4 ms·

I don't think see any important similarity between patent and copyright. I think that if I write something down, I should be able to say, "If you want to consu

by javert 14y ago

I don't think see any important similarity between patent and copyright. I think that if I write something down, I should be able to say, "If you want to consume this content, you have to agree to certain conditions." I see copyright as the legal mechanism to enforce this. That's all there is to it. I wouldn't mind if there is an exception for orphaned works. People want to argue that what I'm suggesting would result in horrible consequences, but it just wouldn't. Take your story example. So what if I forevermore have control over a story I wrote? It just doesn't matter. So what if my decendants get rich selling it? Again, it just doesn't matter. But, hell, it's my story, I and the people I share it with should be able to institute any rules around its distribution that we mutually agree on. You talk about the government staying out of the interaction between content creators and consumers, but that is exactly my position, whereas you are arguing that the government can force content creators to cede their works to consumers after a certain time has elapsed. I don't think copyright can/should cover "an idea," only specific content.

Peaker 14y ago
The most important avenue of creative work is derivative works. Copyrights essentially ban almost all forms of derivative works -- thereby depriving society of the most important form of creativity. Also, old works are mostly lost to society -- whereas if they were easily distributed they could compete as free works with contemporary copyrighted works, thereby driving the competition and thus quality up. Whether or not you get to control distribution of the story you wrote, in fact, whether it is your story at all -- is subject to debate. A world with short copyright terms (or perhaps even no copyright terms at all) might make some authors less rich -- and it might make the world of content available to everyone much richer, too.
nathan_long 14y ago
>> ...you are arguing that the government can force content creators to cede their works to consumers after a certain time has elapsed. That's like saying I force you to fall to the ground by not holding you up. Works are inherently copyable. Copyright is an artificial monopoly which society spends money to create and enforce. It does so in order to get the benefit of encouraging creation of works. The whole goal is to have more works available as a public good. This is exactly what the Constitution says: >> To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. If those works are made less useful to society by remaining locked up forever, there is less benefit to society, and less reason to spend money and effort creating artificial monopolies. If it were shown that monopoly incentives were actually not very helpful in encouraging the creation of new works, copyright should be abolished. It would be a cost to society without a benefit to society. Notice that the creator never enters as a concern here. Society shouldn't make rules to protect the income of specific groups, be they bricklayers, nuclear physicists, or writers. We should work together only for the common good. If you want to work exclusively for your own good, that's fine, but do it by yourself and stop trying to get the laws to serve you.
- javert 14y ago
  I disagree with practically everything you say, but I'm only going to address part of it. Society shouldn't make rules to protect the income of specific groups, be they bricklayers, nuclear physicists, or writers. We should work together only for the common good. If you want to work exclusively for your own good, that's fine, but do it by yourself and stop trying to get the laws to serve you. I think that the proper purpose of government is to secure my individual rights, particularly property rights, so that I can pursue my happiness. Laws should serve me, and everyone, in that sense. (I also believe this brings the best overall outcome for society, but that's beside the point.) I do not have any duty to "serve the common good." If we keep going towards that model, to the point that my own productive work is no longer productive for me, I will literally "go on strike" and just do manual labor to survive. (Or go to a more free country, if there is one.) That's not out of dedication to ideology, it's out of a need for psychological survival. I can't make myself work hard to benefit a society that is mainly just extractive of my production (i.e., bad for me). As an aside, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" != promoting the "public good". This is a distinction the Founders would have been aware of. But the Constitution isn't perfect, anyway, so it hardly matters.
  - lmm 14y ago
    >I think that the proper purpose of government is to secure my individual rights, particularly property rights, so that I can pursue my happiness. Laws should serve me, and everyone, in that sense. (I also believe this brings the best overall outcome for society, but that's beside the point.) You can define anything equivalently as a right or an obligation. "The government should protect my right to own land" ~ "The government should provide soldiers (presumably funded through taxation) to evict other people from my land"; there's no qualitative distinction between property rights and e.g. a right to healthcare. Copyright law does not make individuals more free, quite the opposite. It gives a small number of powerful organizations the power to control the much larger number of individuals who would want to create derivative works. There seems to be this weird blind spot on the political right where they're perfectly happy for people to be oppressed as long as it's not by the government. (Of course, the left has the opposite problem). >I do not have any duty to "serve the common good." If we keep going towards that model, to the point that my own productive work is no longer productive for me, I will literally "go on strike" and just do manual labor to survive. I hope this bluff gets called. Every aspect of modern life is made possible by others serving the common good. And frankly, society would be better off without the "creativity" of those who are producing works just for the paycheck.

by javert 14y ago

Peaker 14y ago

The most important avenue of creative work is derivative works. Copyrights essentially ban almost all forms of derivative works -- thereby depriving society of the most important form of creativity. Also, old works are mostly lost to society -- whereas if they were easily distributed they could compete as free works with contemporary copyrighted works, thereby driving the competition and thus quality up. Whether or not you get to control distribution of the story you wrote, in fact, whether it is your story at all -- is subject to debate. A world with short copyright terms (or perhaps even no copyright terms at all) might make some authors less rich -- and it might make the world of content available to everyone much richer, too.

nathan_long 14y ago

>> ...you are arguing that the government can force content creators to cede their works to consumers after a certain time has elapsed. That's like saying I force you to fall to the ground by not holding you up. Works are inherently copyable. Copyright is an artificial monopoly which society spends money to create and enforce. It does so in order to get the benefit of encouraging creation of works. The whole goal is to have more works available as a public good. This is exactly what the Constitution says: >> To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. If those works are made less useful to society by remaining locked up forever, there is less benefit to society, and less reason to spend money and effort creating artificial monopolies. If it were shown that monopoly incentives were actually not very helpful in encouraging the creation of new works, copyright should be abolished. It would be a cost to society without a benefit to society. Notice that the creator never enters as a concern here. Society shouldn't make rules to protect the income of specific groups, be they bricklayers, nuclear physicists, or writers. We should work together only for the common good. If you want to work exclusively for your own good, that's fine, but do it by yourself and stop trying to get the laws to serve you.

javert 14y ago
I disagree with practically everything you say, but I'm only going to address part of it. Society shouldn't make rules to protect the income of specific groups, be they bricklayers, nuclear physicists, or writers. We should work together only for the common good. If you want to work exclusively for your own good, that's fine, but do it by yourself and stop trying to get the laws to serve you. I think that the proper purpose of government is to secure my individual rights, particularly property rights, so that I can pursue my happiness. Laws should serve me, and everyone, in that sense. (I also believe this brings the best overall outcome for society, but that's beside the point.) I do not have any duty to "serve the common good." If we keep going towards that model, to the point that my own productive work is no longer productive for me, I will literally "go on strike" and just do manual labor to survive. (Or go to a more free country, if there is one.) That's not out of dedication to ideology, it's out of a need for psychological survival. I can't make myself work hard to benefit a society that is mainly just extractive of my production (i.e., bad for me). As an aside, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" != promoting the "public good". This is a distinction the Founders would have been aware of. But the Constitution isn't perfect, anyway, so it hardly matters.
- lmm 14y ago
  >I think that the proper purpose of government is to secure my individual rights, particularly property rights, so that I can pursue my happiness. Laws should serve me, and everyone, in that sense. (I also believe this brings the best overall outcome for society, but that's beside the point.) You can define anything equivalently as a right or an obligation. "The government should protect my right to own land" ~ "The government should provide soldiers (presumably funded through taxation) to evict other people from my land"; there's no qualitative distinction between property rights and e.g. a right to healthcare. Copyright law does not make individuals more free, quite the opposite. It gives a small number of powerful organizations the power to control the much larger number of individuals who would want to create derivative works. There seems to be this weird blind spot on the political right where they're perfectly happy for people to be oppressed as long as it's not by the government. (Of course, the left has the opposite problem). >I do not have any duty to "serve the common good." If we keep going towards that model, to the point that my own productive work is no longer productive for me, I will literally "go on strike" and just do manual labor to survive. I hope this bluff gets called. Every aspect of modern life is made possible by others serving the common good. And frankly, society would be better off without the "creativity" of those who are producing works just for the paycheck.