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Maybe you'd have more luck if you tried to address the specific problems with copyright law, rather than attack the massively larger, mostly unrelated and somew

by floor2 2y ago

Maybe you'd have more luck if you tried to address the specific problems with copyright law, rather than attack the massively larger, mostly unrelated and somewhat abstract and nebulous concept of "capitalism". You could just as well argue that since these laws were created under democracy, that this is the unacceptable face of democracy. We don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. We can get a broad coalition of people from diverse backgrounds and beliefs to agree that the current copyright laws need to be changed, but tying that to extremist political stances works against that progress.

nonrandomstring 2y ago
You make a very good point. It's a clumsy catch-all and lazy of me. One could very well say; unacceptable face of greed unacceptable face of idolatry (money) unacceptable face of exploitation unacceptable face of dehumanisation unacceptable face of power inequality Capitalism contains all of these, plus an unparalleled ability to create wealth, growth and innovation. For whatever reasons we weight these last qualities over and above the downsides. So I hesitate. Should I use "capitalism" as a shortcut for all the bad things... or not be lazy and list them fully. Sadly we live in the age of efficiency. As for "intellectual property" (perhaps the laziest of all catch-alls to kludge together a bunch of unrelated concepts); One could not just as well "argue these laws are unacceptable face of democracy" because they were never created "under democracy". Sure they persist under democracy, but mainly because they are extremely hard to dismantle. And other than the Pirate Party I am unaware of a political group in recent history that has ever made it a policy point. In fact they come from a lineage of censorship laws that were created under conditions of extraordinary tyranny in the seventeenth century that involved the public burning alive of dissident publishers. Eventually the Statute of Ann consolidated these twice repealed and resurrected laws into a notionally "legitimate" Copyright. Anyway you can read all about that in any honest history of English law like Lessig's. What we're left with in 2024 is a set of almost insoluble power relations that can probably never be reformed in law. They will have to be over-run by de-facto progress. Much as I dislike many aspects of "AI" it is at least a fundamental challenge to the absurdity of "intellectual property" and may have the power to clear away much of what is rotten. That's why I wrote [0] [0] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/2048-information-unchained-and-even-schoolgirls-win-nobel-prizes https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/2048-informatio...

by floor2 2y ago

nonrandomstring 2y ago

You make a very good point. It's a clumsy catch-all and lazy of me. One could very well say; unacceptable face of greed unacceptable face of idolatry (money) unacceptable face of exploitation unacceptable face of dehumanisation unacceptable face of power inequality Capitalism contains all of these, plus an unparalleled ability to create wealth, growth and innovation. For whatever reasons we weight these last qualities over and above the downsides. So I hesitate. Should I use "capitalism" as a shortcut for all the bad things... or not be lazy and list them fully. Sadly we live in the age of efficiency. As for "intellectual property" (perhaps the laziest of all catch-alls to kludge together a bunch of unrelated concepts); One could not just as well "argue these laws are unacceptable face of democracy" because they were never created "under democracy". Sure they persist under democracy, but mainly because they are extremely hard to dismantle. And other than the Pirate Party I am unaware of a political group in recent history that has ever made it a policy point. In fact they come from a lineage of censorship laws that were created under conditions of extraordinary tyranny in the seventeenth century that involved the public burning alive of dissident publishers. Eventually the Statute of Ann consolidated these twice repealed and resurrected laws into a notionally "legitimate" Copyright. Anyway you can read all about that in any honest history of English law like Lessig's. What we're left with in 2024 is a set of almost insoluble power relations that can probably never be reformed in law. They will have to be over-run by de-facto progress. Much as I dislike many aspects of "AI" it is at least a fundamental challenge to the absurdity of "intellectual property" and may have the power to clear away much of what is rotten. That's why I wrote [0] [0] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/2048-information-unchained-and-even-schoolgirls-win-nobel-prizes https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/2048-informatio...