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Is modern copyright even valuable? Except for brief moments in time (early music recording, early software sales, the recent iOS store, occasionally writers), c
by ynniv 15y ago
Is modern copyright even valuable? Except for brief moments in time (early music recording, early software sales, the recent iOS store, occasionally writers), copyright has mostly benefited the people who enforce it (the publishers) and not the people whose works are protected (the authors). I morally support compensating creators, but legal (and now criminal) copyright seems to have no benefit.
- muuh-gnu 15y ago> Is modern copyright even valuable? Is political censorship valuable to North Korean goverment? Probably yes, otherwise they wouldnt pursue it. Is is valuable to the population at large? We dont know, since the North Korean population was never directly asked. Theoretically, North Koreans might also consider it valuable, but probably not. The same way we dont know whether for-profit censorship (which copyright enforcement is) is beneficial to our population, since, similar to the North Koreans, we also never have been asked about it. Copyright has since the beginning been kept out of reach of direct democratic vote, so we'll never know whether the people consider it valuable to keep in its current form. Probably not.
- hxa7241 15y agoHere is a good quote for you: "Economic analysis has come up short of providing either theoretical or empirical grounds for assessing the overall effect of intellectual property law on economic welfare." -- 'The economic structure of intellectual property law'; Landes, Posner; 2003. (Conclusion, p422, s3.) Landes and Posner are the accepted orthodox authority on the subject, and even they are telling us that we do not even know if copyright is doing any good.