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How can anyone take seriously the notion that anyone who has written a book and seeks to earn money from people who want to read it is a "monopolist"?
by emodendroket 4y ago
How can anyone take seriously the notion that anyone who has written a book and seeks to earn money from people who want to read it is a "monopolist"?
- matheusmoreira 4y agoNothing wrong with wanting to get paid. They're monopolists because their means to that end is a literal monopoly. Created something? Government gives you an essentially eternal monopoly on it. In other words: if you're a copyright holder, you're a monopolist. It really is that simple. I suppose I'm also a monopolist.
- emodendroket 4y agoThat’s not true. You can just read something else.
- matheusmoreira 4y agoI didn't say copyright holders had a monopoly on reading though. I said they had monopolies on "their" works.
- emodendroket 4y agoThen the concept is meaningless. If we go with your definition, Toyota now has a "monopoly" on Toyota Camrys, even though there are quite a few comparable cars for sale from other manufacturers.
- realusername 4y agoHow much of the common culture is free from copyright and how much belongs to megacorps? It's really a monopoly
- emodendroket 4y agoQuite a lot of books or characters I’d expect most people to recognize are in the public domain, to be honest.
- carom 4y agoDo you not have a monopoly on your work?
- AstixAndBelix 4y agoBecause ideas are not property. Are mathematical theorems property? No, because someone who proved the theorem "owns" it just as much as someone who has studied the proof and learned it by heart. And what about independently discovered theorems? Who owns the idea in that case? Curiously when we talk about science where there is no money, the knowledge is ownerless, but when we talk about engineering where there is money to be made, suddenly inventions are property. The moment "your" idea travels from your brain to my brain it becomes "my" idea too. Just like a digital file that gets copied from one computer to another is the exact same file, bit for bit. It's senseless to talk about "original" in that case.
- emodendroket 4y agoConsider that copyright protects a presentation of a recipe but not the recipe itself and you will realize that “ideas” are not copyright protects.
- AstixAndBelix 4y agoIntellectual property and copyright are not the same thing. Also the presentation of something is an idea just like the something itself, so copyright is also a scam.
- mold_aid 4y agoThey are literally the same thing. "Intellectual property" comprises copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secrets. >Also the presentation of something is an idea just like the something itself, so This is exactly what copyright is. Copyright is based on the argument that the presentation of an idea is a unique correspondence to the idea, and constitutes a tangible item to which property value is attached. It's not intangible and ephemeral (an idea) or concrete and unremarkable (a piece of paper that the idea will be written on).
- precompute 4y agoSophistry. Intellectual work is indeed Work, and people who engage in it expect money for their service, otherwise, they're happier to not do it at all.
- narwally 4y agoCan you really not imagine any kind of system where everyone can pay their bills and knowledge isn't guarded behind a paywall?
- emodendroket 4y agoI can imagine various options but none of them would change the point I'm making.