4 ms·

Why do people like him think copyright laws are bad and made by rich people, but also support open source software, which relies on the same copyright laws to e

Why do people like him think copyright laws are bad and made by rich people, but also support open source software, which relies on the same copyright laws to exist. If hes an anarchist then fine, but it looks like he wants laws that benefit him and not people that actually write software. I read the whole thing and I still don't know why he did it. He says there was no money incentive and his work had no impact on piracy. What was its purpose then?

pharmakom 4y ago
Copyleft is a defensive measure in a hostile environment. If there were no copy laws at all then they wouldn't argue for them.
- kube-system 4y ago
  I think you're painting with quite a broad brush. There are absolutely people who support copyleft because they do not want 'intermediaries' to be able to distribute binaries alone. e.g. GNU.
- abigail95 4y ago
  If copyleft means restricting freedoms on what you can do with software and preserving those rights on derivative works (GPL) - then 100% no, those people need copyright laws to enforce that. With no copyright law I could take any GPL software, modify it, sell it as my own and nobody could force me to give up the code. If copyleft means permissive (MIT) - then it's not a hostile environment. You are free to create and share permissive works with no hostility from anyone else.
soulofmischief 4y ago
The heart of the copyleft movement is not to remove all government regulation. You can have a problem with copyright laws in their current form while still supporting the copyleft movement.
- abigail95 4y ago
  To make what this guy did legal would require overhauling 300 years of law. It's a ridiculous position. Especially given the hypocrisy in supporting copyleft, which lets people distribute works gratis with heavy restrictions, and ripping off other peoples work who didn't want any part of that, while getting mad that people aren't following the copyleft restrictions.
sedatk 4y ago
> What was its purpose then? Clout, reputation, group identity, coolness factor. It's similar to how demoscene operates.
- coldacid 4y ago
  >It's similar to how demoscene operates. Considering that the demoscene spun off the cracking scene...
beardedwizard 4y ago
They did it for the thrill and because they could. It was a different time.
- BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  I still do things for the thrill and because I can, and I'm well into adulthood. That's what makes life fun and interesting and there doesn't have to be a 'point' that anyone else understands. But sometimes I still try to do things I can't - I currently have a broken wrist.
bentley 4y ago
Only some free software licenses rely heavily on copyright law as their primary mechanism. Permissive licensing, or something like it, would continue to exist if copyright as a concept disappeared tomorrow.
- kube-system 4y ago
  Permissive licenses are not public domain waivers, they usually have some other disclaimers of liability, a requirement to include that provision in all copies, etc. In a world without copyright, OSS devs will need to find another way to shield themselves from liability. However, what would realistically happen in a hypothetical world without copyright, is that commercial organizations will stop most OSS development and revert to distributing obfuscated binaries.
- shagie 4y ago
  While I am generally in favor of permissive licensing and accept the corresponding "yes, the code can get incorporated into other projects"... That same copyright law protects my photographs. I am generally in favor of strong copyright laws. There are also philosophies of software licensing that want to ensure that the user can have access to the code that uses my code. Under those philosophies, it is the protections granted by the limited right to prepare derivative works that allow that licensing to have teeth and enforce a copy left. Without copyright, the GPL and corresponding licensing that is written with the desire to be able to guarantee the 2nd and 4th freedoms (access to the source for some product and ability to modify the code for that product) have no teeth and those cannot be guaranteed.
petsfed 4y ago
I think his position is a little more nuanced than that. >The bottom line, what I did violated the laws governing copyrights. I don't agree with those laws 100%, but they were designed by people with lots of money in their pockets to keep lots of money in their pockets, so I doubt they're going to change for the better any time soon. This is why I'm a huge advocate for the open source community. I understood that to mean "the open source community specifically addresses the flaws in a system that it cannot itself abolish, so I support them".
- abigail95 4y ago
  I'm sorry, I have no patience for "rich man bad" takes on copyright. Copyright law protects the smallest against the biggest. If some company comes and steals my product and outspends me on marketing, how do I fight back without copyright law? Say someone stole the book I wrote and passed it off as their own - how does open sourcing it help me? The chief purpose of the DMCA was to clarify legal liability and penalties for digital copyright infringement brought on by the disruption of the internet. How does that keep anyone rich? Who is that taking money from? Who is made poorer because people are able to create and sell their own works in the manner of their choosing?
ilyt 4y ago
> Why do people like him think copyright laws are bad and made by rich people, but also support open source software, which relies on the same copyright laws to exist. Because they have more nuanced thoughts that you think ? "A copyright law" is not a one thing. DMCA doesn't touch OSS software for example. It could entirely go away. Length of copyright protection could be 5 years from creation instead of 70y from authors death and it would do near jack squat to OSS software. Ye you could use 5y worth of unfixed bugs and ignore OSS license but that wouldn't exactly hurt most projects.
wdhilliard 4y ago
While it's possible that he did it for clout or as a FU to software companies, I think many people, including myself, pirated software in the early days of computing because the software itself was rare and cool. There were no demos back then to try software before you buy, and many people used software like Photoshop, Flash, 3D Max, etc for personal projects that made no profit. Even today, it's hard to justify paying $600 for a program that you aren't sure you actually like just to hopefully create some cool stuff to show your friends. As for the "people that actually write software", I couldn't care less. It's been shown over and over that piracy never made the effect on thier bottom line that large software companies led many to believe. Simply put, people didn't buy these things because they considered them overpriced luxuries for simple hobbyists. The only choice was to pirate the software, or to never get to use it. As someone who writes software myself, I have no sympathy for people who want harsh punishments for someone who steals their stupid little program. Sure you put hard work into it, but so did a lot of people who offer their software for free. Generally, my thought is that these people are more upset that their software failed to make the impact that they thought it would or failed to generate the profit that they had dreamed of. Piracy was never at fault for either of those. They need to cope
- abigail95 4y ago
  I sell software, I wouldn't do it if I couldn't retain ownership of it. I don't care how much work I put into it, I don't care how much money its worth. I don't care about its impact. I create because it's mine and I control it. The hands that built it decide what happens to it. I could paint the prettiest picture and then burn it forever and nobody has any right to stop me, no matter how many poor hobbiest art admirers wanted to see it.
thomastjeffery 4y ago
Copyright is about monopoly. That's the antithesis of freedom. Copyleft is a hack that turns monopoly inside-out. All for one, and one for all. Without copyright, copyleft would be fundamentally broken. But that isn't the whole picture: anything under a permissive license like MIT or Apache2 would see the same result they implement today. Those are part of "open source", too. And we could certainly come up with a different system to maintain copyleft: we could make regulation that preserves a user's right to edit their software, and bans practices like DRM and intentional incompatibility. That's what I imagine the "open source movement" would look like if it were brought to an extreme logical conclusion.
- abigail95 4y ago
  > bans practices like DRM and intentional incompatibility more restrictions on the road to copyright freedom if restricting what people are allowed to do with software is bad, why does that make it acceptable to create more restirctions on what people can do with software. once we have 1,000 pages of restrictions closing all the interop and drm loopholes - our software will truely be free
aleph_minus_one 4y ago
> Why do people like him think copyright laws are bad and made by rich people, but also support open source software, which relies on the same copyright laws to exist. There are quite very different open-source licenses. Copyleft licenses do depends on copyright, that is true. On the other hand, typical non-copyleft licenses are in my opinion much less dependent on copyright. A world without copyright does in my opinion not correspond to any open-source license that I am aware of: you are allowed to reverse-engineer and distribute any software that you want and you must not forbid this to any person using your software or any work derived from it, but nobody is obliged to provide any source code. In my personal opinion such a license is a gap in the "market of open source licenses", so if some reader feels inspired to create such an open-source license, I utterly encourage the respective reader to do so.

pharmakom 4y ago

Copyleft is a defensive measure in a hostile environment. If there were no copy laws at all then they wouldn't argue for them.

kube-system 4y ago
I think you're painting with quite a broad brush. There are absolutely people who support copyleft because they do not want 'intermediaries' to be able to distribute binaries alone. e.g. GNU.
abigail95 4y ago
If copyleft means restricting freedoms on what you can do with software and preserving those rights on derivative works (GPL) - then 100% no, those people need copyright laws to enforce that. With no copyright law I could take any GPL software, modify it, sell it as my own and nobody could force me to give up the code. If copyleft means permissive (MIT) - then it's not a hostile environment. You are free to create and share permissive works with no hostility from anyone else.

soulofmischief 4y ago

The heart of the copyleft movement is not to remove all government regulation. You can have a problem with copyright laws in their current form while still supporting the copyleft movement.

abigail95 4y ago
To make what this guy did legal would require overhauling 300 years of law. It's a ridiculous position. Especially given the hypocrisy in supporting copyleft, which lets people distribute works gratis with heavy restrictions, and ripping off other peoples work who didn't want any part of that, while getting mad that people aren't following the copyleft restrictions.

sedatk 4y ago

> What was its purpose then? Clout, reputation, group identity, coolness factor. It's similar to how demoscene operates.

coldacid 4y ago
>It's similar to how demoscene operates. Considering that the demoscene spun off the cracking scene...

beardedwizard 4y ago

They did it for the thrill and because they could. It was a different time.

BLKNSLVR 4y ago
I still do things for the thrill and because I can, and I'm well into adulthood. That's what makes life fun and interesting and there doesn't have to be a 'point' that anyone else understands. But sometimes I still try to do things I can't - I currently have a broken wrist.

bentley 4y ago

Only some free software licenses rely heavily on copyright law as their primary mechanism. Permissive licensing, or something like it, would continue to exist if copyright as a concept disappeared tomorrow.

kube-system 4y ago
Permissive licenses are not public domain waivers, they usually have some other disclaimers of liability, a requirement to include that provision in all copies, etc. In a world without copyright, OSS devs will need to find another way to shield themselves from liability. However, what would realistically happen in a hypothetical world without copyright, is that commercial organizations will stop most OSS development and revert to distributing obfuscated binaries.
shagie 4y ago
While I am generally in favor of permissive licensing and accept the corresponding "yes, the code can get incorporated into other projects"... That same copyright law protects my photographs. I am generally in favor of strong copyright laws. There are also philosophies of software licensing that want to ensure that the user can have access to the code that uses my code. Under those philosophies, it is the protections granted by the limited right to prepare derivative works that allow that licensing to have teeth and enforce a copy left. Without copyright, the GPL and corresponding licensing that is written with the desire to be able to guarantee the 2nd and 4th freedoms (access to the source for some product and ability to modify the code for that product) have no teeth and those cannot be guaranteed.

petsfed 4y ago

I think his position is a little more nuanced than that. >The bottom line, what I did violated the laws governing copyrights. I don't agree with those laws 100%, but they were designed by people with lots of money in their pockets to keep lots of money in their pockets, so I doubt they're going to change for the better any time soon. This is why I'm a huge advocate for the open source community. I understood that to mean "the open source community specifically addresses the flaws in a system that it cannot itself abolish, so I support them".

abigail95 4y ago
I'm sorry, I have no patience for "rich man bad" takes on copyright. Copyright law protects the smallest against the biggest. If some company comes and steals my product and outspends me on marketing, how do I fight back without copyright law? Say someone stole the book I wrote and passed it off as their own - how does open sourcing it help me? The chief purpose of the DMCA was to clarify legal liability and penalties for digital copyright infringement brought on by the disruption of the internet. How does that keep anyone rich? Who is that taking money from? Who is made poorer because people are able to create and sell their own works in the manner of their choosing?

ilyt 4y ago

> Why do people like him think copyright laws are bad and made by rich people, but also support open source software, which relies on the same copyright laws to exist. Because they have more nuanced thoughts that you think ? "A copyright law" is not a one thing. DMCA doesn't touch OSS software for example. It could entirely go away. Length of copyright protection could be 5 years from creation instead of 70y from authors death and it would do near jack squat to OSS software. Ye you could use 5y worth of unfixed bugs and ignore OSS license but that wouldn't exactly hurt most projects.

wdhilliard 4y ago

While it's possible that he did it for clout or as a FU to software companies, I think many people, including myself, pirated software in the early days of computing because the software itself was rare and cool. There were no demos back then to try software before you buy, and many people used software like Photoshop, Flash, 3D Max, etc for personal projects that made no profit. Even today, it's hard to justify paying $600 for a program that you aren't sure you actually like just to hopefully create some cool stuff to show your friends. As for the "people that actually write software", I couldn't care less. It's been shown over and over that piracy never made the effect on thier bottom line that large software companies led many to believe. Simply put, people didn't buy these things because they considered them overpriced luxuries for simple hobbyists. The only choice was to pirate the software, or to never get to use it. As someone who writes software myself, I have no sympathy for people who want harsh punishments for someone who steals their stupid little program. Sure you put hard work into it, but so did a lot of people who offer their software for free. Generally, my thought is that these people are more upset that their software failed to make the impact that they thought it would or failed to generate the profit that they had dreamed of. Piracy was never at fault for either of those. They need to cope

abigail95 4y ago
I sell software, I wouldn't do it if I couldn't retain ownership of it. I don't care how much work I put into it, I don't care how much money its worth. I don't care about its impact. I create because it's mine and I control it. The hands that built it decide what happens to it. I could paint the prettiest picture and then burn it forever and nobody has any right to stop me, no matter how many poor hobbiest art admirers wanted to see it.

thomastjeffery 4y ago

Copyright is about monopoly. That's the antithesis of freedom. Copyleft is a hack that turns monopoly inside-out. All for one, and one for all. Without copyright, copyleft would be fundamentally broken. But that isn't the whole picture: anything under a permissive license like MIT or Apache2 would see the same result they implement today. Those are part of "open source", too. And we could certainly come up with a different system to maintain copyleft: we could make regulation that preserves a user's right to edit their software, and bans practices like DRM and intentional incompatibility. That's what I imagine the "open source movement" would look like if it were brought to an extreme logical conclusion.

abigail95 4y ago
> bans practices like DRM and intentional incompatibility more restrictions on the road to copyright freedom if restricting what people are allowed to do with software is bad, why does that make it acceptable to create more restirctions on what people can do with software. once we have 1,000 pages of restrictions closing all the interop and drm loopholes - our software will truely be free

aleph_minus_one 4y ago

> Why do people like him think copyright laws are bad and made by rich people, but also support open source software, which relies on the same copyright laws to exist. There are quite very different open-source licenses. Copyleft licenses do depends on copyright, that is true. On the other hand, typical non-copyleft licenses are in my opinion much less dependent on copyright. A world without copyright does in my opinion not correspond to any open-source license that I am aware of: you are allowed to reverse-engineer and distribute any software that you want and you must not forbid this to any person using your software or any work derived from it, but nobody is obliged to provide any source code. In my personal opinion such a license is a gap in the "market of open source licenses", so if some reader feels inspired to create such an open-source license, I utterly encourage the respective reader to do so.