[nybble41]

> … the law is as it is and producers invest in content with the expectation that those laws will be enforced.

The law can change tomorrow with the stroke of a pen and society won't owe them anything for these past "investments" no matter what their expectations were. Which, of course, is why they invest so much in politics and astroturf campaigns to head off any attempt to actually change the law to something more in line with what most people actually think is right. (If you applied the principle of estoppel and required anyone who had ever violated copyright law to suit words to actions and vote against it then you probably couldn't even get a quorum in favor, much less a majority.)

> The problem with this line of reasoning is that all property is an artificial construct.

Property rights arise naturally as a result of scarcity. Someone has to have the right to decide how the scarce resource will be used or it might as well not exist.

"Property" rights in things that are not scarce are a purely artificial construct.

> For starters, the GPL, CC, Apache and many other free licenses rely on copyright to work.

Copyleft licenses were created as a reaction against copyright. Sometimes they overstep their bounds, true—especially the less permissive variants. However, in general, if copyright and software patents did not exist then there would be no need for any of these licenses.

> The wholesale destruction of journalism, for example, has clearly damaged society. Part of the damage has been caused because Google and Facebook have subverted copyright to their own causes.

Taking it at face value, this appears to be an argument against copyright? Not that I really agree that Google and Facebook are primarily to blame. The public simply prefers to be entertained and reaffirmed rather than informed. If anything, copyright reinforces this outcome since you can't copyright facts (and rightly so); as such, actual journalism, uncovering the facts of the situation, has become a cost center to be minimized, whereas the "expression" is heavily subsidized via copyright monopoly.

[doctor_eval]

> The law can change tomorrow with the stroke of a pen and society won't owe them anything

What you say is literally true, but because most investment ends up as wages, such an act would literally destroy tens of billions of dollars of working capital, and put a hundred thousand people out of work overnight.

I assume that's not an outcome you actually advocate.

> Property rights arise naturally as a result of scarcity

Rubbish. The whole concept of rights is almost entirely artificial [0]. For most of history, property and other rights were determined by whoever had the biggest army. Jesus, many people still don't have the right to their own bodies in some places in the world.

The idea that rights of any kind are somehow anything other than a set of cherished beliefs codified in law, is nonsense.

> Copyleft licenses were created as a reaction against copyright.

I think the situation is much, much more complicated than that, but it is a side issue of this conversation at best.

> this appears to be an argument against copyright... The public simply prefers to be entertained

You surely can't blame people for wanting to be entertained? Are you saying you never watch something fun?

In any case, weak and misapplied copyright laws have enabled Google and Facebook, in particular, to concentrate the important elements of journalism and present it to their users in a way which reduces the diversity of all journalism. They show just enough to get away with "fair use" while ensuring that the likelihood of people clicking outside the walled garden is minimised.

Imagine what these companies would do to us if basic copyright was even weaker. Do you think Facebook would link to an article it can just copy? 2 billion+ people on the earth would have just one web browser and it would never - not be allowed - to leave fb.com.

That is not a future I want.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta

[nybble41]

> I assume that's not an outcome you actually advocate.

I don't wish misfortune on anyone, and I expect there would be a transitional period in any real-world implementation, but just the same I cannot possibly justify continuing this parasitic situation any longer than absolutely necessary. If I were presented with a button that would eliminate copyright law instantly, globally, and permanently, I would press it without hesitation—and then get to work dealing with the inevitable fallout.

> For most of history, property and other rights were determined by whoever had the biggest army. Jesus, many people still don't have the right to their own bodies in some places in the world.

You are obviously referring to legal recognition of rights, not the rights themselves. The law is artificial, founded for the most part on non-defensive application of force to achieve a desired outcome, and doesn't correlate very well with the rights that people naturally possess. Some legal systems are better than other in this regard. No law which comes from a government will ever fully recognize natural human rights because, quite simply, that would put them out of business. However, here in the U.S. we at least explicitly recognize that there are rights which humans naturally possess ("endowed by their Creator"—whatever that happens to mean to you) which do not derive from the law, but rather have priority over it. There is a difference between what the law says you may do without penalty and what you may rightfully do, and when the two are in conflict it is the law which is wrong, no matter how popular the law might be or how much force can be brought to bear to back it up.

> You surely can't blame people for wanting to be entertained? Are you saying you never watch something fun?

I'm not blaming them. I'm just saying that there isn't a strong market right now for actual journalism. It's thankless work, for the most part, with or without copyright.

> In any case, weak and misapplied copyright laws have enabled Google and Facebook, in particular, to concentrate the important elements of journalism and present it to their users in a way which reduces the diversity of all journalism. They show just enough to get away with "fair use" while ensuring that the likelihood of people clicking outside the walled garden is minimised.

Are you trying to say that copyright should be expanded to cover facts and not just expression? That it should be illegal to quote or paraphrase a small portion of a copyrighted work? I believe the majority would side with me in vehemently disagreeing. Keep in mind that (in the U.S.) the exceptions for fair use are the only reason why copyright law was not declared wholly unconstitutional on 1st Amendment grounds. Freedom of speech is far more important than this runaway social engineering experiment known as copyright. (IMHO they gave in too easily. Copyright law violates the 1st Amendment and freedom of speech even with fair use.)

[doctor_eval]

> I don't wish misfortune on anyone ... I would press it without hesitation

I can’t reconcile these two statements. People would definitely die if you pushed that button; I don’t think you want that.

> here in the U.S. we at least explicitly recognize that there are rights which humans naturally possess

Perhaps true, but only for certain values of ‘human’.

> Are you trying to say that copyright should be expanded to cover facts and not just expression? That it should be illegal to quote or paraphrase a small portion of a copyrighted work?

I think it’s pretty clear that I’m saying that fair use has been subverted by companies for profit, and that eliminating copyright will make things far worse.

> Freedom of speech is far more important than this runaway social engineering experiment known as copyright

Given the rate at which people are getting sick and dying in the US right now, I’m not certain that the “runaway social experiment of free speech” - as moderated and directed by the copyright infringing trolls at big social media - is working out too well for you guys either.

> Copyright law violates the 1st Amendment and freedom of speech even with fair use.

Didn’t you just essentially argue that the law is not morally authoritative?

You clearly believe that there exist natural rights. I happen to believe that the right to control the things I create is natural. Just because something can be copied easily doesn’t abrogate my natural rights, any more than the fact that your genome can be copied abrogates yours.

Despite what you think, its entirely possible and natural for me to suffer a loss if you copy something that I created, particularly if creating it was expensive for me, and your copying it prevents me from making good my loss.

While there is much I find dismaying about copyright law, there is nothing unnatural about it.