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There are countless cases of historical figures burning their unfinished works before their death. It's absolutely their right. I find it grotesque to feel you

There are countless cases of historical figures burning their unfinished works before their death. It's absolutely their right. I find it grotesque to feel you have a right to other people's work. You have don't nothing for them. They owe you nothing. You're just a faceless/nameless consumer that they don't know - who only cares about your own pleasure and not giving anything > What if we changed the laws so that they didn't have that right? I think it doesn't solve anything ultimately. It just makes things worse and more inconvenient. For instance piracy just made everything a SaaS where the code isn't even accessible and is on a server behind an API. If everyone can own and copy games, then business models will just shift to where nobody ever sells games and everyone just has to stream through some online service. Everyone will lose out

danlitt 1y ago
Unfinished works are a slightly different matter. I still disagree by and large with destroying them, but I can see the argument for it, especially when it is the explicit wish of the author. Published works are different: you released it, why? People publish art precisely so that it can be enjoyed by others. Your argument as stated seems to naively imply that if I write a book and decide later I'm embarrassed by it, I should be able to remotely destroy all the copies. That's probably an unfair reading and not what you meant, but there is nothing in your argument that rules it out. Sharing a creative work is a reciprocal act. The consumer (who usually pays for it, by the way) gets pleasure in enjoying the work, and the creator gets pleasure from their reputation and from feeling like they made something important. It is normal and healthy for both sides of that interaction to feel like they are a holistic part of the work. Why do you think so many people form communities around the kind of art they like? Bands are nothing if they have no fans, artists are nothing if they have no following. To just dismiss this as a nameless/faceless consumer is honestly not even offensive, I just don't believe you.
- contrarian1234 1y ago
  it's a nice argument. I mean it sincerely and it has changed my mind some But "It is normal and healthy for both sides of that interaction to feel like they are a holistic part of the work." This is just a bit ridiculous ... You person is creating and investing effort in to it and one is not. And the creator should dictate the terms under which he wishes to share his work. To follow your musical example. If a musican wants to do a performance once and not leave a record, why should he not? The audience isn't "part of the work" and thereby granted rights to a copy or to listen to it later
  - danlitt 1y ago
    That's very gracious of you to admit! Obviously "the creator should dictate ..." part I just disagree with. Incidentally note that what you say is actually much stronger than the real situation - in the real world, copyright is time-limited and subject to exceptions ("fair uses"). It does not sound like you agree with these justifications - if you do, then my position can be phrased more palatably as "I think the class of fair uses is broader than you do". About the specific moral question you pose: > If a musican wants to do a performance once and not leave a record, why should he not? Reversing the question is obviously, "If I want to record a performance I went to see, why should I not?". But I think this is easy to just answer directly. It is very hard to portray the musician who wants to prevent recording here sympathetically. Of course we can't appeal to the usual reasoning (that they're recording it themselves, and want to sell the recording) since you say they don't want it recorded at all. Maybe they want to sell an album, and they're playing the album in the show, and they want to keep recordings of those songs artificially scarce. So let's limit to the case where I record it for my personal use, and I'm not allowed to share it. Or I can sell the recording for the same price as the album, and I have to give it to the musician. What harm is there left for it to do? The only remaining thing I can say as the musician is "I don't like it and I created the music so you can't have it". Sorry to say this, but this is the logic of a playground bully. Comparing the harm ("I don't like it and I will throw a tantrum if you record me") with the potential benefit ("I get to remember and relive this concert for the rest of my life") it is just a no-brainer to me.
    - contrarian1234 1y ago
      > "If I want to record a performance I went to see, why should I not?" Because that's the agreement you go into when you see the performance. Same with a purchase of a game with a particular license. If you don't agree to the creators terms, you're free to not partake. But you can't in effect just say, "I don't like your terms, I'm going to do what I please with your work" You're dictating that you either have to give it out entirely (to everyone? sort of?) or not at all. I think this is just violating people's innate right to direct their labor/work/efforts in a way that they wish. To me it feels fundamentally sort of dehumanizing In the end, as I illustrate in some of the other comments, I think it fundamentally doesn't really solve anything and leads to people just contorting themselves further to regain control (using DRM and SaaS'ing their software) Mario in 20 years will probably just be streamed from a server and you'll never have access to the code in any form at all As for copyright.. simplistically I think it makes sense to control your work while you're alive and not control it once you die (the whole idea of children controlling their parent's legacy is kinda gross to me). But that's not a real workeable solution for a variety of reasons. The current system seems ok. I have no strong opinions...
danaris 1y ago
> historical figures burning their unfinished works before their death > unfinished Do you not see the difference between this and what is being discussed? No one is saying that game studios have to release everything they are working on as open source from the moment they start writing code. They are saying that once a game is published and sold on the market, it needs to remain usable for as long as the actual hardware to run it is usable.

danlitt 1y ago

Unfinished works are a slightly different matter. I still disagree by and large with destroying them, but I can see the argument for it, especially when it is the explicit wish of the author. Published works are different: you released it, why? People publish art precisely so that it can be enjoyed by others. Your argument as stated seems to naively imply that if I write a book and decide later I'm embarrassed by it, I should be able to remotely destroy all the copies. That's probably an unfair reading and not what you meant, but there is nothing in your argument that rules it out. Sharing a creative work is a reciprocal act. The consumer (who usually pays for it, by the way) gets pleasure in enjoying the work, and the creator gets pleasure from their reputation and from feeling like they made something important. It is normal and healthy for both sides of that interaction to feel like they are a holistic part of the work. Why do you think so many people form communities around the kind of art they like? Bands are nothing if they have no fans, artists are nothing if they have no following. To just dismiss this as a nameless/faceless consumer is honestly not even offensive, I just don't believe you.

contrarian1234 1y ago
it's a nice argument. I mean it sincerely and it has changed my mind some But "It is normal and healthy for both sides of that interaction to feel like they are a holistic part of the work." This is just a bit ridiculous ... You person is creating and investing effort in to it and one is not. And the creator should dictate the terms under which he wishes to share his work. To follow your musical example. If a musican wants to do a performance once and not leave a record, why should he not? The audience isn't "part of the work" and thereby granted rights to a copy or to listen to it later
- danlitt 1y ago
  That's very gracious of you to admit! Obviously "the creator should dictate ..." part I just disagree with. Incidentally note that what you say is actually much stronger than the real situation - in the real world, copyright is time-limited and subject to exceptions ("fair uses"). It does not sound like you agree with these justifications - if you do, then my position can be phrased more palatably as "I think the class of fair uses is broader than you do". About the specific moral question you pose: > If a musican wants to do a performance once and not leave a record, why should he not? Reversing the question is obviously, "If I want to record a performance I went to see, why should I not?". But I think this is easy to just answer directly. It is very hard to portray the musician who wants to prevent recording here sympathetically. Of course we can't appeal to the usual reasoning (that they're recording it themselves, and want to sell the recording) since you say they don't want it recorded at all. Maybe they want to sell an album, and they're playing the album in the show, and they want to keep recordings of those songs artificially scarce. So let's limit to the case where I record it for my personal use, and I'm not allowed to share it. Or I can sell the recording for the same price as the album, and I have to give it to the musician. What harm is there left for it to do? The only remaining thing I can say as the musician is "I don't like it and I created the music so you can't have it". Sorry to say this, but this is the logic of a playground bully. Comparing the harm ("I don't like it and I will throw a tantrum if you record me") with the potential benefit ("I get to remember and relive this concert for the rest of my life") it is just a no-brainer to me.
  - contrarian1234 1y ago
    > "If I want to record a performance I went to see, why should I not?" Because that's the agreement you go into when you see the performance. Same with a purchase of a game with a particular license. If you don't agree to the creators terms, you're free to not partake. But you can't in effect just say, "I don't like your terms, I'm going to do what I please with your work" You're dictating that you either have to give it out entirely (to everyone? sort of?) or not at all. I think this is just violating people's innate right to direct their labor/work/efforts in a way that they wish. To me it feels fundamentally sort of dehumanizing In the end, as I illustrate in some of the other comments, I think it fundamentally doesn't really solve anything and leads to people just contorting themselves further to regain control (using DRM and SaaS'ing their software) Mario in 20 years will probably just be streamed from a server and you'll never have access to the code in any form at all As for copyright.. simplistically I think it makes sense to control your work while you're alive and not control it once you die (the whole idea of children controlling their parent's legacy is kinda gross to me). But that's not a real workeable solution for a variety of reasons. The current system seems ok. I have no strong opinions...

danaris 1y ago

> historical figures burning their unfinished works before their death > unfinished Do you not see the difference between this and what is being discussed? No one is saying that game studios have to release everything they are working on as open source from the moment they start writing code. They are saying that once a game is published and sold on the market, it needs to remain usable for as long as the actual hardware to run it is usable.