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And the solution to broken copyright law is to ignore it, at the expense of working-class authors, rather than ... working on the law? You realize this undermi

And the solution to broken copyright law is to ignore it, at the expense of working-class authors, rather than ... working on the law? You realize this undermines the ability of our society to produce the actual written works that we're arguing so damn valuable that we can't abide locking them behind a paywall?

matheusmoreira 6y ago
> And the solution to broken copyright law is to ignore it Civil disobedience is a form of peaceful protest. > You realize this undermines the ability of our society to produce the actual written works Creators aren't going to stop. They'll find a way. The solution is to somehow get paid for the act of creating rather than the finished work. Patronage and crowdfunding could be the answer.
vertex-four 6y ago
People write for free constantly. We're doing it right now, Tumblr was absolutely full of freely available fiction, and there were plenty of stories and technical knowledge written and passed between people before copyright was even a concept in anyone's minds. The primary thing the copyright industry gets us in regards to writing is that some people can get paid doing things others will do for free, and a large body of advertising is created around the non-free works.
- stubish 6y ago
  If you stop paying people to write, the only people who write are those who can afford the time. Writing a novel can take years of your life. Books are not fungible, and some books you would want to read will never get written if the author cannot afford to write it.
  - vertex-four 6y ago
    Sure, but we get into a weird place if we try to argue that every thing that possibly might be written must be written - no copyright law is strong enough, we have a moral obligation to buy books we have no interest in, etc etc. So why is the current copyright system the exact correct system for getting people paid to write, where any stronger or weaker would be bad? I can think of at least a few other possible systems that would get people paid to write as well - maybe an entirely different set of people, so some things would get written that aren’t today and some things that would get written today aren’t under that system. How can we evidence that our current system works best?

matheusmoreira 6y ago

> And the solution to broken copyright law is to ignore it Civil disobedience is a form of peaceful protest. > You realize this undermines the ability of our society to produce the actual written works Creators aren't going to stop. They'll find a way. The solution is to somehow get paid for the act of creating rather than the finished work. Patronage and crowdfunding could be the answer.

vertex-four 6y ago

People write for free constantly. We're doing it right now, Tumblr was absolutely full of freely available fiction, and there were plenty of stories and technical knowledge written and passed between people before copyright was even a concept in anyone's minds. The primary thing the copyright industry gets us in regards to writing is that some people can get paid doing things others will do for free, and a large body of advertising is created around the non-free works.

stubish 6y ago
If you stop paying people to write, the only people who write are those who can afford the time. Writing a novel can take years of your life. Books are not fungible, and some books you would want to read will never get written if the author cannot afford to write it.
- vertex-four 6y ago
  Sure, but we get into a weird place if we try to argue that every thing that possibly might be written must be written - no copyright law is strong enough, we have a moral obligation to buy books we have no interest in, etc etc. So why is the current copyright system the exact correct system for getting people paid to write, where any stronger or weaker would be bad? I can think of at least a few other possible systems that would get people paid to write as well - maybe an entirely different set of people, so some things would get written that aren’t today and some things that would get written today aren’t under that system. How can we evidence that our current system works best?