4 ms·

> It's the 21st century and copyright is absolute nonsense. This is an awful, terrible take. We know that intellectual property is much more artificial than

by SR2Z 5y ago

> It's the 21st century and copyright is absolute nonsense. This is an awful, terrible take. We know that intellectual property is much more artificial than pretty much every other type of property right, but we still want governments to enforce copyright and other IP law because it's a good way to make sure that people have a financial incentive to be creative or do R&D. Copyright needs reform (and many types of DRM need to be banned), but just because you'd gladly sacrifice thousands of industries (how many jobs is that? millions?) to have some ideological purity, it doesn't mean that such a decision would be broadly supported or even in the best interest of society as a whole. Source: work in copyright, have seen firsthand how shitty IP protections can destroy businesses that produce excellent content.

matheusmoreira 5y ago
> we still want governments to enforce copyright and other IP law because it's a good way to make sure that people have a financial incentive to be creative or do R&D. I have to believe that there must be alternatives. We need better post-copyright business models. This artificial scarcity thing is simply not going to work anymore. At least not without sacrificing everything about computers that make them special. Maybe crowdfunding where creation is treated as an investment. Maybe patronage where it's treated as a subscription. I really don't know for sure. I just know it can't go on like this.
- snowwrestler 5y ago
  Without copyright you cannot write contracts about creative works, because there is no value to exchange. Creative works without legal protection are free and therefore cannot be investments or subscriptions. Just like I can’t get people to invest in or subscribe to the air in front of my house. I think you are headed down the wrong path here. You don’t need to eliminate intellectual property to preserve general purpose computing. You just have to change the guardrails on how IP enforcement works. They’ve changed many times and they can change again. And it’s way more achievable than ripping copyright out of society entirely.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > Without copyright you cannot write contracts about creative works, because there is no value to exchange. There is no value even with copyright. Its value is made up, created via artificial scarcity whose days became numbered the minute computers were invented. There's no point in perpetuating this system. The true value is the labor of creators. Data is abundant. Creators are rare. They need to somehow get paid for the labor of creating rather than copies of the finished product. > Creative works without legal protection are free and therefore cannot be investments or subscriptions. We can invest in the creator. Paying them up front like investments, or continuously every month like patronage. > You don’t need to eliminate intellectual property to preserve general purpose computing. You just have to change the guardrails on how IP enforcement works. I'm not convinced the copyright industry will ever stop. The situation gets worse every year. How is this supposed to change with copyright holders still around? Their lobbying power is immense. > They’ve changed many times and they can change again. They've changed for the worse. How many times has copyright duration been extended? How many of our rights eroded? Fair use rights? Public domain rights? They mean nothing anymore. When was the last time some work entered the public domain?
    - snowwrestler 5y ago
      Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain 24 days ago. And value has a legal meaning in the context of contracts, regardless of how you personally feel about copyright. You’re convinced that copyright industry has tremendous power; but apparently you are also convinced that the only way forward is to 100% defeat them. I’m just saying there may be more options than the extremes of total fail / total win. Also, your ideas about investing in creators are orthogonal to copyright; you can do all of that today and copyright will neither help nor hinder. Commissioning creative works is great and in fact predates copyright.
    - SR2Z 5y ago
      > There is no value even with copyright. Its value is made up, And I'm sure that's why Disney makes billions of dollars selling movie tickets every year, right? The moviegoers who drag themselves out of the house just can't be trusted to determine value? Yeah, the value is determined by scarcity. That's the point of IP law. Otherwise the value would be zero, and these movies would not be made because they'd instantly get copied ad infinitum and anyone proposing to spend more than fun money on one would be shunned. > The true value is the labor of creators. No, and this sounds an awful lot like the Labor Theory of Value. The value of IP is what people are willing to pay for it, same as any other market good. Comic book franchises were basically worthless until Disney and WB blew them up, for example. It's rare for any media to succeed without marketing. Value requires far more than just creators and it's absurd to pretend otherwise. > We can invest in the creator. Paying them up front like investments, or continuously every month like patronage. There are far, far more creators than there could ever be works of great cultural significance, and the creators building valuable IP are compensated for it far more than they would under any other practical scheme. > I'm not convinced the copyright industry will ever stop. The situation gets worse every year. How is this supposed to change with copyright holders still around? Their lobbying power is immense. By passing laws. It's literally that simple. You can replace "copyright holders" with "oil barons" or "AT&T" and see how silly that sounds. Copyright, unfortunately, is at the very bottom of everyone's list of priorities, and for obvious reasons. You ask "how is this supposed to change?" as if the situation is unbearable, but it's really not. A big reason for why nobody cares is that your average consumer now can consume pretty much everything more cheaply than ever before - fully legally. And so what if Google makes an obvious and stupid mistake with Google Drive every now and then? They'll generally fix it pretty quickly, and there are a million similarly-priced competitors that don't do this if you're not satisfied with the quality of the (free) service. > When was the last time some work entered the public domain? Given that copyright is automatic and requires no registration, there's a steady flow of works entering the public domain. OG Mickey Mouse lost copyright a few years ago, IIRC. tl;dr there's a gigantic jump from "copyright protections are frequently onerous and stupid" to "we should abolish IP law." You are giving evidence for the first and acting like it justifies the second.
scrollaway 5y ago
Since you work in copyright, you've probably also seen firsthand how overzealous copyright enforcement can destroy businesses that produce excellent content. Frankly, your bias shows and you might have a case of EverythingLooksLikeANailitis. The copyright industry may be "protecting" jobs in some ways, but it's also destroying jobs in others. It's halting progress in so many cases. You also need to look at who, in practice, is protected by copyright. The grand majority of the money being protected is that of big, rich industries. Even when the Little Guys are protected, it's usually by a bigger company that gets the way bigger cut from it (eg. stock photo and music artists). A world without copyright is a different one. IP lawyers and copyright enforcers might be out of a job, but it doesn't mean it'd be one without music or art. We'd find a different way to make it work, hopefully a way that doesn't drive the next Aaron Swartz to suicide.
- SR2Z 5y ago
  > Frankly, your bias shows and you might have a case of EverythingLooksLikeANailitis. The copyright industry may be "protecting" jobs in some ways, but it's also destroying jobs in others. It's halting progress in so many cases. No, I have a case of "I'veSeenWhatHappensWhenCopyrightIsIgnoreditis." A blind man could see that copyright needs serious reforms, but it's absurd to pretend like other systems produce the diversity and scale of works that the current one does. > You also need to look at who, in practice, is protected by copyright. Believe it or not, I do every day. It's crazy that your solution to "small creators get ripped off" is "make ripping them off legal." The actual solution is to reduce the cost of enforcing copyright - right now it takes a court case, which obviously is a nonstarter for anyone who isn't making bank off of their copyright. > A world without copyright is a different one. IP lawyers and copyright enforcers might be out of a job, but it doesn't mean it'd be one without music or art. As long as there are humans, there'll be art and music. What there won't be are people who make a living off of it, and we'll rewind to like 300 years ago when the only people who could afford to create art were born rich or willing to find a rich person who'd individually sponsor them. When people have more time to spend on art, they produce better art. I really hope that isn't controversial. > We'd find a different way to make it work, hopefully a way that doesn't drive the next Aaron Swartz to suicide. I'd really rather we didn't use a deeply individual instance of suicide as a political talking point. It's kind of tasteless and you can find plenty of examples of suicide for virtually any problem.
ncmncm 5y ago
Copyright is spelled out in the US Constitution as distinct from property, for clear and well-justified reasons. Every move to make copyright more like property makes copyright less useful for its designated purposes, and more a drain on the public interest. But copyright holders are continually pressing courts and legislators to try make copyright law subservient to property law, and succeeding, incrementally, so case law on copyright has become hard to distinguish from property law. Nowadays copyright lawyers even call themselves "Intellectual Property" lawyers, deliberately trying to obscure the difference. The consequence is that Copyright, which was once a benefit for the public interest, is now a benefit only for entrenched media companies. Eliminating it would once have been taking away from the public. Now, eliminating it would benefit the public. But, since copyright is now a matter of international treaty, we no longer have, even in principle, the power to eliminate it: treaties override the Constitution.

by SR2Z 5y ago

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> we still want governments to enforce copyright and other IP law because it's a good way to make sure that people have a financial incentive to be creative or do R&D. I have to believe that there must be alternatives. We need better post-copyright business models. This artificial scarcity thing is simply not going to work anymore. At least not without sacrificing everything about computers that make them special. Maybe crowdfunding where creation is treated as an investment. Maybe patronage where it's treated as a subscription. I really don't know for sure. I just know it can't go on like this.

snowwrestler 5y ago
Without copyright you cannot write contracts about creative works, because there is no value to exchange. Creative works without legal protection are free and therefore cannot be investments or subscriptions. Just like I can’t get people to invest in or subscribe to the air in front of my house. I think you are headed down the wrong path here. You don’t need to eliminate intellectual property to preserve general purpose computing. You just have to change the guardrails on how IP enforcement works. They’ve changed many times and they can change again. And it’s way more achievable than ripping copyright out of society entirely.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > Without copyright you cannot write contracts about creative works, because there is no value to exchange. There is no value even with copyright. Its value is made up, created via artificial scarcity whose days became numbered the minute computers were invented. There's no point in perpetuating this system. The true value is the labor of creators. Data is abundant. Creators are rare. They need to somehow get paid for the labor of creating rather than copies of the finished product. > Creative works without legal protection are free and therefore cannot be investments or subscriptions. We can invest in the creator. Paying them up front like investments, or continuously every month like patronage. > You don’t need to eliminate intellectual property to preserve general purpose computing. You just have to change the guardrails on how IP enforcement works. I'm not convinced the copyright industry will ever stop. The situation gets worse every year. How is this supposed to change with copyright holders still around? Their lobbying power is immense. > They’ve changed many times and they can change again. They've changed for the worse. How many times has copyright duration been extended? How many of our rights eroded? Fair use rights? Public domain rights? They mean nothing anymore. When was the last time some work entered the public domain?
  - snowwrestler 5y ago
    Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain 24 days ago. And value has a legal meaning in the context of contracts, regardless of how you personally feel about copyright. You’re convinced that copyright industry has tremendous power; but apparently you are also convinced that the only way forward is to 100% defeat them. I’m just saying there may be more options than the extremes of total fail / total win. Also, your ideas about investing in creators are orthogonal to copyright; you can do all of that today and copyright will neither help nor hinder. Commissioning creative works is great and in fact predates copyright.
  - SR2Z 5y ago
    > There is no value even with copyright. Its value is made up, And I'm sure that's why Disney makes billions of dollars selling movie tickets every year, right? The moviegoers who drag themselves out of the house just can't be trusted to determine value? Yeah, the value is determined by scarcity. That's the point of IP law. Otherwise the value would be zero, and these movies would not be made because they'd instantly get copied ad infinitum and anyone proposing to spend more than fun money on one would be shunned. > The true value is the labor of creators. No, and this sounds an awful lot like the Labor Theory of Value. The value of IP is what people are willing to pay for it, same as any other market good. Comic book franchises were basically worthless until Disney and WB blew them up, for example. It's rare for any media to succeed without marketing. Value requires far more than just creators and it's absurd to pretend otherwise. > We can invest in the creator. Paying them up front like investments, or continuously every month like patronage. There are far, far more creators than there could ever be works of great cultural significance, and the creators building valuable IP are compensated for it far more than they would under any other practical scheme. > I'm not convinced the copyright industry will ever stop. The situation gets worse every year. How is this supposed to change with copyright holders still around? Their lobbying power is immense. By passing laws. It's literally that simple. You can replace "copyright holders" with "oil barons" or "AT&T" and see how silly that sounds. Copyright, unfortunately, is at the very bottom of everyone's list of priorities, and for obvious reasons. You ask "how is this supposed to change?" as if the situation is unbearable, but it's really not. A big reason for why nobody cares is that your average consumer now can consume pretty much everything more cheaply than ever before - fully legally. And so what if Google makes an obvious and stupid mistake with Google Drive every now and then? They'll generally fix it pretty quickly, and there are a million similarly-priced competitors that don't do this if you're not satisfied with the quality of the (free) service. > When was the last time some work entered the public domain? Given that copyright is automatic and requires no registration, there's a steady flow of works entering the public domain. OG Mickey Mouse lost copyright a few years ago, IIRC. tl;dr there's a gigantic jump from "copyright protections are frequently onerous and stupid" to "we should abolish IP law." You are giving evidence for the first and acting like it justifies the second.

scrollaway 5y ago

Since you work in copyright, you've probably also seen firsthand how overzealous copyright enforcement can destroy businesses that produce excellent content. Frankly, your bias shows and you might have a case of EverythingLooksLikeANailitis. The copyright industry may be "protecting" jobs in some ways, but it's also destroying jobs in others. It's halting progress in so many cases. You also need to look at who, in practice, is protected by copyright. The grand majority of the money being protected is that of big, rich industries. Even when the Little Guys are protected, it's usually by a bigger company that gets the way bigger cut from it (eg. stock photo and music artists). A world without copyright is a different one. IP lawyers and copyright enforcers might be out of a job, but it doesn't mean it'd be one without music or art. We'd find a different way to make it work, hopefully a way that doesn't drive the next Aaron Swartz to suicide.

SR2Z 5y ago
> Frankly, your bias shows and you might have a case of EverythingLooksLikeANailitis. The copyright industry may be "protecting" jobs in some ways, but it's also destroying jobs in others. It's halting progress in so many cases. No, I have a case of "I'veSeenWhatHappensWhenCopyrightIsIgnoreditis." A blind man could see that copyright needs serious reforms, but it's absurd to pretend like other systems produce the diversity and scale of works that the current one does. > You also need to look at who, in practice, is protected by copyright. Believe it or not, I do every day. It's crazy that your solution to "small creators get ripped off" is "make ripping them off legal." The actual solution is to reduce the cost of enforcing copyright - right now it takes a court case, which obviously is a nonstarter for anyone who isn't making bank off of their copyright. > A world without copyright is a different one. IP lawyers and copyright enforcers might be out of a job, but it doesn't mean it'd be one without music or art. As long as there are humans, there'll be art and music. What there won't be are people who make a living off of it, and we'll rewind to like 300 years ago when the only people who could afford to create art were born rich or willing to find a rich person who'd individually sponsor them. When people have more time to spend on art, they produce better art. I really hope that isn't controversial. > We'd find a different way to make it work, hopefully a way that doesn't drive the next Aaron Swartz to suicide. I'd really rather we didn't use a deeply individual instance of suicide as a political talking point. It's kind of tasteless and you can find plenty of examples of suicide for virtually any problem.

ncmncm 5y ago

Copyright is spelled out in the US Constitution as distinct from property, for clear and well-justified reasons. Every move to make copyright more like property makes copyright less useful for its designated purposes, and more a drain on the public interest. But copyright holders are continually pressing courts and legislators to try make copyright law subservient to property law, and succeeding, incrementally, so case law on copyright has become hard to distinguish from property law. Nowadays copyright lawyers even call themselves "Intellectual Property" lawyers, deliberately trying to obscure the difference. The consequence is that Copyright, which was once a benefit for the public interest, is now a benefit only for entrenched media companies. Eliminating it would once have been taking away from the public. Now, eliminating it would benefit the public. But, since copyright is now a matter of international treaty, we no longer have, even in principle, the power to eliminate it: treaties override the Constitution.