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The goal of copyright has always been to promote business interests. Once upon a time people thought it was worthwhile to balance those business interests with

The goal of copyright has always been to promote business interests. Once upon a time people thought it was worthwhile to balance those business interests with the interests of society at large, but these days the only thing politicians care about are business interests so this is what we get.

res0nat0r 13y ago
You forgot to mention all of the authors/musicians/film makers/artists who also are still willingly releasing things under copyright.
- thuuuomas 13y ago
  In pursuit of their business interests, not out of constraints inherent to writing/music/film/art.
  - res0nat0r 13y ago
    I'll wager that their business interests are directly inherent to their writing/music/film/art. The meme that artists somehow shouldn't expect to be paid for their work needs to be stopped. Many wouldn't have the ability to continue creating their product if they weren't being paid for the time and effort it takes to produce it.
    - baddox 13y ago
      > The meme that artists somehow shouldn't expect to be paid for their work needs to be stopped. Who has said that? I think there should be zero IP protection laws, but I believe that artists should expect to be paid for their work, and indeed would be paid for their work.
      - res0nat0r 13y ago
        Most comments here when it comes to piracy are along the lines of: Welllll it's easy for me to take your product for free thanks to fast bandwidth and the Internet, so you shouldn't expect to be paid for your work since I can easily obtain it now without consequence. That's nonsense.
  - alexqgb 13y ago
    The number of generally appreciated works produced and delivered with $0 in costs is so small as to be not worth mentioning. Money, and therefore exchange (i.e. business) is inseparable from just about anything worth anyone's attention. Indeed, money is as inseparable from the most popular art forms as gravity is from rocketry. Entire mediums wax and wane in response to the flow of finance. Film, opera, books, television, to say nothing of architecture are almost evntierly defined by the commercial melieu. Mastery of this dimension provides the very cornerstone of professional accomplishment, since nothing else is possible without the requisite budget. To the extent that time is money, every creative type who values the often considerable amount of time it takes to produce the work they want to produce understands the constraints of finance in their bones. They all do their best to do the most with what they can get. That a big part of the reason they get so frustrated with audiences who refuse to pay. How can you possibly fail to recognize this?
    - baddox 13y ago
      In your model, which seems to assume that IP laws result in a net positive to society by some measure, do you actually figure in the cost to society of maintaining and enforcing the IP laws?
      - res0nat0r 13y ago
        If it is so detrimental why hasn't it been replaced with something better? Note any conspiracy about the MAFIAA running the show behind the scenes as to why it hasn't been replaced aren't reasonable...
        betterunix 13y ago
        Why is it unreasonable to think that copyright has been maintained because of lobbyists when copyright was established by a vast lobbying effort in the first place? The Statute of Anne was created following literally years of pressure on the British parliament by the publishers who wanted to revive the monopoly they had once held under the Licensing of the Press Act. At no point did the politicians actually care about artists or art; it was money, from the very beginning until today.
alexqgb 13y ago
It's just shocking — absolutly SHOCKING — to see how many artists expect to get paid for their work. Why, the NERVE of those people. How DARE they ruin our enjoyment by bringing up petty concerns such as their private business interests?
- baddox 13y ago
  Lots of artists create work that is not or cannot be protected by copyright and other IP laws, so the mental model your sarcasm suggests doesn't seem to accurately represent reality.
  - alexqgb 13y ago
    And yet, some of the most popular forms continue to be ones that rarely—if ever—exist without copyright protection. Why not admit that copyright and culture evolved together, and that suddenly trashing one does irreparable harm to the other? I'm not saying that reforms aren't in order. After all, the 21st century is its own special thing. But it has yet to replace art forms that have spent (no exaggeration) centuries developing with the aid and support of copyright. To the extent that nobody has come up with a better solution to the problem of high capital requirements and near-zero marginal costs, it's the best arrangement we've got, especially when the preference for expensive productions is as clear as its ever been.
    - betterunix 13y ago
      "Why not admit that copyright and culture evolved together, and that suddenly trashing one does irreparable harm to the other?" You are confusing correlation with causation. Copyright as we know it today is the result of a change in technology -- the printing press -- which also caused changes in culture. Prior to printing presses copying books was a vital service, worthy of praise and encouraged by society as a way to preserve knowledge (at least among those societies that gave a damn about such things). Ancient Greek science was preserved because Arab scholars copied Greek works. The Library of Alexandria had a vast collection because books were copied by law. Ironically, we might never have developed the technology that led to copyright law had it not been for such copying. Of course, how technology left to copyright is very different from how that technology changed culture. Copyright was the result of many years of efforts by the British government to censor printed material, which ultimately failed for political reasons. The censorship effort did create a very powerful lobby of printers who pushed very hard to reestablish the monopoly they had enjoyed during that effort, and who ultimately managed to get what they wanted in the form of copyrights. This is basically orthogonal to the cultural changes. "the preference for expensive productions is as clear as its ever been." Maybe those productions are a waste of resources that have been made economically viable by copyright. Do you really think people would be unable to produce and enjoy entertainment without the copyright system? It might mean the death of films that cost as much as it would take to end world hunger, but not the death of entertainment. The printing press changed how we communicate. Computers are doing so as well, and like it or not, entertainment will be affected as much by this change as it was by the printing press.
chrismcb 13y ago
In America the goal of copyrights has always been to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts. Of course this is done by giving the authors exclusive rights over their work. With the hopes they can profit from it, so they can make more.
- betterunix 13y ago
  "In America the goal of copyrights has always been to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." That is the stated purpose of the power given to Congress. The manner in which Congress has exercised that power since the constitution was drafted has been essentially a clone of the Statute of Anne, a British law created following years of heavy lobbying pressure by the publishing industry. The payment of artists comes secondary; in theory, the businesses that benefit from copyrights need to gather their material from creative workers, and those workers demand payment (in practice the people who create copyrighted works get the short end of that stick). "Of course this is done by giving the authors exclusive rights over their work" You make this sound like the most obvious thing ever, yet this was not always the case. Prior to the invention of the printing press it was common to encourage people to copy creative works -- to prevent them from being lost forever. In fact, the Library of Alexandria, one of the important stores of human knowledge of its time, existed because of a law that required books to be copied regardless of the wishes of authors. You brought up the progress of science, but most scientists give zero thought to exclusive rights over their writing. The point of writing a research article is to share knowledge as widely as possible. You can often find PDF copies of published articles on the authors' websites despite the fact that the authors signed over their copyrights. The only reason scientists ever bothered with publishing companies was that prior to the Internet distributing articles on a global scale required industrial equipment that publishers happened to have. Frankly, do you really think that a system which requires expert lawyers to draft contracts, enforce royalty payments, and settle disputes by arguing before a judge is the sort of system that is meant to protect the interests of individuals? Everything about copyright screams "made for business." That artists happen to be paid for their work under this system is merely a side effect; the real purpose is to confer an advantage to certain businesses, who (sometimes) happen pay artists/authors/programmers/etc. for their work.

res0nat0r 13y ago

You forgot to mention all of the authors/musicians/film makers/artists who also are still willingly releasing things under copyright.

thuuuomas 13y ago
In pursuit of their business interests, not out of constraints inherent to writing/music/film/art.
- res0nat0r 13y ago
  I'll wager that their business interests are directly inherent to their writing/music/film/art. The meme that artists somehow shouldn't expect to be paid for their work needs to be stopped. Many wouldn't have the ability to continue creating their product if they weren't being paid for the time and effort it takes to produce it.
  - baddox 13y ago
    > The meme that artists somehow shouldn't expect to be paid for their work needs to be stopped. Who has said that? I think there should be zero IP protection laws, but I believe that artists should expect to be paid for their work, and indeed would be paid for their work.
    - res0nat0r 13y ago
      Most comments here when it comes to piracy are along the lines of: Welllll it's easy for me to take your product for free thanks to fast bandwidth and the Internet, so you shouldn't expect to be paid for your work since I can easily obtain it now without consequence. That's nonsense.
- alexqgb 13y ago
  The number of generally appreciated works produced and delivered with $0 in costs is so small as to be not worth mentioning. Money, and therefore exchange (i.e. business) is inseparable from just about anything worth anyone's attention. Indeed, money is as inseparable from the most popular art forms as gravity is from rocketry. Entire mediums wax and wane in response to the flow of finance. Film, opera, books, television, to say nothing of architecture are almost evntierly defined by the commercial melieu. Mastery of this dimension provides the very cornerstone of professional accomplishment, since nothing else is possible without the requisite budget. To the extent that time is money, every creative type who values the often considerable amount of time it takes to produce the work they want to produce understands the constraints of finance in their bones. They all do their best to do the most with what they can get. That a big part of the reason they get so frustrated with audiences who refuse to pay. How can you possibly fail to recognize this?
  - baddox 13y ago
    In your model, which seems to assume that IP laws result in a net positive to society by some measure, do you actually figure in the cost to society of maintaining and enforcing the IP laws?
    - res0nat0r 13y ago
      If it is so detrimental why hasn't it been replaced with something better? Note any conspiracy about the MAFIAA running the show behind the scenes as to why it hasn't been replaced aren't reasonable...
      - betterunix 13y ago
        Why is it unreasonable to think that copyright has been maintained because of lobbyists when copyright was established by a vast lobbying effort in the first place? The Statute of Anne was created following literally years of pressure on the British parliament by the publishers who wanted to revive the monopoly they had once held under the Licensing of the Press Act. At no point did the politicians actually care about artists or art; it was money, from the very beginning until today.

alexqgb 13y ago

It's just shocking — absolutly SHOCKING — to see how many artists expect to get paid for their work. Why, the NERVE of those people. How DARE they ruin our enjoyment by bringing up petty concerns such as their private business interests?

baddox 13y ago
Lots of artists create work that is not or cannot be protected by copyright and other IP laws, so the mental model your sarcasm suggests doesn't seem to accurately represent reality.
- alexqgb 13y ago
  And yet, some of the most popular forms continue to be ones that rarely—if ever—exist without copyright protection. Why not admit that copyright and culture evolved together, and that suddenly trashing one does irreparable harm to the other? I'm not saying that reforms aren't in order. After all, the 21st century is its own special thing. But it has yet to replace art forms that have spent (no exaggeration) centuries developing with the aid and support of copyright. To the extent that nobody has come up with a better solution to the problem of high capital requirements and near-zero marginal costs, it's the best arrangement we've got, especially when the preference for expensive productions is as clear as its ever been.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    "Why not admit that copyright and culture evolved together, and that suddenly trashing one does irreparable harm to the other?" You are confusing correlation with causation. Copyright as we know it today is the result of a change in technology -- the printing press -- which also caused changes in culture. Prior to printing presses copying books was a vital service, worthy of praise and encouraged by society as a way to preserve knowledge (at least among those societies that gave a damn about such things). Ancient Greek science was preserved because Arab scholars copied Greek works. The Library of Alexandria had a vast collection because books were copied by law. Ironically, we might never have developed the technology that led to copyright law had it not been for such copying. Of course, how technology left to copyright is very different from how that technology changed culture. Copyright was the result of many years of efforts by the British government to censor printed material, which ultimately failed for political reasons. The censorship effort did create a very powerful lobby of printers who pushed very hard to reestablish the monopoly they had enjoyed during that effort, and who ultimately managed to get what they wanted in the form of copyrights. This is basically orthogonal to the cultural changes. "the preference for expensive productions is as clear as its ever been." Maybe those productions are a waste of resources that have been made economically viable by copyright. Do you really think people would be unable to produce and enjoy entertainment without the copyright system? It might mean the death of films that cost as much as it would take to end world hunger, but not the death of entertainment. The printing press changed how we communicate. Computers are doing so as well, and like it or not, entertainment will be affected as much by this change as it was by the printing press.

chrismcb 13y ago

In America the goal of copyrights has always been to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts. Of course this is done by giving the authors exclusive rights over their work. With the hopes they can profit from it, so they can make more.

betterunix 13y ago
"In America the goal of copyrights has always been to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." That is the stated purpose of the power given to Congress. The manner in which Congress has exercised that power since the constitution was drafted has been essentially a clone of the Statute of Anne, a British law created following years of heavy lobbying pressure by the publishing industry. The payment of artists comes secondary; in theory, the businesses that benefit from copyrights need to gather their material from creative workers, and those workers demand payment (in practice the people who create copyrighted works get the short end of that stick). "Of course this is done by giving the authors exclusive rights over their work" You make this sound like the most obvious thing ever, yet this was not always the case. Prior to the invention of the printing press it was common to encourage people to copy creative works -- to prevent them from being lost forever. In fact, the Library of Alexandria, one of the important stores of human knowledge of its time, existed because of a law that required books to be copied regardless of the wishes of authors. You brought up the progress of science, but most scientists give zero thought to exclusive rights over their writing. The point of writing a research article is to share knowledge as widely as possible. You can often find PDF copies of published articles on the authors' websites despite the fact that the authors signed over their copyrights. The only reason scientists ever bothered with publishing companies was that prior to the Internet distributing articles on a global scale required industrial equipment that publishers happened to have. Frankly, do you really think that a system which requires expert lawyers to draft contracts, enforce royalty payments, and settle disputes by arguing before a judge is the sort of system that is meant to protect the interests of individuals? Everything about copyright screams "made for business." That artists happen to be paid for their work under this system is merely a side effect; the real purpose is to confer an advantage to certain businesses, who (sometimes) happen pay artists/authors/programmers/etc. for their work.