[ghaff]

>They had a good, innovative product

They had a product that involved giving away other people's stuff. Yes, copyright terms are too long. But I'm pretty sure that a vanishingly small amount of that stuff they were giving away would be out of copyright even with a copyright term of 20 years.

[cfmcdonald]

Aereo's business model was almost exactly identical to how the cable industry started - capture an over-the-air signal and deliver it to customers over a landline channel.

If Aereo was in the wrong than the cable industry probably should never have existed.

[ghaff]

There were lawsuits around the cable industry and they ended up having to re-license content as I understand it.

[cfmcdonald]

Yes, in 1976 Congress passed new legislation that forced them to pay up. By that time the cable industry was well-established and could afford it (and they had enough of an audience that the broadcasters had a strong incentive to make rights deals). If the same rules had been in place and enforced in the 50s and 60s, I doubt there ever would have been a cable industry.

[Spivak]

The important thing to note is that the cable companies won the lawsuits (with the arguments that are currently being made here, the courts agree with you!) which spurred Congress to amend the Copyright Act so that transmission was a copyright violation and cable companies needed to license.

[monocasa]

And Aereo tried to pay for the content under the same terms as the cable companies, but that was squashed on appeal as well.

[TaylorAlexander]

Well I really take issue with the idea that IP is "other people's stuff". I might say they were giving away copies of data that the government had granted others a monopoly on. I am being intentionally pedantic because copyright is much more harmful than people give it credit for. The internet archive is desperately trying to give people free books and others are trying to stop them.

[sonofaplum]

Nothing is stopping the IA from buying books and giving them to people, or paying authors to write books and then giving them to people. What they are suing is to prevent IA from scanning books and giving those copies to an unlimited number of people, which is, no matter what your moral feelings about the matter, quite different!

[rgbrenner]

Are you planning to make all your code on GitHub public domain? Or are you just referring to other people’s copyrights?

[TaylorAlexander]

Yes. All of the writing on my website is CC0 licensed (public domain). The robot I have been designing for the last 2.5 years is CC0 licensed. I design PCBs for fun and license them CC0. I have been licensing my youtube videos as CC0, and I just started a new youtube channel for my own CC0 licensed 4k videos of nature. Most of the content on my github is already licensed with some kind of permissive open license either CC0 or MIT/BSD licensed, though some of my older work is licensed GPL.

Intellectual property restrictions raise costs and keep people poor. 3D printers were $50,000+ until the patents expired, and now you can get a decent printer for $300. And books of course could be distributed for free. Every person on earth could be born in to great wealth if we simply allowed it.

Of course I do not advocate that we take income from hard working artists. Instead I advocate for a world where we make living so cheap that artists need little in the way of income for survival. Reducing intellectual property restrictions is one important factor in lowering the cost of living for all, and would make it easier for billions to benefit from the technologies people like me in the USA enjoy.

Supporting copyright means supporting the idea that we do not build a comprehensive library of all books accessible to all people. In contrast to the idea that every child born on earth should have access to a complete library of the written word, intellectual property advocates push for the impoverishment of the billions on earth who cannot pay tithing to book publishers and movie studios. It's quite the bold position to take.

[salawat]

Great people deserve great recognition. Thank you.

May your works act as a seed to a tree whose shade you may one day enjoy.

[TaylorAlexander]

Thanks! As long as the seeds grow, someone will enjoy the result. :)

[tekknik]

I can’t see this working on a large scale. With no IP rights then how can I protect my work? We could outlaw all businesses so nobody can take my work and turn a profit from it but then where’s the incentive to solve complex problems? If I have to give away my solution then there’s really no reason for me to try unless I’m being forced in some way. Why would a dr want to work on a solution for cancer instead of just treating people if the value gain is the same?

[TaylorAlexander]

Prusa 3D printers are open source. Their main product over the last several years has been the MK2 and MK3 line of printers. Millions of clones have been sold by well-equipped Chinese companies. The clones sell for 1/3 the price, but make some cost cutting measures to achieve low cost. The result is that there is plenty of room in the market for the first party company and the clones.

Your suggestion that we outlaw business is clearly meant to be inflammatory, but it's unnecessary. Businesses like Prusa seem to be just fine without using IP restrictions.

> Why would a dr want to work on a solution for cancer instead of just treating people if the value gain is the same?

I would put it to you that you've misunderstood why people do things that they do. I am making a 3D printable off road robot and associated computer vision stack completely open source because I want to. It feels good to make something I think others will benefit from. I am able to cover my material needs with part time work, and I put a huge amount of effort in to my computer vision research so I can help contribute to solving tough robotics problems. The endeavor has cost me thousands of dollars in supplies and truly hundreds of hours of my own time. But it's worth doing.

You mentioned a desire to "protect your work". Well your work is not under attack when someone observes what you've done and reproduces it. Your work is still there, it's fine. But to advocate for IP restrictions is to say that you think I should collaborate with you to stop anyone else from copying your work. And I think that's a bad idea. Closed source technology is a big unchanging black box that stops up the works. We can make the cost of living dramatically cheaper for all people on Earth, but not with thousands of little black boxes everywhere. Imagine a huge open source software project that relies on a bunch of closed source modules. Developing improvements would be a pain. Why should we tolerate the same for the very means of reproduction of our society?

[tekknik]

I actually didn’t mean the outlaw business thing as inflammatory. I challenge you to find a way to make this work when some can still make profit.

I’m aware what you do on your Github, I looked it up. Interestingly I have many more public/oss repos than you.

You have failed to address the point and gave one example of a company based around 3d printers. I challenge you to think about this across all industries and how a company making something of great value can protect this thing so another company cannot just take it and get all the research for free.

Further I put it to you that YOU don’t understand why people do what they do. Most of us enjoy an intelectual challenge but that is not all we enjoy.

[behringer]

I'm sure if you wrote a book you would be a bit annoyed.

[TaylorAlexander]

I have published a small book which I licensed CC0 and put a free copy online. I have also been designing a robot for the last two and a half years and I have licensed the entire thing as CC0 so anyone can benefit from it. I also regularly publish youtube videos which I license CC0, and in fact all of the writing on my personal website is also licensed CC0. Even at my workplace I am leading the push to become a non-profit so we can raise money via donations and make our product open source (with a CC0 license).

So no, I would not be annoyed. Intellectual property restrictions increase the cost of everything and stand in the way of providing a better world for all.

[Dylan16807]

They were renting out equipment, and the equipment captured free OTA signals for the renter to view later. If they were offering a datacenter where people put their own DVR boxes, it would be unquestionably legal and ethical. It's stupid that there is a distinction.