9 ms·

Any reason to think being creative in general is somehow easier for people than before? Whatever solution you offer should also apply to the base case which is

Any reason to think being creative in general is somehow easier for people than before? Whatever solution you offer should also apply to the base case which is writing a story or a song, both of which are “cheap” in terms of required tools and yet extremely difficult for most people to do well. So maybe we don’t want to discourage the creators just yet?

caconym_ 4y ago
+1 People don't seem to consider what it would be like for authors (and similar) if copyright disappeared overnight: just as quickly, their work will be published and distributed by for-profit entities who can still turn a profit on it but don't have to give them a dime. Congratulations, you've made it impossible to make a living---or even part of one---as an author, except as an employee of a corporation that also controls distribution (e.g. your Disneys, your HBOs, and so on). I don't want to live in a world where the importance of storytelling [in media] is marginalized even further than it already is. A lot of people seem to have a "how hard could it be?" attitude toward it; the answer is, really fucking hard.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  > People don't seem to consider what it would be like for authors (and similar) if copyright disappeared overnight We know very well what things were like pre-copyright. People still came up with compelling stories. Creativity flourished. Of course we've seen an increase since then, but that's the effect of industrialization and overall prosperity not copyright per se. > Congratulations, you've made it impossible to make a living---or even part of one---as an author The success of distributed patronage platforms like Kickstarter is a very real challenge to this assumption. People are in fact making a living by producing content that can be freely copied and distributed. Meanwhile, the average self-proclaimed author sees their content languishing in utter obscurity. This can hardly be called a "benefit" of copyright.
  - caconym_ 4y ago
    > We know very well what things were like pre-copyright. People still came up with compelling stories. Creativity flourished. Of course we've seen an increase since then, but that's the effect of industrialization and overall prosperity not copyright per se. Do you think differences in how stories were copied and distributed "then" vs. today might have some bearing on the question of whether the absence of copyright "then" implies that authors don't benefit from it today? For instance, in the year 1400 AD, the cost of reproducing a written work of any significant length for mass distribution was beyond exorbitant. Today, it is essentially zero. > The success of distributed patronage platforms like Kickstarter is a very real challenge to this assumption. People are in fact making a living by producing content that can be freely copied and distributed. If copyright is done away with, making money on works before they're released to the public might indeed be the only way for independent authors to make money. Right now it's an alternative to self-pub that's really only available to authors who already have a large established following, e.g. Brandon Sanderson; if people can just wait for you to finish and get the work for free, I doubt they're going to put money up front before you've even finished it unless they're already big fans of your work. So---in short---no, I don't think the Kickstarter model will protect most independent authors from the effects of a dissolution of copyright law. But I welcome any challenges to the above reasoning. > Meanwhile, the average self-proclaimed author sees their content languishing in utter obscurity. This can hardly be called a "benefit" of copyright. What's the relevance of this bitter little nugget? Somebody who has written something is perfectly free to release it to the public domain if they like, and indeed many authors do just that. They are not bound to hold onto exclusive rights to their work just because copyright grants those rights by default.
    - somenameforme 4y ago
      Twitch is a reasonable argument to the contrary. You can watch Twitch completely for free with 0 impairment whatsoever to your experience (so long as at least have an ad-blocker), yet there are vast numbers of people making a living streaming, with a small chunk even becoming millionaires from it all, largely from people donating a few bucks at a time. Like you're saying there's always a big get bigger type phenomena, but that's an issue everybody has to deal with regardless of the system. And examples like Richard Bachman [1] would suggest its deterministically surmountable. There are also countless other examples of things like DRM free products selling just fine in spite of the fact you can get a byte identical copy for free in about 2 seconds with a torrent. The point I make with this is that people are willing to part with more than enough money for people to make a living off of, even when they are not coerced into doing so. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bachman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bachman
- TheDong 4y ago
  Free software / open source licenses have effectively made copyright disappear for open source code. Red Hat certainly does package up a large collection of open source work and sell support for it, but that has not caused authors of open source software to despair and quit writing code. It is not common for a commercial entity to republish open source software, and Red Hat is an exception. Sure, there are a vast number of open source developers who do it on the side, or are not compensated... but that is also true of professions where copyright remains. Most authors, most artists, they write or draw on the side, post their work to substack or twitter or deviant art or such, and never see a dime. I think open source software is a good example of what happens when you get rid of copyright - people still feel ownership for what they make, people are still creative, and a tiny fraction of people manage to make a profit off their passion projects.
  - ssalazar 4y ago
    Copyleft / GPL licenses require copyright law to have any threat of enforcement. Otherwise anyone could just ignore the terms of a copyleft license and use open source under any terms they wish.
  - caconym_ 4y ago
    > Free software / open source licenses have effectively made copyright disappear for open source code. [...] > I think open source software is a good example of what happens when you get rid of copyright - people still feel ownership for what they make [...] I think this is a quite a stretch given the prominence of copyright in popular open source licenses, including (for example) the extremely popular and permissive MIT license. You can copy it, modify it, distribute it, etc., but I still own the copyright, and you still have to give me credit for the initial development. I can choose whatever license I want, which may or may not impose restrictions on who can use my code in derivative works, etc., and how. In a very real sense, I do own the FOSS software I've released to the world. If legal codification of that ownership isn't important to open source developers, why are so many pixels spent discussing it?
    - TheDong 4y ago
- landryraccoon 4y ago
  I think there's middle ground between "throw away all copyright protections" and "throw copyright infringers into prison for years". I'm more inclined toward leniency than the draconian laws we have now. I mean, 95 years of copyright protection? Is society really going to be destroyed if Disney has to release some of their IP under creative commons after 30 years instead? I doubt it.
  - caconym_ 4y ago
    I don't really disagree with any of this. Big business has corrupted the modern implementation of copyright law (e.g. erosion of fair use) and something should be done to turn it back in favor of independent creators. Of course, big money runs everything, so that probably isn't going to happen.
- mattnewton 4y ago
  We ran that experiment of dramatically shorter copyright terms, and it produced much of the culture you know and love before 1975. Copyright has been extended in 1976 and then again in 1998 mostly at the behest of rent seeking corporations who bought the culture after it’s creation and after paying the authors handsomely for it. Calling Disney’s business “marginalized” seems ridiculous to me?
  - caconym_ 4y ago
    See my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31688954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31688954 I'm advocating for copyright from the perspective of independent creators, not big media conglomerates. Additionally, my comment is (explicitly, if you read closely) addressing the case of copyright being completely dissolved, which---as crazy as this seems---is an idea some people apparently support. You need look no further than this thread to prove this to yourself. I am not necessarily against shorter copyright terms. Honestly, since the main reason I support copyright is because it protects independent creators' rights to their own work, I would be totally fine with completely striking the postmortem copyright period for non-corporate authors (certainly, 70 years is insane) and cutting the pseudonymous/corporate terms in half.
    - mattnewton 4y ago
      Then I think we are in violent agreement. People who say “copyright has gotten out of control” or “is the cost worth it to society” largely are complaining about the current state of copyright where it lasts generations in my experience. Nobody hates the creator of culture they love, the hate the lawyers strangling anyone’s ability to participate in that culture in any way other than as a consumer. If we turned back the clock to 1975 levels of protection, we would get a public domain again which is good for creators, and creators would still have long periods to profit off their labor. The next Disney could be born as the first Disney was, by remixing the rich public domain. Of course that wouldn’t be good for the current disney monopoly and so it’s unlikely to happen.
svachalek 4y ago
I hate to say it but I think society is pretty full up on creativity these days. If the richest 1000 musicians stopped composing, would there be no music? Would it be worse than what we have now?
- mauvehaus 4y ago
  On the basis of what's on the radio these days, I'd say that if the richest 1000 musicians quit composing, it might be a huge win.
- bruce511 4y ago
  >> Would it be worse than what we have now? Point of view is everything. From at least one point of view the answer is yes. Say I'm a small unsigned singer/songwriter, grinding along looking for a break. I write one good song. Elvis hears my song, and is free to just perform it himself. No copyright, no payment to me. His release is a smash hit, making him millions. His performance of the song contributes a lot to his success, but the song itself is valuable too. Of course elvis is signed by a record label, who pays him. The other record label buys one CD, and copies it (as they are entitled to do - no copyright remember.) they make millions selling it cheap (no need to spend on artists or marketing.) In fact they have a chain of stores where you can by any CD ever at half price. So the real winner here is the person who sells to the customer, and pays not a penny upstream. Musicians and song writers and audience builders upstream all work in construction doing their day job, and the cream of that crop can't afford to spend much time on creating. Their secret sauce is lost, and we are all poorer because of that. Which personally, for me, sounds like a much worse system.
_carbyau_ 4y ago
Honestly? I do think that video and song writers are overrated for different reasons. Movies. It isn't that they aren't worth what people pay to watch. But after ... say three to five years at most, it HAS entered Public Domain in a practical sense - just not legally... A more fun way to measure it, once you can stop using [spoiler alert] in a public forum about a movie, it is in the Public Domain. Why a shorter period of time now? Availability. In the 1930's seeing a movie was tricky business compared to streaming on every device any time. Nowadays, after three years, anyone who really wants to see your movie has had sufficient time to do so. Song Writers. Have you seen some of the lyrics they come up with? Teen Spirit for example. These are not literary masterpieces. But the performance is key. Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" did ok with her own performances, but blasted out of the park when Whitney Houston covered it. Yet Dolly made money for a song that had been out for 20 years? Damn, that's a good racquet if you have the connections - because song writing talent is only 5% of this equation. The performance, publicity around the movie etc etc made that happen. As for - "but it will make it hard for creators to make money" Yes, the future will be different. Not all people will be able to make money from art. But a large chunk of this of down to democratisation of tools. Just because you too have an Apple laptop and Garageband doesn't mean you should be able to make money. Ultimately, all the people wanting to make big $ out of music are looking at the 60's-2000's time of music where corporations milked the scale of selling copies of music rather than performances. Now that bubble has popped. Will your song be a masterpiece in a gallery earning you a lifetime of riches? Likely not. But that is the same for most painters in history.
TheDong 4y ago
Do you think open source code is worse off for the fact that copyright has been removed (via the various licenses, all of which reduce copyright's restrictions)? In my mind, open source code has been an excellent experiment showing that eschewing copyright doesn't mean people are less creative. Certainly, I've seen more creative open source code than I've seen creative proprietary code. Similarly, there are huge swathes of fanfiction out there which are incredible pieces of creative writing which are not charged for, are not created for commercial interest, and while technically copyrighted, the author may not even realize that. There are masses of people producing tiktok videos and spotify music for an audience, with no explicit expectation of copyright protection. People clearly want attribution, not control to the point where they can say that their work cannot be remixed into a new tiktok video (a common thing), or used as fuel for a new creative endeavor. On the other hand, copyright is largely used to stop such remixing, to prevent making creative derivative use of a work. If it were used just for "you must attribute me" (what open source licenses reduce it to), I would have no complaints.
- paulmd 4y ago
  > Do you think open source code is worse off for the fact that copyright has been removed (via the various licenses, all of which reduce copyright's restrictions)? Open-source code doesn't mean it's not copyrighted, and in fact copyleft licenses are explicitly designed to use this copyright as a coercive/protective mechanism the same as any other copyright. But as a general statement, everything anyone produces is copyrighted from the moment they produce it. Your "hello world" that you write in a demo project and never open again is copyrighted. Your phone snap of your dog is copyrighted. MIT/BSD licensed code is copyrighted. A license providing grant of permissions is not the same thing as not having a copyright. Open-source code still has an author, and that owner can also offer other licenses if they want.
readbeard 4y ago
In 1790, copyright term in the US was 14 years (if registered) plus 14 more years (if renewed), for a maximum total of 28 years. As of 1998, the copyright term is 95 years after publication (or 75 years after the author's death). So if creativity is equally as difficult now as it was in the past, I would ask why copyright terms have been so substantially expanded. It's also worth pointing out that, since the vast majority of works generate almost all their profits within the first few years of publication, such a lengthy copyright term primarily benefits rights holders of the extremely elite set of works that remain popular after decades of publication. In practice, this mostly winds up being companies like Disney, Sony, Universal, and so on. Meanwhile, the group that is most directly harmed is not the public in general, but everyday artists—who are less free than they were in the past to build on previous works, remix them, or use them as supporting elements in a larger project. Consider that, whereas consumers wanting to enjoy an older (let's say WWII-era) work usually face a choice between paying a small fee and getting an unauthorized copy somehow, creators face a choice between enduring a difficult and extremely costly licensing ordeal or opening themselves up to substantial legal risk. Creators often lose heart when faced with this dilemma—and many projects, at least a few of which would probably have been great, will never be made because of this.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  Disney's Sleeping Beauty (1959) could not have been made until 1986[1] if the current rules were in effect (The ballet it was based on was from 1890, and copyright is 95 years). That's my go-to example for why this entire "creators vs consumers" narrative is so bogus. Copyright today is no less of a lottery ticket than getting noticed by the Medici family was 100s of years ago. 1: In theory they could have licensed it, but I suspect a theoretical person in charge of maintaining the dignity of Tchaikovsky's works might have balked at giving Disney free reign to make a cartoon version and add lyrics for children to the instrumental music. Also, I don't think a ballet writer would feel particularly incentivized to know that someone would pay their estate to make a cartoon movie 60 years after they die.
kelnos 4y ago
I think for smaller creators, what you are saying makes a lot of sense. While writing a song or story doesn't require much equipment cost, it does take a lot of time and effort, and that's time and effort that would be impossible to justify if the returns don't at least pay for food and housing. But for big business media, it feels like the usual justification that rightsholders use for aggressive enforcement is that if too many people "steal", then there won't be enough revenue to even break even, let alone make a profit, and so no one will make movies anymore. Which is technically true, but I don't think we've ever seen infringement on a level that would make these sorts of creations financially infeasible to make. Actually, going back to small creators: it's not like current copyright terms are reasonable, anyway. I mean, let's say it takes you a year of full-time work to write a novel and get it published. So you could say that's a year of "lost" wages. Maybe copyright terms should be floating. As soon as the author recoups the "lost wages" plus some percent for creation-related expenses and profit, then it goes into the public domain. Why should creators (and often their descendants) get to milk their work for decades? I get that something like this would be a nightmare to handle legally, so maybe it makes sense to set a shorter copyright term based on some sort of average time to break even (or perhaps say 30th percentile or whatever, to make it more inclusive of some works that take longer). That's still difficult; I imagine you'd have to have different terms for different types of work. But it might be a lot more fair to the public commons. Regardless, current terms for copyright are ridiculous: 95 years after publication, or 75 years after the death of the creator. I mean... what? That's nuts. Before Disney and Sonny Bono got greedy about all this, max term was less than 30 years, which sounds a lot more reasonable... though IMO still high! If the cost to create has gone down over time -- which for many types of creations I believe it has -- then copyright terms should be adjusted downward, not upward!
- hypertele-Xii 4y ago
  > if too many people "steal", then there won't be enough revenue to even break even, let alone make a profit, and so no one will make movies anymore At current budgets. To make a movie all you need is a camera, and we pretty much all got one in our pockets at this point. Someone will make movies sans copyright. It just won't be a massive, entrenched studio on a billion budget.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

caconym_ 4y ago

+1 People don't seem to consider what it would be like for authors (and similar) if copyright disappeared overnight: just as quickly, their work will be published and distributed by for-profit entities who can still turn a profit on it but don't have to give them a dime. Congratulations, you've made it impossible to make a living---or even part of one---as an author, except as an employee of a corporation that also controls distribution (e.g. your Disneys, your HBOs, and so on). I don't want to live in a world where the importance of storytelling [in media] is marginalized even further than it already is. A lot of people seem to have a "how hard could it be?" attitude toward it; the answer is, really fucking hard.

zozbot234 4y ago
> People don't seem to consider what it would be like for authors (and similar) if copyright disappeared overnight We know very well what things were like pre-copyright. People still came up with compelling stories. Creativity flourished. Of course we've seen an increase since then, but that's the effect of industrialization and overall prosperity not copyright per se. > Congratulations, you've made it impossible to make a living---or even part of one---as an author The success of distributed patronage platforms like Kickstarter is a very real challenge to this assumption. People are in fact making a living by producing content that can be freely copied and distributed. Meanwhile, the average self-proclaimed author sees their content languishing in utter obscurity. This can hardly be called a "benefit" of copyright.
- caconym_ 4y ago
  > We know very well what things were like pre-copyright. People still came up with compelling stories. Creativity flourished. Of course we've seen an increase since then, but that's the effect of industrialization and overall prosperity not copyright per se. Do you think differences in how stories were copied and distributed "then" vs. today might have some bearing on the question of whether the absence of copyright "then" implies that authors don't benefit from it today? For instance, in the year 1400 AD, the cost of reproducing a written work of any significant length for mass distribution was beyond exorbitant. Today, it is essentially zero. > The success of distributed patronage platforms like Kickstarter is a very real challenge to this assumption. People are in fact making a living by producing content that can be freely copied and distributed. If copyright is done away with, making money on works before they're released to the public might indeed be the only way for independent authors to make money. Right now it's an alternative to self-pub that's really only available to authors who already have a large established following, e.g. Brandon Sanderson; if people can just wait for you to finish and get the work for free, I doubt they're going to put money up front before you've even finished it unless they're already big fans of your work. So---in short---no, I don't think the Kickstarter model will protect most independent authors from the effects of a dissolution of copyright law. But I welcome any challenges to the above reasoning. > Meanwhile, the average self-proclaimed author sees their content languishing in utter obscurity. This can hardly be called a "benefit" of copyright. What's the relevance of this bitter little nugget? Somebody who has written something is perfectly free to release it to the public domain if they like, and indeed many authors do just that. They are not bound to hold onto exclusive rights to their work just because copyright grants those rights by default.
  - somenameforme 4y ago
    Twitch is a reasonable argument to the contrary. You can watch Twitch completely for free with 0 impairment whatsoever to your experience (so long as at least have an ad-blocker), yet there are vast numbers of people making a living streaming, with a small chunk even becoming millionaires from it all, largely from people donating a few bucks at a time. Like you're saying there's always a big get bigger type phenomena, but that's an issue everybody has to deal with regardless of the system. And examples like Richard Bachman [1] would suggest its deterministically surmountable. There are also countless other examples of things like DRM free products selling just fine in spite of the fact you can get a byte identical copy for free in about 2 seconds with a torrent. The point I make with this is that people are willing to part with more than enough money for people to make a living off of, even when they are not coerced into doing so. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bachman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bachman
TheDong 4y ago
Free software / open source licenses have effectively made copyright disappear for open source code. Red Hat certainly does package up a large collection of open source work and sell support for it, but that has not caused authors of open source software to despair and quit writing code. It is not common for a commercial entity to republish open source software, and Red Hat is an exception. Sure, there are a vast number of open source developers who do it on the side, or are not compensated... but that is also true of professions where copyright remains. Most authors, most artists, they write or draw on the side, post their work to substack or twitter or deviant art or such, and never see a dime. I think open source software is a good example of what happens when you get rid of copyright - people still feel ownership for what they make, people are still creative, and a tiny fraction of people manage to make a profit off their passion projects.
- ssalazar 4y ago
  Copyleft / GPL licenses require copyright law to have any threat of enforcement. Otherwise anyone could just ignore the terms of a copyleft license and use open source under any terms they wish.
- caconym_ 4y ago
  > Free software / open source licenses have effectively made copyright disappear for open source code. [...] > I think open source software is a good example of what happens when you get rid of copyright - people still feel ownership for what they make [...] I think this is a quite a stretch given the prominence of copyright in popular open source licenses, including (for example) the extremely popular and permissive MIT license. You can copy it, modify it, distribute it, etc., but I still own the copyright, and you still have to give me credit for the initial development. I can choose whatever license I want, which may or may not impose restrictions on who can use my code in derivative works, etc., and how. In a very real sense, I do own the FOSS software I've released to the world. If legal codification of that ownership isn't important to open source developers, why are so many pixels spent discussing it?
  - TheDong 4y ago
landryraccoon 4y ago
I think there's middle ground between "throw away all copyright protections" and "throw copyright infringers into prison for years". I'm more inclined toward leniency than the draconian laws we have now. I mean, 95 years of copyright protection? Is society really going to be destroyed if Disney has to release some of their IP under creative commons after 30 years instead? I doubt it.
- caconym_ 4y ago
  I don't really disagree with any of this. Big business has corrupted the modern implementation of copyright law (e.g. erosion of fair use) and something should be done to turn it back in favor of independent creators. Of course, big money runs everything, so that probably isn't going to happen.
mattnewton 4y ago
We ran that experiment of dramatically shorter copyright terms, and it produced much of the culture you know and love before 1975. Copyright has been extended in 1976 and then again in 1998 mostly at the behest of rent seeking corporations who bought the culture after it’s creation and after paying the authors handsomely for it. Calling Disney’s business “marginalized” seems ridiculous to me?
- caconym_ 4y ago
  See my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31688954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31688954 I'm advocating for copyright from the perspective of independent creators, not big media conglomerates. Additionally, my comment is (explicitly, if you read closely) addressing the case of copyright being completely dissolved, which---as crazy as this seems---is an idea some people apparently support. You need look no further than this thread to prove this to yourself. I am not necessarily against shorter copyright terms. Honestly, since the main reason I support copyright is because it protects independent creators' rights to their own work, I would be totally fine with completely striking the postmortem copyright period for non-corporate authors (certainly, 70 years is insane) and cutting the pseudonymous/corporate terms in half.
  - mattnewton 4y ago
    Then I think we are in violent agreement. People who say “copyright has gotten out of control” or “is the cost worth it to society” largely are complaining about the current state of copyright where it lasts generations in my experience. Nobody hates the creator of culture they love, the hate the lawyers strangling anyone’s ability to participate in that culture in any way other than as a consumer. If we turned back the clock to 1975 levels of protection, we would get a public domain again which is good for creators, and creators would still have long periods to profit off their labor. The next Disney could be born as the first Disney was, by remixing the rich public domain. Of course that wouldn’t be good for the current disney monopoly and so it’s unlikely to happen.

svachalek 4y ago

I hate to say it but I think society is pretty full up on creativity these days. If the richest 1000 musicians stopped composing, would there be no music? Would it be worse than what we have now?

mauvehaus 4y ago
On the basis of what's on the radio these days, I'd say that if the richest 1000 musicians quit composing, it might be a huge win.
bruce511 4y ago
>> Would it be worse than what we have now? Point of view is everything. From at least one point of view the answer is yes. Say I'm a small unsigned singer/songwriter, grinding along looking for a break. I write one good song. Elvis hears my song, and is free to just perform it himself. No copyright, no payment to me. His release is a smash hit, making him millions. His performance of the song contributes a lot to his success, but the song itself is valuable too. Of course elvis is signed by a record label, who pays him. The other record label buys one CD, and copies it (as they are entitled to do - no copyright remember.) they make millions selling it cheap (no need to spend on artists or marketing.) In fact they have a chain of stores where you can by any CD ever at half price. So the real winner here is the person who sells to the customer, and pays not a penny upstream. Musicians and song writers and audience builders upstream all work in construction doing their day job, and the cream of that crop can't afford to spend much time on creating. Their secret sauce is lost, and we are all poorer because of that. Which personally, for me, sounds like a much worse system.

_carbyau_ 4y ago

Honestly? I do think that video and song writers are overrated for different reasons. Movies. It isn't that they aren't worth what people pay to watch. But after ... say three to five years at most, it HAS entered Public Domain in a practical sense - just not legally... A more fun way to measure it, once you can stop using [spoiler alert] in a public forum about a movie, it is in the Public Domain. Why a shorter period of time now? Availability. In the 1930's seeing a movie was tricky business compared to streaming on every device any time. Nowadays, after three years, anyone who really wants to see your movie has had sufficient time to do so. Song Writers. Have you seen some of the lyrics they come up with? Teen Spirit for example. These are not literary masterpieces. But the performance is key. Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" did ok with her own performances, but blasted out of the park when Whitney Houston covered it. Yet Dolly made money for a song that had been out for 20 years? Damn, that's a good racquet if you have the connections - because song writing talent is only 5% of this equation. The performance, publicity around the movie etc etc made that happen. As for - "but it will make it hard for creators to make money" Yes, the future will be different. Not all people will be able to make money from art. But a large chunk of this of down to democratisation of tools. Just because you too have an Apple laptop and Garageband doesn't mean you should be able to make money. Ultimately, all the people wanting to make big $ out of music are looking at the 60's-2000's time of music where corporations milked the scale of selling copies of music rather than performances. Now that bubble has popped. Will your song be a masterpiece in a gallery earning you a lifetime of riches? Likely not. But that is the same for most painters in history.

TheDong 4y ago

Do you think open source code is worse off for the fact that copyright has been removed (via the various licenses, all of which reduce copyright's restrictions)? In my mind, open source code has been an excellent experiment showing that eschewing copyright doesn't mean people are less creative. Certainly, I've seen more creative open source code than I've seen creative proprietary code. Similarly, there are huge swathes of fanfiction out there which are incredible pieces of creative writing which are not charged for, are not created for commercial interest, and while technically copyrighted, the author may not even realize that. There are masses of people producing tiktok videos and spotify music for an audience, with no explicit expectation of copyright protection. People clearly want attribution, not control to the point where they can say that their work cannot be remixed into a new tiktok video (a common thing), or used as fuel for a new creative endeavor. On the other hand, copyright is largely used to stop such remixing, to prevent making creative derivative use of a work. If it were used just for "you must attribute me" (what open source licenses reduce it to), I would have no complaints.

paulmd 4y ago
> Do you think open source code is worse off for the fact that copyright has been removed (via the various licenses, all of which reduce copyright's restrictions)? Open-source code doesn't mean it's not copyrighted, and in fact copyleft licenses are explicitly designed to use this copyright as a coercive/protective mechanism the same as any other copyright. But as a general statement, everything anyone produces is copyrighted from the moment they produce it. Your "hello world" that you write in a demo project and never open again is copyrighted. Your phone snap of your dog is copyrighted. MIT/BSD licensed code is copyrighted. A license providing grant of permissions is not the same thing as not having a copyright. Open-source code still has an author, and that owner can also offer other licenses if they want.

readbeard 4y ago

In 1790, copyright term in the US was 14 years (if registered) plus 14 more years (if renewed), for a maximum total of 28 years. As of 1998, the copyright term is 95 years after publication (or 75 years after the author's death). So if creativity is equally as difficult now as it was in the past, I would ask why copyright terms have been so substantially expanded. It's also worth pointing out that, since the vast majority of works generate almost all their profits within the first few years of publication, such a lengthy copyright term primarily benefits rights holders of the extremely elite set of works that remain popular after decades of publication. In practice, this mostly winds up being companies like Disney, Sony, Universal, and so on. Meanwhile, the group that is most directly harmed is not the public in general, but everyday artists—who are less free than they were in the past to build on previous works, remix them, or use them as supporting elements in a larger project. Consider that, whereas consumers wanting to enjoy an older (let's say WWII-era) work usually face a choice between paying a small fee and getting an unauthorized copy somehow, creators face a choice between enduring a difficult and extremely costly licensing ordeal or opening themselves up to substantial legal risk. Creators often lose heart when faced with this dilemma—and many projects, at least a few of which would probably have been great, will never be made because of this.

aidenn0 4y ago
Disney's Sleeping Beauty (1959) could not have been made until 1986[1] if the current rules were in effect (The ballet it was based on was from 1890, and copyright is 95 years). That's my go-to example for why this entire "creators vs consumers" narrative is so bogus. Copyright today is no less of a lottery ticket than getting noticed by the Medici family was 100s of years ago. 1: In theory they could have licensed it, but I suspect a theoretical person in charge of maintaining the dignity of Tchaikovsky's works might have balked at giving Disney free reign to make a cartoon version and add lyrics for children to the instrumental music. Also, I don't think a ballet writer would feel particularly incentivized to know that someone would pay their estate to make a cartoon movie 60 years after they die.

kelnos 4y ago

I think for smaller creators, what you are saying makes a lot of sense. While writing a song or story doesn't require much equipment cost, it does take a lot of time and effort, and that's time and effort that would be impossible to justify if the returns don't at least pay for food and housing. But for big business media, it feels like the usual justification that rightsholders use for aggressive enforcement is that if too many people "steal", then there won't be enough revenue to even break even, let alone make a profit, and so no one will make movies anymore. Which is technically true, but I don't think we've ever seen infringement on a level that would make these sorts of creations financially infeasible to make. Actually, going back to small creators: it's not like current copyright terms are reasonable, anyway. I mean, let's say it takes you a year of full-time work to write a novel and get it published. So you could say that's a year of "lost" wages. Maybe copyright terms should be floating. As soon as the author recoups the "lost wages" plus some percent for creation-related expenses and profit, then it goes into the public domain. Why should creators (and often their descendants) get to milk their work for decades? I get that something like this would be a nightmare to handle legally, so maybe it makes sense to set a shorter copyright term based on some sort of average time to break even (or perhaps say 30th percentile or whatever, to make it more inclusive of some works that take longer). That's still difficult; I imagine you'd have to have different terms for different types of work. But it might be a lot more fair to the public commons. Regardless, current terms for copyright are ridiculous: 95 years after publication, or 75 years after the death of the creator. I mean... what? That's nuts. Before Disney and Sonny Bono got greedy about all this, max term was less than 30 years, which sounds a lot more reasonable... though IMO still high! If the cost to create has gone down over time -- which for many types of creations I believe it has -- then copyright terms should be adjusted downward, not upward!

hypertele-Xii 4y ago
> if too many people "steal", then there won't be enough revenue to even break even, let alone make a profit, and so no one will make movies anymore At current budgets. To make a movie all you need is a camera, and we pretty much all got one in our pockets at this point. Someone will make movies sans copyright. It just won't be a massive, entrenched studio on a billion budget.

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