3 ms·

> If they can't legally stop people from republishing IP, then they'll make it hard. Alternatively it changes the game on how things are built. Building in pub

by breck 4y ago

> If they can't legally stop people from republishing IP, then they'll make it hard. Alternatively it changes the game on how things are built. Building in public becomes the default, lowering the cost for all. You'd expect a short term variance (downward) while the system adjusts, but in the long run it'd be much cheaper to produce great works, since your material costs will be lower (no royalties) and you wouldn't burn resources on the security and bureaucratic hoops you have to go through today to build and integrate ideas. Monopoly profits would be finished though. So yes, <1% of the population would arguably be worse off. (I'm in that group, btw).

paulmd 4y ago
I think the "building in public" approach has been a failure though. Unreal Tournament didn't work. Crowdfunding can work, but I think people probably are leery of that for larger projects or studios without a track record of success. And with a project like Unreal Tournament you're not going to get the flood of hat money and other MTX bullshit that currently feeds studios. Even if you want to pay for a game pass, I can just give myself the game pass on my own local copy, and get all the same stuff right? I'm not entirely saying that (Jim Sterling voice) "triple-A gaming" dying is the worst thing in the world mind you, but, we'd be talking about some really tectonic shifts in how things get built and I think the pot of addressable money is really a lot smaller. Hopefully it would lead to more passion projects and not just the death of the industry. Like I said I think patents have been a scourge, but copyright in the sense of owning the thing you wrote, is less problematic. Derivative works are the problem case that I've previously talked about though since I think humans go through our world deriving and remixing everything we see and touch and that's not a bad thing. And AI is going to make all of this very problematic in not-very-many years either, 5-10 years and AIs will be writing great software and making great creative works without significant human intervention. Once we move past capitalism as a concept, then yes, by all means these things can go away too ;)

by breck 4y ago

paulmd 4y ago

I think the "building in public" approach has been a failure though. Unreal Tournament didn't work. Crowdfunding can work, but I think people probably are leery of that for larger projects or studios without a track record of success. And with a project like Unreal Tournament you're not going to get the flood of hat money and other MTX bullshit that currently feeds studios. Even if you want to pay for a game pass, I can just give myself the game pass on my own local copy, and get all the same stuff right? I'm not entirely saying that (Jim Sterling voice) "triple-A gaming" dying is the worst thing in the world mind you, but, we'd be talking about some really tectonic shifts in how things get built and I think the pot of addressable money is really a lot smaller. Hopefully it would lead to more passion projects and not just the death of the industry. Like I said I think patents have been a scourge, but copyright in the sense of owning the thing you wrote, is less problematic. Derivative works are the problem case that I've previously talked about though since I think humans go through our world deriving and remixing everything we see and touch and that's not a bad thing. And AI is going to make all of this very problematic in not-very-many years either, 5-10 years and AIs will be writing great software and making great creative works without significant human intervention. Once we move past capitalism as a concept, then yes, by all means these things can go away too ;)