5 ms·

>Enabling creators to pay their bills by charging money for data will have serious consequences for society in the long term. < Grr, the idea of a society wher

>Enabling creators to pay their bills by charging money for data will have serious consequences for society in the long term. < Grr, the idea of a society where creators get paid a fair amount for their content just makes me so mad. Won't anyone think of the pirates?!

matheusmoreira 6y ago
I have absolutely zero problem with creators who make a Patreon and get paid for their work through patronage. That would work even without copyright. The problem is copyright, not creators getting paid. In order for creators to get paid via the copyright system, artificial scarcity of data is needed. In order to create artificial scarcity, people's computers must be compromised with DRM so that they won't be able to make and distribute unauthorized copies of works. Allowing anyone to compromise and own our computers by design and for any reason is a really bad idea and will probably lead to total worldwide surveillance.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  You're equating the existence of copyright as a principle/law and the existence of DRM as a technological means of enforcement. They are not the same thing at all. I could, physically, go drive my car at 100mph past a school, and nothing about the vehicle would prevent it. Everyone would rightly think me a dangerous idiot for doing it, and the police would probably arrest me, and I'd likely go to jail after being found guilty of motoring offences, but none of that requires the car itself to physically intervene. The likelihood of being observed, investigated, convicted and sentenced is, for most people, a sufficient deterrent even if they might otherwise be so cavalier. The strange thing about copyright is that unlike other "minor" crimes, copyright infringement is primarily treated as a civil matter in law. The state typically will not invest significant resources in investigating minor infringements or punishing those who break the law. It is left instead to the rightsholder to protect themselves, yet the legal system typically provides no cost-effective means of doing so, nor does it provide access to the investigative powers that police officers or other government officials would have in connection with many other types of illegal behaviour. The creative industries have fought back with technological measures like DRM and the related laws because, even though we all agree they are deeply flawed, they are also among the few somewhat effective tools that have been left to the legal rightsholders to protect themselves.
  - matheusmoreira 6y ago
    > You're equating the existence of copyright as a principle/law and the existence of DRM as a technological means of enforcement. They are not the same thing at all. I'm not comparing copyright and DRM. I'm saying DRM is a consequence of copyright. As you noted, technology is the only way rightsholders can effectively protect their property. Since the copyright industry is worth many billions of dollars, they have more than enough money and influence to make their DRM technology a reality. The computer industry is going to back them up. The result will be computers that obey them, not us. Computers that only run the software that they approve, software that does their bidding. The source of this evil is copyright. There should be no imaginary property to protect in the first place.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kelnos 6y ago
I think the parent's point was that paying someone to copy and transfer bits of data from one computer to another is weird and impossible to fully control and enforce. Paying someone for the act of creation itself is reasonable. While the current system uses the former as a sort of proxy for the latter, that's not the only current system, and it comes with some really bad side-consequences, like ever-expanding copyright terms, corporations as gatekeepers to content (who often end up profiting far more than the actual creator), and DRM leading to forever-locked/disappearing creative works.

matheusmoreira 6y ago

I have absolutely zero problem with creators who make a Patreon and get paid for their work through patronage. That would work even without copyright. The problem is copyright, not creators getting paid. In order for creators to get paid via the copyright system, artificial scarcity of data is needed. In order to create artificial scarcity, people's computers must be compromised with DRM so that they won't be able to make and distribute unauthorized copies of works. Allowing anyone to compromise and own our computers by design and for any reason is a really bad idea and will probably lead to total worldwide surveillance.

Silhouette 6y ago
You're equating the existence of copyright as a principle/law and the existence of DRM as a technological means of enforcement. They are not the same thing at all. I could, physically, go drive my car at 100mph past a school, and nothing about the vehicle would prevent it. Everyone would rightly think me a dangerous idiot for doing it, and the police would probably arrest me, and I'd likely go to jail after being found guilty of motoring offences, but none of that requires the car itself to physically intervene. The likelihood of being observed, investigated, convicted and sentenced is, for most people, a sufficient deterrent even if they might otherwise be so cavalier. The strange thing about copyright is that unlike other "minor" crimes, copyright infringement is primarily treated as a civil matter in law. The state typically will not invest significant resources in investigating minor infringements or punishing those who break the law. It is left instead to the rightsholder to protect themselves, yet the legal system typically provides no cost-effective means of doing so, nor does it provide access to the investigative powers that police officers or other government officials would have in connection with many other types of illegal behaviour. The creative industries have fought back with technological measures like DRM and the related laws because, even though we all agree they are deeply flawed, they are also among the few somewhat effective tools that have been left to the legal rightsholders to protect themselves.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  > You're equating the existence of copyright as a principle/law and the existence of DRM as a technological means of enforcement. They are not the same thing at all. I'm not comparing copyright and DRM. I'm saying DRM is a consequence of copyright. As you noted, technology is the only way rightsholders can effectively protect their property. Since the copyright industry is worth many billions of dollars, they have more than enough money and influence to make their DRM technology a reality. The computer industry is going to back them up. The result will be computers that obey them, not us. Computers that only run the software that they approve, software that does their bidding. The source of this evil is copyright. There should be no imaginary property to protect in the first place.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

kelnos 6y ago

I think the parent's point was that paying someone to copy and transfer bits of data from one computer to another is weird and impossible to fully control and enforce. Paying someone for the act of creation itself is reasonable. While the current system uses the former as a sort of proxy for the latter, that's not the only current system, and it comes with some really bad side-consequences, like ever-expanding copyright terms, corporations as gatekeepers to content (who often end up profiting far more than the actual creator), and DRM leading to forever-locked/disappearing creative works.