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But doesn’t that conflict with the practicalities of economics? If everyone freely creates copies of what I produce, because they can, I can’t go buy things th

But doesn’t that conflict with the practicalities of economics? If everyone freely creates copies of what I produce, because they can, I can’t go buy things that can’t be easily replicated, like food or shelter. If IP is free for everyone, what do we do with all the people who need to live solely by producing IP?

narwally 4y ago
Do we actually need monetary incentives to get people to create new things. Won't people naturally keep creating new things as long as they aren't constrained by a more fundamental need? So we really just need to create a society where nobody has to worry about their basic needs like housing, food, healthcare, etc...and then people are free to create and are even free to fail while doing so.
- berniedurfee 4y ago
  I agree, but until we get to that new society and new economic system, people need to consider the creators. IP is often all they have.
realusername 4y ago
Maybe there's a middle-ground between zero IP and the near perpetual IP we have right now. Additionally, we must keep in mind in those debates that piracy causing loss of revenue has never been proven and is an urban legend.
- berniedurfee 4y ago
  Piracy (stealing) _has_ to cause loss of revenue. It’s right in the definition. There’s no way around it. There’s also a moral component to all this. Regardless of the calculus, if a creator says they don’t want to give their product away for free, that they’d like to be paid for every copy, we should respect that.
  - realusername 4y ago
    > Piracy (stealing) _has_ to cause loss of revenue. It’s right in the definition. There’s no way around it. No that's not, that's an urban legend, feel free to point me to some aggregated research studies proving this, the copyright lobbies never managed to prove that during multiple decades. Repeating something over and over again on TV by paid lobbyist doesn't make it true, you have to prove it. > Regardless of the calculus, if a creator says they don’t want to give their product away for free, that they’d like to be paid for every copy, we should respect that. That's debatable at best.
    - berniedurfee 4y ago
      If I produce a song and sell 1,000 copies for $1 each, but 1,000 copies are stolen by people who don’t pay me $1 for their copy, I get $1,000 instead of $2,000. That’s just how the math works out. Same as any other form of theft.
      - realusername 4y ago
        To start with, most of the copyright holders are actually dead since copyright right now is very long. That's going to be hard to state that you are preventing new Beatles songs by pirating the Beatles, they are not going to produce any new songs, regardless of what you do. Then in economics, free is different from any other price (even 1 cent), they have different behaviour and cannot be used interchangeably as demonstrated again and again during research. So no, your example is wrong, those people wouldn't have bought the song anyway and the total revenue from those people would be zero.
      - account42 4y ago
        Your entire premise that copyright infringement is theft is wrong. That is not the case, neither morally nor legally. As a result, your argumentation is flawed. The 1000 "pirated" copies were never copies that you had. Even in a world where you could magically prevent all sharing of information you would not have that many more copies sold.
  - account42 4y ago
frollo 4y ago
The whole Reinassence happened without copyright law and they did just fine. In fact, a lot of masterpieces we have from that period would have been illegal under current IP law because they were the result of a lot of iteration on the same concepts by different artists.

narwally 4y ago

Do we actually need monetary incentives to get people to create new things. Won't people naturally keep creating new things as long as they aren't constrained by a more fundamental need? So we really just need to create a society where nobody has to worry about their basic needs like housing, food, healthcare, etc...and then people are free to create and are even free to fail while doing so.

berniedurfee 4y ago
I agree, but until we get to that new society and new economic system, people need to consider the creators. IP is often all they have.

realusername 4y ago

Maybe there's a middle-ground between zero IP and the near perpetual IP we have right now. Additionally, we must keep in mind in those debates that piracy causing loss of revenue has never been proven and is an urban legend.

berniedurfee 4y ago
Piracy (stealing) _has_ to cause loss of revenue. It’s right in the definition. There’s no way around it. There’s also a moral component to all this. Regardless of the calculus, if a creator says they don’t want to give their product away for free, that they’d like to be paid for every copy, we should respect that.
- realusername 4y ago
  > Piracy (stealing) _has_ to cause loss of revenue. It’s right in the definition. There’s no way around it. No that's not, that's an urban legend, feel free to point me to some aggregated research studies proving this, the copyright lobbies never managed to prove that during multiple decades. Repeating something over and over again on TV by paid lobbyist doesn't make it true, you have to prove it. > Regardless of the calculus, if a creator says they don’t want to give their product away for free, that they’d like to be paid for every copy, we should respect that. That's debatable at best.
  - berniedurfee 4y ago
    If I produce a song and sell 1,000 copies for $1 each, but 1,000 copies are stolen by people who don’t pay me $1 for their copy, I get $1,000 instead of $2,000. That’s just how the math works out. Same as any other form of theft.
    - realusername 4y ago
      To start with, most of the copyright holders are actually dead since copyright right now is very long. That's going to be hard to state that you are preventing new Beatles songs by pirating the Beatles, they are not going to produce any new songs, regardless of what you do. Then in economics, free is different from any other price (even 1 cent), they have different behaviour and cannot be used interchangeably as demonstrated again and again during research. So no, your example is wrong, those people wouldn't have bought the song anyway and the total revenue from those people would be zero.
    - account42 4y ago
      Your entire premise that copyright infringement is theft is wrong. That is not the case, neither morally nor legally. As a result, your argumentation is flawed. The 1000 "pirated" copies were never copies that you had. Even in a world where you could magically prevent all sharing of information you would not have that many more copies sold.
- account42 4y ago

frollo 4y ago

The whole Reinassence happened without copyright law and they did just fine. In fact, a lot of masterpieces we have from that period would have been illegal under current IP law because they were the result of a lot of iteration on the same concepts by different artists.