5 ms·

If Shakespeare had better lawyers we’d all be paying $7.99 per user per month just to talk, or $9.99 for the pro version

D13Fd 4y ago
I agree completely. But don't blame the lawyers -- that's like blaming guns for the war in Ukraine. Blame the companies that lobby for the laws and treaties that set these kinds of IP protection, and then use those laws to come after people who actually try to create something.
- mandmandam 4y ago
  Sir, lawyers identify the possibly loopholes to lobby into, write the laws that are lobbied, and work the loopholes that exist. They are 100% culpable at every step. They do it for money, and the broad culture is one of scoffing at ethics or honesty, which are seen as weaknesses. Guns aren't conscious. Lawyers are (at least on some level).
  - D13Fd 4y ago
    There are lawyers on both sides, fighting each other. That's how the system works. The winner is largely determined by the laws. The laws are set by legislators, and those legislators are heavily influenced by corporations. The lawyers aren't the ones deciding what the laws are.
    - mandmandam 4y ago
      > The lawyers aren't the ones deciding what the laws are. Lol. As you say, the wealthy decide the laws, and the lawyers write them. The vast majority of lawyers work for whoever pays them the most. In today's world, in today's system, that's generally whoever can fuck over the most people, or extract the most from nature while externalizing the cost, and get away with it. Almost by definition, the wealthiest are the literal worst. Public defenders get paid beans, and are overworked with no respect, while fossil fuel and banker's lawyers live in mansions with a fraction of the effort. Damn near every aspect of our society and the world we live in has been tainted by this. Environmental groups don't have the funds that Exxon do, and the response to oil spills and climate change reflects this. Look at Donziger. Look at Deepwater Horizon. Peace groups don't have the funds Raytheon do, and the response to people like Assange and Snowden reflects that. Poor people and groups who advocate for them don't have the funds available that the .01% do. Our tax code and social supports reflect this fact in ten thousand ways, each grotesque. And in all of this, the lawyers are culpable. They work to attack the peaceniks, the whistleblowers, the tax reformists, the journalists seeking accountability. They sue for libel, they make shit up and make it stick, they find the obscure laws and loopholes, they stack the court, stack the deck, all for a tiny portion of the wealth 'saved' for the yacht class. Lawyers enable a rather unimaginable amount of evil by doing these things. I don't understand how the fact they're told to do this by the evil corporations paying them obscene amounts to enable their evil acts absolves them of anything - can you explain it to me?
      - bawolff 4y ago
        > The vast majority of lawyers work for whoever pays them the most. Unlike the rest of us? Seems like the real issue you have is capitalism not lawyers. Capitalism allows rich people to hire skilled workers to do their bidding. I don't see what lawyers as a class of people, have to do with that. Some work for ethically questionable rich people, some dont. How does that set them apart from say accountants, corporate strategists, etc?
        mandmandam 4y ago
        Haha, you're so close to getting it. And yet so far.
        bawolff 4y ago
        Don't confuse people who disagree with you with people who don't understand you.
        mandmandam 4y ago
        Don't worry, I'm not. Not in this case anyway. I mean you're here saying that if lawyers are generally bad as a class then corporate strategists and corporate tax accountants would be too. ... As if that disproves the argument. ... Bruh. Capitalism is killing the planet, and lawyers, as a class, are helping them do it. Yes, some lawyers are fighting, but they're paid less. Because, again, of this particular form of crony unaccountable capitalism. This isn't all that controversial or complex. You seem caught in a weird loop somehow though, where if capitalism and all those jobs are bad, then your worldview is invalidated and that's just not possible.
        bawolff 4y ago
        I mean in the sense that lawyers are a type of human, and some humans are evil, sure. What would happen if all the food-prep workers disappeared in a blink - probably the world would recover, because its pretty hard to dig for oil while dying of starvation. What would happen if all the lawyers disappeared? Probably things would get worse. Big bizz only hires lawyers to deal with opposing lawyers. If there were no lawyers they wouldn't have to bother hiring any. For that matter they wouldn't have to comply with any environmental regulation, even the insufficient ones. They wouldn't have to deal with critics, since they can just shoot them (what are you going to do if you don't like them arbitrarily murdering people? Call a lawyer? Oh wait there are none). This isn't a hypothetical. There really are failed states in the world that effectively do not have lawyers (As we know them). You can go there, and see how the environment is treated. I assure you, you won't like it. Blaming lawyers for the world's problems is like blaming the writer of the newspaper you read about the problems in for the problems.
  - bawolff 4y ago
    You could probably say the same thing about computer programmers. They write algorithms with questionable outcomes. There is a culture that generally scoffs at ethical questions (at least in some segments). But i dont think you will see that here, because we are programmers and lawyers are the other.
pc86 4y ago
Not everyone has the right software for pro.
jfengel 4y ago
Shakespeare had no lawyers, and that's kinda why we ended up with this system. Shakespeare's work was regularly published without him getting a penny in royalties. He himself never got anything for his plays except what his theater paid him. The official Folio edition was published after he was dead. The quarto editions made during his lifetime are riddled with errors because they were made from people's memories of his plays, not the manuscripts. The manuscripts were kept carefully guarded, and the actors given only "sides" containing their own lines to prevent them from running off and selling them. Actually, Shakespeare did have lawyers; much of what we know about him comes from legal documents. (Including lawsuits. He was kind of a litigious bugger.) But he didn't have lawyers to protect his works because there wasn't any such thing. And it was precisely that which caused the copyright system to be created.
- burkaman 4y ago
  And yet despite the complete lack of copyright protections, he was able to make quite a comfortable living and died with a sizable estate, and his work survives to this day.
  - jfengel 4y ago
    Most of it. Several Shakespeare plays are lost. And many more playwrights, without wealthy friends, are completely lost. It would be fascinating to have Thomas Kyd's version of Hamlet (likely Shakespeare's immediate source), or for that matter Kyd's precursor to The Spanish Tragedy. Kyd was, at the time, more popular than Shakespeare.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- M2Ys4U 4y ago
  >Shakespeare had no lawyers, and that's kinda why we ended up with this system. lol, no. Copyright was invented primarily as a censorship tool, and secondly to enrich publishers rather than authors.
  - 4y ago
pessimizer 4y ago
I learned recently that if this were actually how language worked, Chomsky would be living off of "counterintuitive."
matthewmacleod 4y ago
One of the first things he did was kill all the lawyers.
marginalia_nu 4y ago
Later, when Oracle acquires Shakespeare, you'd be billed not by how many words you use, but how many people hear or read your words. If they mishear your words, you're double billed because otherwise they're getting words for free.

D13Fd 4y ago

I agree completely. But don't blame the lawyers -- that's like blaming guns for the war in Ukraine. Blame the companies that lobby for the laws and treaties that set these kinds of IP protection, and then use those laws to come after people who actually try to create something.

mandmandam 4y ago
Sir, lawyers identify the possibly loopholes to lobby into, write the laws that are lobbied, and work the loopholes that exist. They are 100% culpable at every step. They do it for money, and the broad culture is one of scoffing at ethics or honesty, which are seen as weaknesses. Guns aren't conscious. Lawyers are (at least on some level).
- D13Fd 4y ago
  There are lawyers on both sides, fighting each other. That's how the system works. The winner is largely determined by the laws. The laws are set by legislators, and those legislators are heavily influenced by corporations. The lawyers aren't the ones deciding what the laws are.
  - mandmandam 4y ago
    > The lawyers aren't the ones deciding what the laws are. Lol. As you say, the wealthy decide the laws, and the lawyers write them. The vast majority of lawyers work for whoever pays them the most. In today's world, in today's system, that's generally whoever can fuck over the most people, or extract the most from nature while externalizing the cost, and get away with it. Almost by definition, the wealthiest are the literal worst. Public defenders get paid beans, and are overworked with no respect, while fossil fuel and banker's lawyers live in mansions with a fraction of the effort. Damn near every aspect of our society and the world we live in has been tainted by this. Environmental groups don't have the funds that Exxon do, and the response to oil spills and climate change reflects this. Look at Donziger. Look at Deepwater Horizon. Peace groups don't have the funds Raytheon do, and the response to people like Assange and Snowden reflects that. Poor people and groups who advocate for them don't have the funds available that the .01% do. Our tax code and social supports reflect this fact in ten thousand ways, each grotesque. And in all of this, the lawyers are culpable. They work to attack the peaceniks, the whistleblowers, the tax reformists, the journalists seeking accountability. They sue for libel, they make shit up and make it stick, they find the obscure laws and loopholes, they stack the court, stack the deck, all for a tiny portion of the wealth 'saved' for the yacht class. Lawyers enable a rather unimaginable amount of evil by doing these things. I don't understand how the fact they're told to do this by the evil corporations paying them obscene amounts to enable their evil acts absolves them of anything - can you explain it to me?
    - bawolff 4y ago
      > The vast majority of lawyers work for whoever pays them the most. Unlike the rest of us? Seems like the real issue you have is capitalism not lawyers. Capitalism allows rich people to hire skilled workers to do their bidding. I don't see what lawyers as a class of people, have to do with that. Some work for ethically questionable rich people, some dont. How does that set them apart from say accountants, corporate strategists, etc?
      - mandmandam 4y ago
        Haha, you're so close to getting it. And yet so far.
        bawolff 4y ago
        Don't confuse people who disagree with you with people who don't understand you.
        mandmandam 4y ago
        Don't worry, I'm not. Not in this case anyway. I mean you're here saying that if lawyers are generally bad as a class then corporate strategists and corporate tax accountants would be too. ... As if that disproves the argument. ... Bruh. Capitalism is killing the planet, and lawyers, as a class, are helping them do it. Yes, some lawyers are fighting, but they're paid less. Because, again, of this particular form of crony unaccountable capitalism. This isn't all that controversial or complex. You seem caught in a weird loop somehow though, where if capitalism and all those jobs are bad, then your worldview is invalidated and that's just not possible.
        bawolff 4y ago
        I mean in the sense that lawyers are a type of human, and some humans are evil, sure. What would happen if all the food-prep workers disappeared in a blink - probably the world would recover, because its pretty hard to dig for oil while dying of starvation. What would happen if all the lawyers disappeared? Probably things would get worse. Big bizz only hires lawyers to deal with opposing lawyers. If there were no lawyers they wouldn't have to bother hiring any. For that matter they wouldn't have to comply with any environmental regulation, even the insufficient ones. They wouldn't have to deal with critics, since they can just shoot them (what are you going to do if you don't like them arbitrarily murdering people? Call a lawyer? Oh wait there are none). This isn't a hypothetical. There really are failed states in the world that effectively do not have lawyers (As we know them). You can go there, and see how the environment is treated. I assure you, you won't like it. Blaming lawyers for the world's problems is like blaming the writer of the newspaper you read about the problems in for the problems.
- bawolff 4y ago
  You could probably say the same thing about computer programmers. They write algorithms with questionable outcomes. There is a culture that generally scoffs at ethical questions (at least in some segments). But i dont think you will see that here, because we are programmers and lawyers are the other.

pc86 4y ago

Not everyone has the right software for pro.

jfengel 4y ago

Shakespeare had no lawyers, and that's kinda why we ended up with this system. Shakespeare's work was regularly published without him getting a penny in royalties. He himself never got anything for his plays except what his theater paid him. The official Folio edition was published after he was dead. The quarto editions made during his lifetime are riddled with errors because they were made from people's memories of his plays, not the manuscripts. The manuscripts were kept carefully guarded, and the actors given only "sides" containing their own lines to prevent them from running off and selling them. Actually, Shakespeare did have lawyers; much of what we know about him comes from legal documents. (Including lawsuits. He was kind of a litigious bugger.) But he didn't have lawyers to protect his works because there wasn't any such thing. And it was precisely that which caused the copyright system to be created.

burkaman 4y ago
And yet despite the complete lack of copyright protections, he was able to make quite a comfortable living and died with a sizable estate, and his work survives to this day.
- jfengel 4y ago
  Most of it. Several Shakespeare plays are lost. And many more playwrights, without wealthy friends, are completely lost. It would be fascinating to have Thomas Kyd's version of Hamlet (likely Shakespeare's immediate source), or for that matter Kyd's precursor to The Spanish Tragedy. Kyd was, at the time, more popular than Shakespeare.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
M2Ys4U 4y ago
>Shakespeare had no lawyers, and that's kinda why we ended up with this system. lol, no. Copyright was invented primarily as a censorship tool, and secondly to enrich publishers rather than authors.
- 4y ago

pessimizer 4y ago

I learned recently that if this were actually how language worked, Chomsky would be living off of "counterintuitive."

matthewmacleod 4y ago

One of the first things he did was kill all the lawyers.

marginalia_nu 4y ago

Later, when Oracle acquires Shakespeare, you'd be billed not by how many words you use, but how many people hear or read your words. If they mishear your words, you're double billed because otherwise they're getting words for free.