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Copyright is neither moral nor immoral. It simply gives people who create content the ability to exercise certain property rights over that content for a certai

Copyright is neither moral nor immoral. It simply gives people who create content the ability to exercise certain property rights over that content for a certain period of time. There would be nothing immoral about abolishing copyright, but if you did then you could be sure that a lot less people would be willing to spend years writing the books you enjoy reading, or millions of dollars creating the TV shows and movies you enjoy watching. Whether or not you think the existing copyright laws have exceeded their purpose is a completely different discussion, and one that is not at all related to this particular topic at all. Because the Internet Archive did not only violate copyright for content benefiting from whatever your opinion of excessive copyright is, they violated it for all the content they had.

som33 6y ago
>Copyright is neither moral nor immoral. Except you're wrong, idea's are not rivalrous goods. Imagine if someone copyrighted the alphabet and we had to pay $5 a word. Rent seeking puts a damper on global productivity by allowing people to take information hostage. It can also be used as a tool for censorship. Right now copyright is censoring culture and I'm watching videogame history being destroyed on the PC due to bs copyright and software licensing laws. We should have gotten full property rights transfer for software. It's allowed mass invasion of privacy and theft of software on a mass scale by PC game companies. You haven't been paying attention to how monopoly rights have been used or abused. http://www.free-culture.cc/ http://www.free-culture.cc/ https://www.lessig.org/books/ https://www.lessig.org/books/
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  As I said: > Whether or not you think the existing copyright laws have exceeded their purpose is a completely different discussion Bringing up another completely seperate category of abuse is again another completely different discussion, and completely not relevant to this one.
  - som33 6y ago
    You're clueless, it is directly relevant, you said "copyright laws are neither moral or immorral" which is a bs statement because every rule (which it is) has political consequences, you need a giant state to declare "some ideas are not sharable". AKA copyright is a cultural construct that evolved in one particular society at a particular point in history, not a natural law. So no, you don't get the idea of owning ideas is directly itself an attack on freedom itself, aka if you can claim you own ideas you can use violence against others because you believe in that idea. The problem you're not seeing is that it's impossible to enforce property rights for ideas while not infringing on basic human freedoms. Copyright is backdoor to get rid of property rights for the public by associating it with software/technology. The idea that we just need "good regulation" to stop the abuses, is bs, since the last 200 years of copyright has always seen its power and abuse expanded and not reduced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/media/File:Tom_Bell's_graph_showing_extension_of_U.S._copyright_term_over_time.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/... So you're the one making disingenuous arguments. Since our culture is literally being irrevocably destroyed and there's no way much culture during this period will be saved because of the lawlessness of the USA and general idiocy of its citizenry.
    - AmericanChopper 6y ago
      > You're clueless, it is directly relevant, you said "copyright laws are neither moral or immorral" I actually said that copyright itself is neither moral nor immoral, which is a completely different statement. Any particularly copyright law can be as immoral as you want it to be, but the idea that somebody can retain rights over content they create is not immoral. You could easily create a society that didn’t have such rights, but the outcome would certainly be much less content, and much more restrictions put on it. You complain about copyright destroying video games history, but copyright is the only reason that history exists to begin with. Your examples harmful copyright abuse are irrelevant first of all because they are not copyright able. The alphabet can not be copyrighted, and neither can an idea (that would be a patent, which is again a completely different thing). They are made even more irrelevant by the fact that such “harmful” applications of copyright are not relevant to this situation. The copyright in question is not of a word, or the alphabet, or an idea, or the work of some long dead author. The copyright in question here is entire recently released books. The idea that somebody who writes a book, or creates a movie, or a video game, can retain exclusive rights over its distribution for a certain period of time is not generally classified as copyright abuse. To characterize it that way is a very extreme, niche position.

som33 6y ago

>Copyright is neither moral nor immoral. Except you're wrong, idea's are not rivalrous goods. Imagine if someone copyrighted the alphabet and we had to pay $5 a word. Rent seeking puts a damper on global productivity by allowing people to take information hostage. It can also be used as a tool for censorship. Right now copyright is censoring culture and I'm watching videogame history being destroyed on the PC due to bs copyright and software licensing laws. We should have gotten full property rights transfer for software. It's allowed mass invasion of privacy and theft of software on a mass scale by PC game companies. You haven't been paying attention to how monopoly rights have been used or abused. http://www.free-culture.cc/ http://www.free-culture.cc/ https://www.lessig.org/books/ https://www.lessig.org/books/

AmericanChopper 6y ago
As I said: > Whether or not you think the existing copyright laws have exceeded their purpose is a completely different discussion Bringing up another completely seperate category of abuse is again another completely different discussion, and completely not relevant to this one.
- som33 6y ago
  You're clueless, it is directly relevant, you said "copyright laws are neither moral or immorral" which is a bs statement because every rule (which it is) has political consequences, you need a giant state to declare "some ideas are not sharable". AKA copyright is a cultural construct that evolved in one particular society at a particular point in history, not a natural law. So no, you don't get the idea of owning ideas is directly itself an attack on freedom itself, aka if you can claim you own ideas you can use violence against others because you believe in that idea. The problem you're not seeing is that it's impossible to enforce property rights for ideas while not infringing on basic human freedoms. Copyright is backdoor to get rid of property rights for the public by associating it with software/technology. The idea that we just need "good regulation" to stop the abuses, is bs, since the last 200 years of copyright has always seen its power and abuse expanded and not reduced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/media/File:Tom_Bell's_graph_showing_extension_of_U.S._copyright_term_over_time.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/... So you're the one making disingenuous arguments. Since our culture is literally being irrevocably destroyed and there's no way much culture during this period will be saved because of the lawlessness of the USA and general idiocy of its citizenry.
  - AmericanChopper 6y ago
    > You're clueless, it is directly relevant, you said "copyright laws are neither moral or immorral" I actually said that copyright itself is neither moral nor immoral, which is a completely different statement. Any particularly copyright law can be as immoral as you want it to be, but the idea that somebody can retain rights over content they create is not immoral. You could easily create a society that didn’t have such rights, but the outcome would certainly be much less content, and much more restrictions put on it. You complain about copyright destroying video games history, but copyright is the only reason that history exists to begin with. Your examples harmful copyright abuse are irrelevant first of all because they are not copyright able. The alphabet can not be copyrighted, and neither can an idea (that would be a patent, which is again a completely different thing). They are made even more irrelevant by the fact that such “harmful” applications of copyright are not relevant to this situation. The copyright in question is not of a word, or the alphabet, or an idea, or the work of some long dead author. The copyright in question here is entire recently released books. The idea that somebody who writes a book, or creates a movie, or a video game, can retain exclusive rights over its distribution for a certain period of time is not generally classified as copyright abuse. To characterize it that way is a very extreme, niche position.