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Yes. I am an anti-copyright extremist. May the best implementation win. Otherwise, everyone loses out so that one individual can artificially collect rent thr

Yes. I am an anti-copyright extremist. May the best implementation win. Otherwise, everyone loses out so that one individual can artificially collect rent through a government-enforced monopoly. Accelerate.

hatthew 1y ago
Downwards acceleration is free
ordinaryradical 1y ago
I write novels. What am I supposed to do to earn in this new, copyright-free regime where anyone is free to “implement” my novels?
- idle_zealot 1y ago
  Attract an audience and ask for patronage or get a job writing on behalf of an employer.
  - martin-t 1y ago
    So basically instead of doing real work (positive sum games - producing value), everyone has to either: a) invest more and more energy into self-promotion, advertisement, etc. (zero- or negative-sum games) or b) flat out give a part of their income to people who are already richer than them?
    - idle_zealot 1y ago
      > a) invest more and more energy into self-promotion, advertisement, etc. (zero- or negative-sum games) How is advertising a book you've written and are selling different than advertising your writing or skills to potential patrons and clients with regard to being negative-sum? b) flat out give a part of their income to people who are already richer than them? Who said anything about the relative wealth or patrons and authors? People seem totally willing to subscribe to people whose creative output they value. Sometimes such patronage is barely enough to live, sometimes it's an impressive total sum.
      - martin-t 1y ago
        re a) For starters, the difference is you already have a product which people can judge vs you claim you're gonna produce something great. Anybody can lie, some people can lie very well. Even ruling out malice (which many people underestimate), people just end up not keeping their promises. Would you pay GRRM for the finished Winds of winter? Would you fall for him asking for money to write it a few years ago? re b) An employer ("user") is generally richer than the person they're employing ("using"). The reason they can employ people and people are willing to be employed is because they have access to tools such as trademarks, patents, other employees or advertising budgets the employee ("person used") does not. It's a relationship where power is fundamentally imbalanced.
  - heavyset_go 1y ago
    Leads to a class system where those who actually create for society are parasitically leeched on by a class whose wealth only exists because of another government enforced monopoly.
    - logicchains 1y ago
      > those who actually create for society If someone's unable to find anyone willing to pay them in advance for their work or purchase a subscription, is their work really creating much value to society?
      - tobias3 1y ago
        Why would someone that is somewhat constrained w.r.t. spending pay for something they would get for free?
        martin-t 1y ago
        In fact, if _just taking_ someone else's material possessions (rather than intellectual work) was legal, why would anyone build anything they can't physically protect themselves? A lot of the people bashing on copyright seem to have no concept of the second order effects abolishing copyright would have and no intention to game it out. Copyright has issues. For example it protects corporations instead of individual creators and workers. But not having it means rich people who own brands and have access to massive advertising can just take someone's work and make money from it while contributing nothing of value by themselves.
    - Cheer2171 1y ago
      It's called feudalism. The lords have a monopoly not just on the means of production, they own the full stack of society and economy in their domain.
      - heavyset_go 1y ago
        Saying the quiet part out loud usually doesn't play well on HN, evidently
  - Cheer2171 1y ago
    We had a few very violent revolutions and civil wars to get out of feudalism and patronage, and I can't believe how many techies want to take us back.
    - martin-t 1y ago
      I wonder how many people see themselves as just temporarily embarrassed millionaires so they sympathize with the upper class where they feel like they should belong. Or they just have no mental model of how incentives work. All this talk about abolishing copyright coming from people whose job literally consists of creating intellectual property. I have never seen one of them try to think it through and come up with the new equilibrium a world without copyright would settle into.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
martin-t 1y ago
Ever since I learned that my open source work was stolen and is being resold to me (laundered through statistical algorithms) without any credit or compensation, I stopped writing open source. Any copy-left code is basically free to be used in closed source software, as long as it's not a verbatim copy? Count me out. LLMs are used to subvert the spirit of GPL, if not the letter.
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  That's where I'm at as an author of several popular open source libraries. That's it, they're in maintenance mode and I'm not releasing anything again in the future. My model used to be to build products and spin off components into generic open source libraries others could use, and some caught on. Now I'm just keeping them for myself or attempting to monetize them somehow.
  - tobias3 1y ago
    Coming to about the same conclusion here. Companies are using my AGPLv3 project without following the license already and enforcing the license seems bleak with not much gain for me. Now they can just copyright-wash it through AI models.
johnnyanmac 1y ago
That's why I'm not an anti-copyright extremist. I've seen enough examples where the best implementation does not in fact win, but merely the one that put the most money into shoving it into people's eyeballs. Or the most money into scaling up production from a small business' idea. The rich will still abuse it, but copyright gives smaller creators some channel to fight back with. It's another means to prevent the rich from getting richer without compensating those who helped get them there. It's basically what powers places like YCombinator; Why would someone pay for your pitch instead of hearing it and going to shop for the lowest bidder to implement it? >Otherwise, everyone loses out so that one individual can artificially collect rent through a government-enforced monopoly. copyright isn't on ideas, it's on implementation. And experience also tells me there's dozens of ways to skin a sheep. Especially in an industry like tech. You try to rest on your laurels protecting your idea, and someone else will just improve on the idea with a new one. There can be a few BS copyrighted ideas, but for the most part you are only copyrighting a very small part of how something works. Not the very idea of making a rounded square phone.
- martin-t 1y ago
  > I've seen enough examples where the best implementation does not in fact win, but merely the one that put the most money into shoving it into people's eyeballs. I thought that was the default? Are there honestly _any_ examples of the best implementation winning against a solid advertising budget? Copyright certainly needs improvement but in the direction of protecting individual creators from mass exploitation, not abolishing it to remove one more restriction from what the rich can monetize to get more rich.
- gametorch 1y ago
  Why would I buy the worse alternative? It doesn't make any sense to me. Genuinely curious.

hatthew 1y ago

Downwards acceleration is free

ordinaryradical 1y ago

I write novels. What am I supposed to do to earn in this new, copyright-free regime where anyone is free to “implement” my novels?

idle_zealot 1y ago
Attract an audience and ask for patronage or get a job writing on behalf of an employer.
- martin-t 1y ago
  So basically instead of doing real work (positive sum games - producing value), everyone has to either: a) invest more and more energy into self-promotion, advertisement, etc. (zero- or negative-sum games) or b) flat out give a part of their income to people who are already richer than them?
  - idle_zealot 1y ago
    > a) invest more and more energy into self-promotion, advertisement, etc. (zero- or negative-sum games) How is advertising a book you've written and are selling different than advertising your writing or skills to potential patrons and clients with regard to being negative-sum? b) flat out give a part of their income to people who are already richer than them? Who said anything about the relative wealth or patrons and authors? People seem totally willing to subscribe to people whose creative output they value. Sometimes such patronage is barely enough to live, sometimes it's an impressive total sum.
    - martin-t 1y ago
      re a) For starters, the difference is you already have a product which people can judge vs you claim you're gonna produce something great. Anybody can lie, some people can lie very well. Even ruling out malice (which many people underestimate), people just end up not keeping their promises. Would you pay GRRM for the finished Winds of winter? Would you fall for him asking for money to write it a few years ago? re b) An employer ("user") is generally richer than the person they're employing ("using"). The reason they can employ people and people are willing to be employed is because they have access to tools such as trademarks, patents, other employees or advertising budgets the employee ("person used") does not. It's a relationship where power is fundamentally imbalanced.
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  Leads to a class system where those who actually create for society are parasitically leeched on by a class whose wealth only exists because of another government enforced monopoly.
  - logicchains 1y ago
    > those who actually create for society If someone's unable to find anyone willing to pay them in advance for their work or purchase a subscription, is their work really creating much value to society?
    - tobias3 1y ago
      Why would someone that is somewhat constrained w.r.t. spending pay for something they would get for free?
      - martin-t 1y ago
        In fact, if _just taking_ someone else's material possessions (rather than intellectual work) was legal, why would anyone build anything they can't physically protect themselves? A lot of the people bashing on copyright seem to have no concept of the second order effects abolishing copyright would have and no intention to game it out. Copyright has issues. For example it protects corporations instead of individual creators and workers. But not having it means rich people who own brands and have access to massive advertising can just take someone's work and make money from it while contributing nothing of value by themselves.
  - Cheer2171 1y ago
    It's called feudalism. The lords have a monopoly not just on the means of production, they own the full stack of society and economy in their domain.
    - heavyset_go 1y ago
      Saying the quiet part out loud usually doesn't play well on HN, evidently
- Cheer2171 1y ago
  We had a few very violent revolutions and civil wars to get out of feudalism and patronage, and I can't believe how many techies want to take us back.
  - martin-t 1y ago
    I wonder how many people see themselves as just temporarily embarrassed millionaires so they sympathize with the upper class where they feel like they should belong. Or they just have no mental model of how incentives work. All this talk about abolishing copyright coming from people whose job literally consists of creating intellectual property. I have never seen one of them try to think it through and come up with the new equilibrium a world without copyright would settle into.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

martin-t 1y ago

Ever since I learned that my open source work was stolen and is being resold to me (laundered through statistical algorithms) without any credit or compensation, I stopped writing open source. Any copy-left code is basically free to be used in closed source software, as long as it's not a verbatim copy? Count me out. LLMs are used to subvert the spirit of GPL, if not the letter.

heavyset_go 1y ago
That's where I'm at as an author of several popular open source libraries. That's it, they're in maintenance mode and I'm not releasing anything again in the future. My model used to be to build products and spin off components into generic open source libraries others could use, and some caught on. Now I'm just keeping them for myself or attempting to monetize them somehow.
- tobias3 1y ago
  Coming to about the same conclusion here. Companies are using my AGPLv3 project without following the license already and enforcing the license seems bleak with not much gain for me. Now they can just copyright-wash it through AI models.

johnnyanmac 1y ago

That's why I'm not an anti-copyright extremist. I've seen enough examples where the best implementation does not in fact win, but merely the one that put the most money into shoving it into people's eyeballs. Or the most money into scaling up production from a small business' idea. The rich will still abuse it, but copyright gives smaller creators some channel to fight back with. It's another means to prevent the rich from getting richer without compensating those who helped get them there. It's basically what powers places like YCombinator; Why would someone pay for your pitch instead of hearing it and going to shop for the lowest bidder to implement it? >Otherwise, everyone loses out so that one individual can artificially collect rent through a government-enforced monopoly. copyright isn't on ideas, it's on implementation. And experience also tells me there's dozens of ways to skin a sheep. Especially in an industry like tech. You try to rest on your laurels protecting your idea, and someone else will just improve on the idea with a new one. There can be a few BS copyrighted ideas, but for the most part you are only copyrighting a very small part of how something works. Not the very idea of making a rounded square phone.

martin-t 1y ago
> I've seen enough examples where the best implementation does not in fact win, but merely the one that put the most money into shoving it into people's eyeballs. I thought that was the default? Are there honestly _any_ examples of the best implementation winning against a solid advertising budget? Copyright certainly needs improvement but in the direction of protecting individual creators from mass exploitation, not abolishing it to remove one more restriction from what the rich can monetize to get more rich.
gametorch 1y ago
Why would I buy the worse alternative? It doesn't make any sense to me. Genuinely curious.