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"If a company pours millions of dollars into something that many people enjoy, why shouldn't their works be protected?" Kodak poured millions of dollars into t
by betterunix 14y ago
"If a company pours millions of dollars into something that many people enjoy, why shouldn't their works be protected?"
Kodak poured millions of dollars into the film development system. Why shouldn't they have their revenue stream protected too? Why not freeze the progress of technology to ensure that no business ever becomes obsolete?
We had entertainment before copyright. We will still have it afterwards.
- TravisLS 14y agoThis is a false analogy. Kodak's revenue stream was not protected, but people were prohibited from stealing their film. The film business disappeared because of alternatives that the market preferred. The case of content is different. Free content is not taking much market share from professional producers. A small subset of people are illegally stealing professionally produced content via torrent sites, but that group is small enough that it's still economically viable to spend $50M to make a great movie. If we eliminate copyright, that group grows large enough that nobody will spend $50M to make a movie, and the big-budget movie will disappear. The big-budget movies don't disappear because people don't want to see them, or because free content has displaced them in the market. They disappear because so many people steal the content against the wishes of the publisher, it's no longer economically viable to produce the content at all.