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There needs to be ways ensuring that content remains a commodity and does not enable rent-seeking. Imagine where we would be today if each television station ha
by Pet_Ant 5y ago
There needs to be ways ensuring that content remains a commodity and does not enable rent-seeking. Imagine where we would be today if each television station had it's own antenna and encoding just to seek more profit.
- Spivak 5y agoWait what? Content has never been a commodity and copyright is by definition rent-seeking just without the negative connotations. You might mean content distribution but that's really never been a commodity either. Even though it sorta kinda feels like you can buy "cable" from lots of companies that's only because each company independently negotiated contracts for all their channels. Physical distribution -- B&N/Blockbuster/Record Stores (and OG DVD Netflix) is the closest thing you could call commodity content distribution. But we kinda ruined open internet distribution early early on with DRM and locked-down clients which put platform owners in a similar spot to cable companies and so here we are.
- colinmhayes 5y agoFacebook and Google have made content a commodity. That's the entire point of aggregators.
- xg15 5y ago> copyright is by definition rent-seeking just without the negative connotations > But we kinda ruined open internet distribution early early on with DRM and locked-down clients DRM is nothing more than an enforcement mechanism for existing copyright though. So that's a bit like saying "copyright is a great thing as long as it only exists on paper".