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> Copyright is serving exactly nobody today Except for nearly everyone who writes anything (including software) or other artistic pursuits to make a living. Th

> Copyright is serving exactly nobody today Except for nearly everyone who writes anything (including software) or other artistic pursuits to make a living. This includes a majority of people here on HN.

cannonpr 1mo ago
I’ve written software all my life, copyright has never been relevant to my earnings at all, trade secrets have been to some extent. Frankly copyright was meant to enable more sharing and benefiting the public domain, instead it’s become a cancer…
- otterley 1mo ago
  For every rule there is an exception.
  - deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
  - loup-vaillant 1mo ago
    I love the self contradiction in this one.
denkmoon 1mo ago
yeah I wouldn't be able to put food on the table if my employer didn't have exclusive license to the glue we use to stick together all that open source code we rely on. Which we now generate exclusively using AI, products of which are of unclear copyright status. Modern IP law inhibits productivity more than it helps, imo. LLMs have fundamentally changed our line of work, and they have done so by completely ignoring the existing legal framework for IP. We should not defend the current implementation just because some people might suffer reduced earning potential.
- otterley 1mo ago
  Copyright was not designed to maximize productivity. It was designed to maximize creativity and inventiveness (or, as stated in the US Constitution, the progress of science and the useful arts).
  - ekianjo 1mo ago
    > t was designed to maximize creativity and inventiveness If you look at outcomes it has completely failed while making big corps very rich in the process
    - furyofantares 1mo ago
      Linux is a marvel of the world and a large amount of its contributions have been made by people being paid to do so for commercial purposes - and I am not sure that would be true without the GPL. Is there a convincing argument there? And outside open source there has been a staggering amount of creative work at all quality levels done for commercial purposes under the protection of copyright. Is there a convincing argument that the last century of software and music and books and etc would have been just as staggering without copyright? I would love to hear such an argument. In my youth I thought copyright was blatantly stupid and should be abolished. I still sorta think that but I don't have a convincing argument in the face of the absolutely massive amount of good work that has been produced under it.
      - jMyles 1mo ago
        > Is there a convincing argument that the last century of software and music and books and etc would have been just as staggering without copyright? > I would love to hear such an argument. Fortunately, one of the many tentacles of the octopus most obviously at the forefront of the zeitgeist of the freedom that arises from a culture of free information - The Grateful Dead - had the outcome of producing - in the form of gripping autobiography - an extremely compelling, and seemingly utterly true and beautiful and good, instrument to fulfill your request: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36750087-mother-american-night https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36750087-mother-american... If you don't want to read a whole book and just want a stump speech which kicks ass in the department of argument you're requesting, it's here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLbqgG6o1n8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLbqgG6o1n8
ekianjo 1mo ago
People made a living juste fine before copyright stop spreading myths
brainwad 1mo ago
Most hackers here are not relying on copyright to make their living. Either you work on open source but make your living off services on top of the code, or your code is a trade secret protected via contracts. Not to mention that everyone using coding agents probably aren't even protected by copyright in the first place, at least in the US, since the courts are taking a pretty hard line on human authorship being required...
- ralferoo 1mo ago
  "your code is a trade secret protected via contracts" isn't enough to replace copyright because the contracts are only enforceable to the signing parties. Let's say you write some software for your employer and they sell the product to several customers with a contract not to distribute it. However, the product appears on some pirate website anyway, and you can't identify who allowed the product to be leaked. Once it's there, your contracts are worthless as nobody who downloads it from the pirate site will be bound by your contract. You need copyright laws to prevent subsequent distribution. Without copyright laws, you'd then end up in the situation where people who paid for the software then are bound by the contract and would have to keep paying, and those who just downloaded it from a pirate site would be completely fine legally and could use the software with impunity. That would create a disincentive for anybody agreeing to buy the software and entering into a contract in the first place, essentially killing the industry. You might not see a problem with that if you believe in Open Source, but most licences require copyright laws to exist to protect the software freedoms so that people don't just take the software and close source it.
  - brainwad 1mo ago
    Yeah, I'm assuming most people here aren't selling proprietary code to customers directly. I assume most professionals here work somewhere that sells SaaS or uses the software they develop internally only.
    - otterley 1mo ago
      That is a false assumption.
jMyles 1mo ago
I'm guessing you didn't click my profile before writing this knee-jerk, but I'm a professional musician. And I've worked in software engineering, across a zillion different licenses, for many years. I'm not just shooting from the hip here.
- otterley 1mo ago
  I'm a trained attorney who specialized in intellectual property law, and I happen to know a little about both the performing arts and software industries. It does serve people and power entire industries. You wrote "copyright is serving exactly nobody today." If that's not what you meant, choose your words more carefully next time. This is a forum of writing, and, much like songwriting, the right words and nuance matter.
  - jMyles 1mo ago
    > I'm a trained attorney who specialized in intellectual property law, and I happen to know a little about both the performing arts and software industries. To be frank, it sounds like you are part of the problem, and that your income may partly be derived from rent-seeking via the intellectual property regime. Is that correct? > You wrote "copyright is serving exactly nobody today." If that's not what you meant, choose your words more carefully next time. Well, I suppose it depends what sorts of engagement we can understand as "serving". By "serving", I do not mean merely enriching. Of course we all recognize that there are massive industries which are enriched by this system; where we may disagree is whether any actual services in rendered to the folks doing the writing and recording and touring in exchange for that enrichment. At present, I think it's perfectly reasonable to observe that _musicians_ are not _served_ by this configuration. To the contrary, it has spawned a complicated system of publication, with many musicians facing the subpar customer service experience of services like distrokid and cdbaby facilitating distribution to services like spotify and apple music, while the RIAA and MPAA employ legal threats and harassment to the more musician-friendly DRM-free and direct-to-consumer counterparts. I think it's also fair to say that, since the beginning of music, no musician ever has wanted a system whose function is to call the cops of their fans. And ultimately, that's what copyright is - it lets me send the cops in to fuck with fans who... try to share my music with their friends? It's awful from first principles, even if the implementation weren't as rotten as it is. You said, "Except for nearly everyone who writes anything (including software) or other artistic pursuits to make a living" in response to this statement. So I think you have no leg to stand on in terms of demanding disambiguity; your statement is flatly and demonstrably false. Every musician I know (including, I'll bet, musicians you listen to) - and I'll bet, every one that you know too - has seething daily contempt for lawyers who make these asinine claims.

cannonpr 1mo ago

I’ve written software all my life, copyright has never been relevant to my earnings at all, trade secrets have been to some extent. Frankly copyright was meant to enable more sharing and benefiting the public domain, instead it’s become a cancer…

otterley 1mo ago
For every rule there is an exception.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- loup-vaillant 1mo ago
  I love the self contradiction in this one.

denkmoon 1mo ago

yeah I wouldn't be able to put food on the table if my employer didn't have exclusive license to the glue we use to stick together all that open source code we rely on. Which we now generate exclusively using AI, products of which are of unclear copyright status. Modern IP law inhibits productivity more than it helps, imo. LLMs have fundamentally changed our line of work, and they have done so by completely ignoring the existing legal framework for IP. We should not defend the current implementation just because some people might suffer reduced earning potential.

otterley 1mo ago
Copyright was not designed to maximize productivity. It was designed to maximize creativity and inventiveness (or, as stated in the US Constitution, the progress of science and the useful arts).
- ekianjo 1mo ago
  > t was designed to maximize creativity and inventiveness If you look at outcomes it has completely failed while making big corps very rich in the process
  - furyofantares 1mo ago
    Linux is a marvel of the world and a large amount of its contributions have been made by people being paid to do so for commercial purposes - and I am not sure that would be true without the GPL. Is there a convincing argument there? And outside open source there has been a staggering amount of creative work at all quality levels done for commercial purposes under the protection of copyright. Is there a convincing argument that the last century of software and music and books and etc would have been just as staggering without copyright? I would love to hear such an argument. In my youth I thought copyright was blatantly stupid and should be abolished. I still sorta think that but I don't have a convincing argument in the face of the absolutely massive amount of good work that has been produced under it.
    - jMyles 1mo ago
      > Is there a convincing argument that the last century of software and music and books and etc would have been just as staggering without copyright? > I would love to hear such an argument. Fortunately, one of the many tentacles of the octopus most obviously at the forefront of the zeitgeist of the freedom that arises from a culture of free information - The Grateful Dead - had the outcome of producing - in the form of gripping autobiography - an extremely compelling, and seemingly utterly true and beautiful and good, instrument to fulfill your request: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36750087-mother-american-night https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36750087-mother-american... If you don't want to read a whole book and just want a stump speech which kicks ass in the department of argument you're requesting, it's here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLbqgG6o1n8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLbqgG6o1n8

ekianjo 1mo ago

People made a living juste fine before copyright stop spreading myths

brainwad 1mo ago

Most hackers here are not relying on copyright to make their living. Either you work on open source but make your living off services on top of the code, or your code is a trade secret protected via contracts. Not to mention that everyone using coding agents probably aren't even protected by copyright in the first place, at least in the US, since the courts are taking a pretty hard line on human authorship being required...

ralferoo 1mo ago
"your code is a trade secret protected via contracts" isn't enough to replace copyright because the contracts are only enforceable to the signing parties. Let's say you write some software for your employer and they sell the product to several customers with a contract not to distribute it. However, the product appears on some pirate website anyway, and you can't identify who allowed the product to be leaked. Once it's there, your contracts are worthless as nobody who downloads it from the pirate site will be bound by your contract. You need copyright laws to prevent subsequent distribution. Without copyright laws, you'd then end up in the situation where people who paid for the software then are bound by the contract and would have to keep paying, and those who just downloaded it from a pirate site would be completely fine legally and could use the software with impunity. That would create a disincentive for anybody agreeing to buy the software and entering into a contract in the first place, essentially killing the industry. You might not see a problem with that if you believe in Open Source, but most licences require copyright laws to exist to protect the software freedoms so that people don't just take the software and close source it.
- brainwad 1mo ago
  Yeah, I'm assuming most people here aren't selling proprietary code to customers directly. I assume most professionals here work somewhere that sells SaaS or uses the software they develop internally only.
  - otterley 1mo ago
    That is a false assumption.

jMyles 1mo ago

I'm guessing you didn't click my profile before writing this knee-jerk, but I'm a professional musician. And I've worked in software engineering, across a zillion different licenses, for many years. I'm not just shooting from the hip here.

otterley 1mo ago
I'm a trained attorney who specialized in intellectual property law, and I happen to know a little about both the performing arts and software industries. It does serve people and power entire industries. You wrote "copyright is serving exactly nobody today." If that's not what you meant, choose your words more carefully next time. This is a forum of writing, and, much like songwriting, the right words and nuance matter.
- jMyles 1mo ago
  > I'm a trained attorney who specialized in intellectual property law, and I happen to know a little about both the performing arts and software industries. To be frank, it sounds like you are part of the problem, and that your income may partly be derived from rent-seeking via the intellectual property regime. Is that correct? > You wrote "copyright is serving exactly nobody today." If that's not what you meant, choose your words more carefully next time. Well, I suppose it depends what sorts of engagement we can understand as "serving". By "serving", I do not mean merely enriching. Of course we all recognize that there are massive industries which are enriched by this system; where we may disagree is whether any actual services in rendered to the folks doing the writing and recording and touring in exchange for that enrichment. At present, I think it's perfectly reasonable to observe that _musicians_ are not _served_ by this configuration. To the contrary, it has spawned a complicated system of publication, with many musicians facing the subpar customer service experience of services like distrokid and cdbaby facilitating distribution to services like spotify and apple music, while the RIAA and MPAA employ legal threats and harassment to the more musician-friendly DRM-free and direct-to-consumer counterparts. I think it's also fair to say that, since the beginning of music, no musician ever has wanted a system whose function is to call the cops of their fans. And ultimately, that's what copyright is - it lets me send the cops in to fuck with fans who... try to share my music with their friends? It's awful from first principles, even if the implementation weren't as rotten as it is. You said, "Except for nearly everyone who writes anything (including software) or other artistic pursuits to make a living" in response to this statement. So I think you have no leg to stand on in terms of demanding disambiguity; your statement is flatly and demonstrably false. Every musician I know (including, I'll bet, musicians you listen to) - and I'll bet, every one that you know too - has seething daily contempt for lawyers who make these asinine claims.