I give every month to them and I never donate besides this and wikipedia. So I’m betting they are making tons of $ through patreon.

jtolmar 7y ago

> Why have copyright at all? You need some amount of copy protection so that people/companies with large platforms can't immediately rip off independent authors and sell their work before the author's version can get any word of mouth. (Where "sell" probably means "distribute with ads" since there's no copy protection.) 4-5 years of copy protection would prevent this, and that's on the very safe end.

teddyh 7y ago
You’re assuming that we still want the “sell-with-ads” model to be the model to make money from producing works. I’m not sure this is what we want; we now see what ad-optimized media looks like.

Noos 7y ago

Why pay programmers at all? Your labor should be free too, and I'm sure we can make some awesome business models if you get paid five bucks an hour or less. You can go make money getting people to support you on patreon.

teddyh 7y ago
> Why pay programmers at all? Your labor should be free too No it shouldn’t, because labor is scarce.

ZoomZoomZoom 7y ago

I don't want my painting to end up on a cigarette pack or a garbage truck or NSBM album cover at least until I die.