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As a society we have gone through great pains to protect the software developer's incompe and job, source code was given copyright and patent protection - no ot

As a society we have gone through great pains to protect the software developer's incompe and job, source code was given copyright and patent protection - no other industry gets both protections at once. Now you seek to deny others such protection while taking advantage of it yourself.

deadbeeves 4y ago
Let's not kid ourselves. Those protections exist for the benefit of corporations, not software developers. If those corporations could have robots write the software and copyright that software and patent it, they absolutely would.
- stevewatson301 4y ago
  Ironically, the high salaries the software industries is able to pay is precisely because of the copyright protection afforded that prevents the value of the software from being diluted by way of rampant copying. This is also the same reason due to which open source projects often struggle with funding, and why many databases (among other OSS software) are moving towards stricter licenses such as the AGPL.
  - deadbeeves 4y ago
    I don't think so. The highest paying companies don't distribute software, they provide access to a remote service. Even if copyright didn't exist, you couldn't copy the Google executable.
    - stevewatson301 4y ago
      You're making my point though. The fact that Google is successful, in part, is because of the fact that you can't copy their trade secrets and methods; which is one reason no solid competitor has come up to challenge Google. (There are infrastructure challenges as well, but this thread is about intellectual property.)
      - capitalsigma 4y ago
        My understanding is that trade secrets are distinct from patents. For patents, you tell everyone how to do it but they're not allowed to for 20 years. For trade secrets, you don't tell anyone how to do it, but if someone else figures it out for themselves, it's fair game. Most of Google's search IP is protected as trade secrets rather than patent/copyright, I believe.
      - deadbeeves 4y ago
        Your point is that you can't copy Google's secrets because of copyright, and therefore copyright is valuable to its employees. I'm saying that the reason you can't copy that information is different from copyright.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      > Even if copyright didn't exist, you couldn't copy the Google executable. If copyright did not exist, you could take it as a google employee and start your own google without going to jail.
      - deadbeeves 4y ago
        Pretty sure you could sue them using other means, such as through contract law, if they signed an appropriate contract. You really don't need copyright if you aren't broadly distributing information.
        ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        if Guy A copied your code, and i got it off him, you can sue him for violation of contract but you cant stop me, a third party. Your ability to sue him will be limured, he cant go to jail, he can deckare bancrupsy, and you have to be spesific about what is protected, 'idea' is a vague term that cant be protectedm
int_19h 4y ago
Many (most?) software developers believe that software shouldn't be patentable at all. Many also believe that copyright terms should be way shorter.
- trention 4y ago
  They only believe this because this won't (immediately) affect their material prospects.
  - Aerroon 4y ago
    Or maybe they genuinely believe that the content they make today shouldn't be copyrighted for the next 100 years? Lifetime of the author +70 years is a very long time.
    - trention 4y ago
      Given a binary choice between unemployability and extending patent protection to (even) snippets of code, I am quite confident that 90+% of salaried developers today will chose the latter.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      thats not the argument we are discussing - the question is should these protections exist at all. We are talking about denying the artists all protection, only fair to confront developers with the same dialemma. Whether they are 3 years or 300 is a finer point, and is only worth discussing after nessesity and legitimacy of sich protections is established
allisdust 4y ago
It doesn't matter what any of us think. The genie is out of the bottle and cannot be put back because unlike pirating existing media, this new style pirates the whole style. Visual arts as a career will be dead soon. Visual arts as a hobby will live on.
- trention 4y ago
  >Visual arts as a career will be dead soon Put a fine of 10% of annual turnover if a company cannot prove that images used in its product/ads are human generated. Make payment to visual artists part of the process of proving it. Boom, visual arts as a career saved. It's one thing to say we shouldn't do it, it's quite another to say we cannot.
  - allisdust 4y ago
    With the amount of power the copyright lobby has, who knows it might be true. However advertising is not the only industry where visual arts will be affected. Gaming, Comics, Animation, VR, Movies etc will be affected as well. And regulation isn't going to keep up across all the countries. Even if we assume the above rule is made, there is no way to prove it because even if a human does it, he might still use the help of photoshop etc which are planning to integrate such tools currently. Most favorable outcome I see out of this is for famous/competent artists to license out their style of art to these generation companies which then train their models on them (which sounds win-win but won't be as profitable as it is today)
    - trention 4y ago
      >Even if we assume the above rule is made, there is no way to prove it because even if a human does it, he might still use the help of photoshop etc which are planning to integrate such tools currently. It's unclear to what extend tool producers will support AI in this context at all. Also, this is a problem for safeguarding the integrity of the product of artists, not for safeguarding their income.
  - throwaway675309 4y ago
throwaway675309 4y ago
What a load of nonsense. The last 40 years has made the barrier of entry to software development lower than it's ever been. We got applications like unity for game generation, low code solutions that let you generate a crud dashboard for a database in a few clicks, etc. As a developer with an actual degree in comp sci, I can guarantee I'd be a helluva lot better paid if everyone had to do their software development in low level C.
fennecfoxy 4y ago
That wasn't to protect software developers that was to protect companies & corporations. Twisting the law/politics is what capitalism has always had companies try to do. Software developers aren't protected at all, we are simply just in demand for the time being. There will probably be a time in the far flung future where our jobs are phased out, too.

deadbeeves 4y ago

Let's not kid ourselves. Those protections exist for the benefit of corporations, not software developers. If those corporations could have robots write the software and copyright that software and patent it, they absolutely would.

stevewatson301 4y ago
Ironically, the high salaries the software industries is able to pay is precisely because of the copyright protection afforded that prevents the value of the software from being diluted by way of rampant copying. This is also the same reason due to which open source projects often struggle with funding, and why many databases (among other OSS software) are moving towards stricter licenses such as the AGPL.
- deadbeeves 4y ago
  I don't think so. The highest paying companies don't distribute software, they provide access to a remote service. Even if copyright didn't exist, you couldn't copy the Google executable.
  - stevewatson301 4y ago
    You're making my point though. The fact that Google is successful, in part, is because of the fact that you can't copy their trade secrets and methods; which is one reason no solid competitor has come up to challenge Google. (There are infrastructure challenges as well, but this thread is about intellectual property.)
    - capitalsigma 4y ago
      My understanding is that trade secrets are distinct from patents. For patents, you tell everyone how to do it but they're not allowed to for 20 years. For trade secrets, you don't tell anyone how to do it, but if someone else figures it out for themselves, it's fair game. Most of Google's search IP is protected as trade secrets rather than patent/copyright, I believe.
    - deadbeeves 4y ago
      Your point is that you can't copy Google's secrets because of copyright, and therefore copyright is valuable to its employees. I'm saying that the reason you can't copy that information is different from copyright.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    > Even if copyright didn't exist, you couldn't copy the Google executable. If copyright did not exist, you could take it as a google employee and start your own google without going to jail.
    - deadbeeves 4y ago
      Pretty sure you could sue them using other means, such as through contract law, if they signed an appropriate contract. You really don't need copyright if you aren't broadly distributing information.
      - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        if Guy A copied your code, and i got it off him, you can sue him for violation of contract but you cant stop me, a third party. Your ability to sue him will be limured, he cant go to jail, he can deckare bancrupsy, and you have to be spesific about what is protected, 'idea' is a vague term that cant be protectedm

int_19h 4y ago

Many (most?) software developers believe that software shouldn't be patentable at all. Many also believe that copyright terms should be way shorter.

trention 4y ago
They only believe this because this won't (immediately) affect their material prospects.
- Aerroon 4y ago
  Or maybe they genuinely believe that the content they make today shouldn't be copyrighted for the next 100 years? Lifetime of the author +70 years is a very long time.
  - trention 4y ago
    Given a binary choice between unemployability and extending patent protection to (even) snippets of code, I am quite confident that 90+% of salaried developers today will chose the latter.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    thats not the argument we are discussing - the question is should these protections exist at all. We are talking about denying the artists all protection, only fair to confront developers with the same dialemma. Whether they are 3 years or 300 is a finer point, and is only worth discussing after nessesity and legitimacy of sich protections is established

allisdust 4y ago

It doesn't matter what any of us think. The genie is out of the bottle and cannot be put back because unlike pirating existing media, this new style pirates the whole style. Visual arts as a career will be dead soon. Visual arts as a hobby will live on.

trention 4y ago
>Visual arts as a career will be dead soon Put a fine of 10% of annual turnover if a company cannot prove that images used in its product/ads are human generated. Make payment to visual artists part of the process of proving it. Boom, visual arts as a career saved. It's one thing to say we shouldn't do it, it's quite another to say we cannot.
- allisdust 4y ago
  With the amount of power the copyright lobby has, who knows it might be true. However advertising is not the only industry where visual arts will be affected. Gaming, Comics, Animation, VR, Movies etc will be affected as well. And regulation isn't going to keep up across all the countries. Even if we assume the above rule is made, there is no way to prove it because even if a human does it, he might still use the help of photoshop etc which are planning to integrate such tools currently. Most favorable outcome I see out of this is for famous/competent artists to license out their style of art to these generation companies which then train their models on them (which sounds win-win but won't be as profitable as it is today)
  - trention 4y ago
    >Even if we assume the above rule is made, there is no way to prove it because even if a human does it, he might still use the help of photoshop etc which are planning to integrate such tools currently. It's unclear to what extend tool producers will support AI in this context at all. Also, this is a problem for safeguarding the integrity of the product of artists, not for safeguarding their income.
- throwaway675309 4y ago

throwaway675309 4y ago

What a load of nonsense. The last 40 years has made the barrier of entry to software development lower than it's ever been. We got applications like unity for game generation, low code solutions that let you generate a crud dashboard for a database in a few clicks, etc. As a developer with an actual degree in comp sci, I can guarantee I'd be a helluva lot better paid if everyone had to do their software development in low level C.

fennecfoxy 4y ago

That wasn't to protect software developers that was to protect companies & corporations. Twisting the law/politics is what capitalism has always had companies try to do. Software developers aren't protected at all, we are simply just in demand for the time being. There will probably be a time in the far flung future where our jobs are phased out, too.