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If I install the plumbing in your house, you don't pay me every time you have a shower. I'm willing to concede an artist might be "better" than a plumber (comme

If I install the plumbing in your house, you don't pay me every time you have a shower. I'm willing to concede an artist might be "better" than a plumber (commercially), but if copyright is intended to incentivise production of art, then 7 years seems perfectly reasonable time to let a work accrue some money before it goes into the public domain. 7+7 was in fact how copyright first existed.

auggierose 3y ago
Reading comments like yours convinces me that open sourcing my stuff wouldn't be a good idea. I very much like the idea that I own what I created. At least as long as owning stuff is how society works.
- ProxCoques 3y ago
  Yes! That worked for Linus Torvalds! Oh, wait... https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-businessmen/linus-torvalds-net-worth/ https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-businessmen/linus-...
  - auggierose 3y ago
    50 Million for the most successful open-source project(s) of all time? That is peanuts. If you want to make money, open-sourcing your work seems to be a very hard way of doing so.
    - Brian_K_White 3y ago
      What is the value of all the software I've been able to use all my life for free? What is the value of the fact that all of that software behaved sanely and in my interests at all times? Both are basically incalculable. There is more than dollars to consider in the equation, and there are even many dollars too, merely indirectly.
tanseydavid 3y ago
Plumber does job work based on agreed price in advance and gets paid for every job. The artist has no sort of guarantee of income from any particular piece of work or really even subsistence from their entire life's output of work. I think most people would agree that the physical trades and the arts are not well-suited for comparisons. They are just fundamentally too different.
- ProxCoques 3y ago
  > I think most people would agree that the physical trades and the arts are not well-suited for comparisons. How is the writing of a book, the production of a movie or the recording of a song any different from the building of a bridge, the drafting of a contract, or the provision of management consultancy? How are they "fundamentally too different" if it's not the way we pay for them? But more importantly, how is is that we see this difference as so fundamental that we afford protection to an artist (or more accurately, their publishers and the industry that surrounds them) via copyright for so long?
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    Simple. If I fashion a shovel and sell it to you, the value I got is the $20 or whatever, and the value you got is the indefinite use of one shovel. You do not get to clone the shovel by magic for about .1 cent and sell 50M copies of it for $20 each for the next forever.
    - ProxCoques 3y ago
      If the copyright system existed for shovels in that analogy, nobody else could make a shovel like yours during your lifetime, and for about 50 years after that, during which time your rights holders would get rich and shovel design would stand still. Again - the copyright system as it currently exists needs to die. 7 years protection is enuogh.
      - Brian_K_White 3y ago

auggierose 3y ago

Reading comments like yours convinces me that open sourcing my stuff wouldn't be a good idea. I very much like the idea that I own what I created. At least as long as owning stuff is how society works.

ProxCoques 3y ago
Yes! That worked for Linus Torvalds! Oh, wait... https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-businessmen/linus-torvalds-net-worth/ https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-businessmen/linus-...
- auggierose 3y ago
  50 Million for the most successful open-source project(s) of all time? That is peanuts. If you want to make money, open-sourcing your work seems to be a very hard way of doing so.
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    What is the value of all the software I've been able to use all my life for free? What is the value of the fact that all of that software behaved sanely and in my interests at all times? Both are basically incalculable. There is more than dollars to consider in the equation, and there are even many dollars too, merely indirectly.

tanseydavid 3y ago

Plumber does job work based on agreed price in advance and gets paid for every job. The artist has no sort of guarantee of income from any particular piece of work or really even subsistence from their entire life's output of work. I think most people would agree that the physical trades and the arts are not well-suited for comparisons. They are just fundamentally too different.

ProxCoques 3y ago
> I think most people would agree that the physical trades and the arts are not well-suited for comparisons. How is the writing of a book, the production of a movie or the recording of a song any different from the building of a bridge, the drafting of a contract, or the provision of management consultancy? How are they "fundamentally too different" if it's not the way we pay for them? But more importantly, how is is that we see this difference as so fundamental that we afford protection to an artist (or more accurately, their publishers and the industry that surrounds them) via copyright for so long?
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  Simple. If I fashion a shovel and sell it to you, the value I got is the $20 or whatever, and the value you got is the indefinite use of one shovel. You do not get to clone the shovel by magic for about .1 cent and sell 50M copies of it for $20 each for the next forever.
  - ProxCoques 3y ago
    If the copyright system existed for shovels in that analogy, nobody else could make a shovel like yours during your lifetime, and for about 50 years after that, during which time your rights holders would get rich and shovel design would stand still. Again - the copyright system as it currently exists needs to die. 7 years protection is enuogh.
    - Brian_K_White 3y ago