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Your initial argument was "art is not a charity" - i.e. people don't produce quality artistic work unless there is a financial incentive, for which copyright is

Your initial argument was "art is not a charity" - i.e. people don't produce quality artistic work unless there is a financial incentive, for which copyright is an essential requirement. Now you have carved out three or four different exceptions to that rule and seem to be reshaping your argument into some sort of class-struggle narrative between wealthy authors and middle class authors. That is very different than what you were initially asserting. If anything, you're presenting an argument for a universal basic income so that people have leisure time that they can use for creative purposes, not an argument for copyright as an essential catalyst for creativity.

ethanbond 3y ago
Let’s say someone proposes that all code any individual or company writes must be made publicly available immediately upon authoring. After all, some people choose to write OSS and do so voluntarily. Are you also confused by the statement, “software engineering is a profession, not a charity” in the context of that argument? I’ve found the only people who claim to struggle to understand this are motivated in a particular direction (the “we should be allowed to profit from others work” crowd). I’ll restate it more specifically for the literalists: art is both a profession and a hobby (as clarified in my second comment and as is self-evident to everyone on the planet). If you’re using the existence of the hobbyist creator as an excuse to capture the economic value of the professional creator, you’re 1) an asshole and 2) likely to destroy much of the incentive that allows professional creators to get as good as they are today and in such diverse forms, from such diverse perspectives (especially in the memetic diversity sense, which I care most about). > some sort of class-struggle narrative The history of funding methods is one of the most informative lenses one can apply to art history. It literally distorts the historical record (oh it turns out the only good artists in the world were those painting church stories eh!). The economic history is real and isn’t changed by your dismissive reference as “some sort of narrative.” > you’re presenting an argument for UBI No I’m not. I’m presenting an argument for forbidding AI companies from rent-seeking on other people’s work and destroying the incentive to continue producing original work.

ethanbond 3y ago

Let’s say someone proposes that all code any individual or company writes must be made publicly available immediately upon authoring. After all, some people choose to write OSS and do so voluntarily. Are you also confused by the statement, “software engineering is a profession, not a charity” in the context of that argument? I’ve found the only people who claim to struggle to understand this are motivated in a particular direction (the “we should be allowed to profit from others work” crowd). I’ll restate it more specifically for the literalists: art is both a profession and a hobby (as clarified in my second comment and as is self-evident to everyone on the planet). If you’re using the existence of the hobbyist creator as an excuse to capture the economic value of the professional creator, you’re 1) an asshole and 2) likely to destroy much of the incentive that allows professional creators to get as good as they are today and in such diverse forms, from such diverse perspectives (especially in the memetic diversity sense, which I care most about). > some sort of class-struggle narrative The history of funding methods is one of the most informative lenses one can apply to art history. It literally distorts the historical record (oh it turns out the only good artists in the world were those painting church stories eh!). The economic history is real and isn’t changed by your dismissive reference as “some sort of narrative.” > you’re presenting an argument for UBI No I’m not. I’m presenting an argument for forbidding AI companies from rent-seeking on other people’s work and destroying the incentive to continue producing original work.