4 ms·

No, rent seeking is the end game of regulations. The only reason publishers can pull this kind of stuff is copyright law and the Berne Convention; "we're just p

by pdonis 4y ago

No, rent seeking is the end game of regulations. The only reason publishers can pull this kind of stuff is copyright law and the Berne Convention; "we're just protecting copyrights!" is what gets them the political support they need to get away with it.

coldtea 4y ago
And who said regulations are not an inherent part of capitalism? After capitalists have acquired wealth, they'll use it to get the regulations they want. Sure, you can imagine a society with capitalism and no regulations. But that would be a wish, not something you can bring about (or that ever occured for long). In fact, when unregulated capitalism is left free things get even worse for the little man and the small business or upstart: they can be crushed with no regulations to protect them. People not liking this doesn't matter. The power is on the ones with the money and the connections, which would be the capitalists, not with the masses who think voting means they rule. And if we restrict it purely to copyright laws, who said removing them only makes things better? Million creators getting paid because of copyright - authors, recording artists, session musicians, illustrators, movie crews, programmers, etc would beg to differ.
- pdonis 4y ago
  The post I responded to said "especially with minimal regulations". That's what I was responding to. I said nothing about regulations and capitalism being incompatible. Of course they're not, although capitalists love it when people think capitalism means the same thing as "free markets" and therefore regulations are opposed to capitalism. Great camouflage. As for ordinary people's opinion not mattering, it matters because it affects what the capitalists, and more generally the people in power, can get away with. That's why capitalists like the camouflage of people confusing capitalism and free markets.
  - aleph_minus_one 4y ago
    > Of course they're not, although capitalists love it when people think capitalism means the same thing as "free markets" and therefore regulations are opposed to capitalism. Great camouflage. Why should capitalists love it when people think that regulations (which also include copyright, patent law, trademark law, ...) are opposed to capitalism?
    - pdonis 4y ago
      Because it means people think the regulations are for their (the people's) benefit, instead of being for the benefit of the capitalists, as they actually are.
    - smsm42 4y ago
      Because there's a difference between the benefit to the whole society and the benefit to a particular person. If one person can set up things so that resources flow to him without him contributing any value in return, it's great for the person, but bad for the society. Some regulations work exactly in this way. It's great for certain people occupying profitable positions, and if it's less great for everybody else - well, sucks to be everybody else, tough luck. "Capitalists" are just people living in the system, and some of them would seek such positions if available, and love it if they successfully occupy them. Those are the people that think it's ok to demand money from people singing "Happy Birthday to You". Why wouldn't they love it? Yes, it's not good to everybody else, but it's good for them.
    - kevviiinn 4y ago
      Capitalists love it when people think that regulations are opposed to capitalism because then people will generally be against regulations, this allows capitalists to get away with things that make them greater profits like not disposing of waste properly or capturing markets with monopolistic practices
comte7092 4y ago
Interesting you consider copyright to be a regulation rather than a definition of a property right. To the extent that private property is an essential component of capitalism, and that intellectual property is a component of private property, your classification of copyright as a regulation rather than capitalism itself makes little sense.
- pdonis 4y ago
  > intellectual property is a component of private property That is precisely the question that is disputed in discussions of copyright. "Intellectual property" in itself is an ambiguous term: does it mean the ideas themselves, or particular expressions of them? Copyright law says the latter: ideas themselves cannot be copyrighted (or patented), only particular expressions of them can. That is because ideas are non-rivalrous: people can give them to others without losing the use of them themselves. That takes away the justification for private property rights, namely, to avoid conflicts over who gets to use the property. Prior to computers and the Internet, one could argue that particular copies of a particular expression of an idea, such as a book, were rivalrous: I can't both give a book to you and read it myself at the same time. But with digital copies that is no longer true. So the same logic that makes ideas themselves not private property, now pushes us towards not treating copies of digital works as private property either. The original justification for copyright law was to encourage people to create works. But that was always a questionable claim, because nobody creates works in a vacuum. From the standpoint of creation, the Internet has made clear that many more works get created when there is free sharing of digital copies. And the Internet has also enabled other ways of paying people whose creative works you like, besides having to pay for individual copies; that's what systems like Patreon are for. So that original justification for copyright law has now lost whatever validity it once had. The best piece of evidence for who really benefits from copyright law, though, is who is pushing hardest for draconian enforcement of it. Is that content creators, i.e., actual authors and artists and musicians, etc.? No. It's the media companies, whose business model depends on being able to, not to put too fine a point on it, exploit content creators by convincing them that working through the media companies is the only way to get them a large audience--and then siphoning off most of the profits for themselves instead of paying them back to the creators.

by pdonis 4y ago

coldtea 4y ago

And who said regulations are not an inherent part of capitalism? After capitalists have acquired wealth, they'll use it to get the regulations they want. Sure, you can imagine a society with capitalism and no regulations. But that would be a wish, not something you can bring about (or that ever occured for long). In fact, when unregulated capitalism is left free things get even worse for the little man and the small business or upstart: they can be crushed with no regulations to protect them. People not liking this doesn't matter. The power is on the ones with the money and the connections, which would be the capitalists, not with the masses who think voting means they rule. And if we restrict it purely to copyright laws, who said removing them only makes things better? Million creators getting paid because of copyright - authors, recording artists, session musicians, illustrators, movie crews, programmers, etc would beg to differ.

pdonis 4y ago
The post I responded to said "especially with minimal regulations". That's what I was responding to. I said nothing about regulations and capitalism being incompatible. Of course they're not, although capitalists love it when people think capitalism means the same thing as "free markets" and therefore regulations are opposed to capitalism. Great camouflage. As for ordinary people's opinion not mattering, it matters because it affects what the capitalists, and more generally the people in power, can get away with. That's why capitalists like the camouflage of people confusing capitalism and free markets.
- aleph_minus_one 4y ago
  > Of course they're not, although capitalists love it when people think capitalism means the same thing as "free markets" and therefore regulations are opposed to capitalism. Great camouflage. Why should capitalists love it when people think that regulations (which also include copyright, patent law, trademark law, ...) are opposed to capitalism?
  - pdonis 4y ago
    Because it means people think the regulations are for their (the people's) benefit, instead of being for the benefit of the capitalists, as they actually are.
  - smsm42 4y ago
    Because there's a difference between the benefit to the whole society and the benefit to a particular person. If one person can set up things so that resources flow to him without him contributing any value in return, it's great for the person, but bad for the society. Some regulations work exactly in this way. It's great for certain people occupying profitable positions, and if it's less great for everybody else - well, sucks to be everybody else, tough luck. "Capitalists" are just people living in the system, and some of them would seek such positions if available, and love it if they successfully occupy them. Those are the people that think it's ok to demand money from people singing "Happy Birthday to You". Why wouldn't they love it? Yes, it's not good to everybody else, but it's good for them.
  - kevviiinn 4y ago
    Capitalists love it when people think that regulations are opposed to capitalism because then people will generally be against regulations, this allows capitalists to get away with things that make them greater profits like not disposing of waste properly or capturing markets with monopolistic practices

comte7092 4y ago

Interesting you consider copyright to be a regulation rather than a definition of a property right. To the extent that private property is an essential component of capitalism, and that intellectual property is a component of private property, your classification of copyright as a regulation rather than capitalism itself makes little sense.

pdonis 4y ago
> intellectual property is a component of private property That is precisely the question that is disputed in discussions of copyright. "Intellectual property" in itself is an ambiguous term: does it mean the ideas themselves, or particular expressions of them? Copyright law says the latter: ideas themselves cannot be copyrighted (or patented), only particular expressions of them can. That is because ideas are non-rivalrous: people can give them to others without losing the use of them themselves. That takes away the justification for private property rights, namely, to avoid conflicts over who gets to use the property. Prior to computers and the Internet, one could argue that particular copies of a particular expression of an idea, such as a book, were rivalrous: I can't both give a book to you and read it myself at the same time. But with digital copies that is no longer true. So the same logic that makes ideas themselves not private property, now pushes us towards not treating copies of digital works as private property either. The original justification for copyright law was to encourage people to create works. But that was always a questionable claim, because nobody creates works in a vacuum. From the standpoint of creation, the Internet has made clear that many more works get created when there is free sharing of digital copies. And the Internet has also enabled other ways of paying people whose creative works you like, besides having to pay for individual copies; that's what systems like Patreon are for. So that original justification for copyright law has now lost whatever validity it once had. The best piece of evidence for who really benefits from copyright law, though, is who is pushing hardest for draconian enforcement of it. Is that content creators, i.e., actual authors and artists and musicians, etc.? No. It's the media companies, whose business model depends on being able to, not to put too fine a point on it, exploit content creators by convincing them that working through the media companies is the only way to get them a large audience--and then siphoning off most of the profits for themselves instead of paying them back to the creators.