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We still don't understand digital ownership and the copyright laws are lagging far behind against the consumers. Before Internet, once you created something, t

by Qahlel 6y ago

We still don't understand digital ownership and the copyright laws are lagging far behind against the consumers. Before Internet, once you created something, the only way for someone to steal your "work" was to steal/copy an actual thing. In the digital age, everything is just ones and zeros. Law makers are clueless to what awaits us.

tzs 6y ago
That's arguably backwards. See Breyer's article "The Uneasy Case for Copyright: A Study of Copyright in Books, Photocopies, and Computer Programs" [1], where he made the argument in 1970 that because copying was relatively slow and expensive, and most works made most of the money in a limited window after release, there really wasn't much need for long term copyright protection. By the time copiers could make and distribute copies there wouldn't be enough of the market left for them to get back their costs. As copying technology becomes cheaper and faster the case for copyright gets stronger, at least if we are going to stick with the approach we currently use. That approach is based on the idea that a free market is an optimal way to determine the allocation of resources and we should use it whenever we can. The mathematical economists can actually prove that is true in markets for goods that have certain properties. Copyright law (and patent law) artificially imbue certain intellectual works with those properties. There are, of course, other systems we could use. One approach would be to treat these works as a public good. Have some tax funded government agency give out grants to authors and film makers and so on to make new works, and their output is public domain. Some problems with that approach include determining the budget, and determining what works get funded. It's hard to see either of those not getting politicized out the wazoo. Another possibility is similar, except you give out the grants after works are created. An author creates something, releases it to the public domain, and the agency determines how many people are actually reading/viewing/etc the work. Then pay the creator based on that. Another approach is similar, but without taxes. Creators can be funded by charitable foundations, or by directly soliciting donations from the public. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uneasy_Case_for_Copyright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uneasy_Case_for_Copyright
- nybble41 6y ago
  The argument that this book is making (albeit not intentionally) is that copyright gets more and more expensive over time. As copying becomes easier you need more and more intrusive regulations with increasingly draconian punishments to achieve the same effect. This is not an argument in favor of stronger copyrights; it is an argument that copyright is the wrong approach. It doesn't scale. There was a time where it was irrelevant because copying was too difficult to permit mass distribution. Once copying started to become easier it "worked" for a while, because copying still required significant effort and specialized equipment. It pretty much stopped working altogether—i.e., even imperfect enforcement costs society far more than it gains by subsidizing the creation of new creative works—once the effort became trivial and the equipment ubiquitous. It's long past time to let it go. > That approach is based on the idea that a free market is an optimal way to determine the allocation of resources and we should use it whenever we can. While "applying the free market to creative works" is a common justification for copyright, in fact the opposite is true. Instead of allowing the free market to operate in the labor of creating new works and the distribution of new and existing works we artificially restrict distribution to subsidize labor. Both areas suffer from misallocation of resources as a result. We waste huge amounts of labor creating minor variations on existing themes and (inefficiently) distributing them when what we already had would have been perfectly adequate if only we were allowed to distribute it freely.
- ketzu 6y ago
  That's a really interesting topic. I wish there was more... realistic discussion about those things. I remember 10 years ago, when the pirate party was hyping up, there were a few propositions of basically a tax based system: remove copyright, but add a 10€ entertainment tax. It felt unrealistic to me to replace a multi billion dollar industry with 80million/year. Digital objects might have nearly zero reproduction cost, but producing the art still costs money. Splitting the cost of a single 320$mio movie on 8bil people, still costs everyone 4cents. In a similar veine the limitations for artists to monetize their money and rely on others: artist could market directly to consumers instead of having advertisers! But that would mostly select for people that are good at advertising themselves, what morphed to influencers.

by Qahlel 6y ago

tzs 6y ago

That's arguably backwards. See Breyer's article "The Uneasy Case for Copyright: A Study of Copyright in Books, Photocopies, and Computer Programs" [1], where he made the argument in 1970 that because copying was relatively slow and expensive, and most works made most of the money in a limited window after release, there really wasn't much need for long term copyright protection. By the time copiers could make and distribute copies there wouldn't be enough of the market left for them to get back their costs. As copying technology becomes cheaper and faster the case for copyright gets stronger, at least if we are going to stick with the approach we currently use. That approach is based on the idea that a free market is an optimal way to determine the allocation of resources and we should use it whenever we can. The mathematical economists can actually prove that is true in markets for goods that have certain properties. Copyright law (and patent law) artificially imbue certain intellectual works with those properties. There are, of course, other systems we could use. One approach would be to treat these works as a public good. Have some tax funded government agency give out grants to authors and film makers and so on to make new works, and their output is public domain. Some problems with that approach include determining the budget, and determining what works get funded. It's hard to see either of those not getting politicized out the wazoo. Another possibility is similar, except you give out the grants after works are created. An author creates something, releases it to the public domain, and the agency determines how many people are actually reading/viewing/etc the work. Then pay the creator based on that. Another approach is similar, but without taxes. Creators can be funded by charitable foundations, or by directly soliciting donations from the public. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uneasy_Case_for_Copyright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uneasy_Case_for_Copyright

nybble41 6y ago
The argument that this book is making (albeit not intentionally) is that copyright gets more and more expensive over time. As copying becomes easier you need more and more intrusive regulations with increasingly draconian punishments to achieve the same effect. This is not an argument in favor of stronger copyrights; it is an argument that copyright is the wrong approach. It doesn't scale. There was a time where it was irrelevant because copying was too difficult to permit mass distribution. Once copying started to become easier it "worked" for a while, because copying still required significant effort and specialized equipment. It pretty much stopped working altogether—i.e., even imperfect enforcement costs society far more than it gains by subsidizing the creation of new creative works—once the effort became trivial and the equipment ubiquitous. It's long past time to let it go. > That approach is based on the idea that a free market is an optimal way to determine the allocation of resources and we should use it whenever we can. While "applying the free market to creative works" is a common justification for copyright, in fact the opposite is true. Instead of allowing the free market to operate in the labor of creating new works and the distribution of new and existing works we artificially restrict distribution to subsidize labor. Both areas suffer from misallocation of resources as a result. We waste huge amounts of labor creating minor variations on existing themes and (inefficiently) distributing them when what we already had would have been perfectly adequate if only we were allowed to distribute it freely.
ketzu 6y ago
That's a really interesting topic. I wish there was more... realistic discussion about those things. I remember 10 years ago, when the pirate party was hyping up, there were a few propositions of basically a tax based system: remove copyright, but add a 10€ entertainment tax. It felt unrealistic to me to replace a multi billion dollar industry with 80million/year. Digital objects might have nearly zero reproduction cost, but producing the art still costs money. Splitting the cost of a single 320$mio movie on 8bil people, still costs everyone 4cents. In a similar veine the limitations for artists to monetize their money and rely on others: artist could market directly to consumers instead of having advertisers! But that would mostly select for people that are good at advertising themselves, what morphed to influencers.