[fsloth]

Actually copyright and all IP legislation is ever more important for businesses as ever more of the wealth companies have is in IP. But this is legally delicate time, companies don't want to squeeze so hard it raises public ire, but sure as anything they don't want to let go of a drop of IP 'leverage' they don't have to.

[matheusmoreira]

Right. It's all about the companies, isn't it? It's all about their leverage, their power, their profits, their god given right to eternal rent seeking.

They forget that copyright is part of a social contract. In its original form, it was something like this:

> we'll pretend your work is scarce so that you can make money

> after a while, it will enter the public domain

Copyright only works because we allow it. We're all pretending this stuff can't be copied and distributed infinitely and at zero cost. We're the ones doing them a favor. We were duped. They assured us that eventually the works would become public property. All of it will one day belong to all of us. That was a lie.

Of course they don't want to let go of their imaginary property. They want their copyrights to last forever so they can extract their rent out of their state granted monopoly for all eternity. So they lobby the governments and systematically rob us of our public domain rights.

So I will no longer pretend this stuff is scarce. It's not. It's data, nothing but a huge number stored on a hard disk. Not a single person on this earth owns that number. It's trivial to copy and distribute it. Everyone needs to know this truth. We need technology that makes it painfully obvious and easy for everyone. Technology that proves it by subverting the business models of these rent seekers. Services like Sci-Hub.

The whole notion of companies hoarding intellectual property is absurd. Intellectual property was never meant to give leverage to companies, it was meant to give them an incentive to create new products and works. Intellectual property expires. At least it would expire if the system worked properly instead of being co-opted by corporations with deep pockets and lots of lobbyists.

If these companies are hoarding wealth in the form of IP, the only just outcome is the one where they lose it all.

[thaumasiotes]

> They forget that copyright is part of a social contract. In its original form, it was something like this:

>> we'll pretend your work is scarce so that you can make money

>> after a while, it will enter the public domain

That is not even close to the original form of copyright. In its original form, copyright was a monopoly held by the crown (and granted to printers) for the purpose of censoring works the crown didn't want published.