[bryanrasmussen]

>Your argument is a straw man. Why should author's have a different right to provide for their children more so than other professions?

I'm pretty sure that people from other professions can leave their property to their children as well, and that property does not suddenly become a public good a set amount of time afterwards.

[mopsi]

I'm sure Levi's wouldn't mind a small license fee every time you wore jeans, but fashion designers - and most other professions - actually don't get the same privileges.

[bryanrasmussen]

so now that we're off the real estate analogy - you picked Levis - a clothing brand and fashion design? It seems a weird argument to make that authors shouldn't have copyright on their books while using as the counterpoint another industry that is also protected by copyright https://copyrightalliance.org/education/qa-headlines/copyrig...

[mopsi]

From your link:

> The way that design elements are cut and pieced together is not protected by copyright. The U.S. Supreme Court recently addressed this topic in Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands, stating that copyright affords “no right to prohibit any person from manufacturing [clothing] of identical shape, cut, and dimensions.”

Levi's in particular has distinct cuts that they are famous for. Should we start embedding RFID tags in jeans to collect licensing fees every time you wear them in public?

[bryanrasmussen]

since you just quoted the part saying that is one of the things not covered by copyright I guess the answer would be no?

I'm sorry but are you under the impression that everything an author does is covered by copyright, that is to say there is nothing an author does that they will be unable to copyright?

on edit: at any rate Levi's cuts etc. are trademarked https://iptica.com/register-clothing-brand/levi-patents/

[bryanrasmussen]

you can sell copyright for $____ and that's it.

but I guess in whatever wonderful country you live in there are no such things as landlords, or perhaps its a dystopian hellhole because there isn't any government enforced property rights so warlords just grab whatever real estate they want? Just trying to get my head around this analogy you were making.

on edit: I see you completely changed your comment from being an example with real estate to being something with Levi's.

[mopsi]

Real estate works the same way. Why are you not paying builders a license fee every time you enjoy the fruits of their labor that protect you from rain and wind? Builders get only a microscopic fraction of the value that their commercial building or a factory produces over its lifetime. Is this fair or unfair?

[Scandiravian]

I don't follow this argument. If a copyright holder can earn money for their work for a fixed period of time, they can use that income to acquire things like property

Unless copyright holders are somehow prohibited from obtaining property or passing it on to their relatives I don't think that's a meaningful comparison

[bryanrasmussen]

>I don't follow this argument. If a copyright holder can earn money for their work for a fixed period of time, they can use that income to acquire things like property

it should be relatively clear, copyrighted works are a form of property that people have and pay taxes on, the same way that they pay taxes on stock they own, or the improvements they did to their land when they built a house on it, and so forth. It's all a form of property.

>they can use that income to acquire things like property

yes, if a master carpenter makes a table and never sells it they can pass it on to their children as a form of property. but they can also sell it and use the money to obtain other forms of property and pass that on to their children. Or just let them inherit the money. Not sure what the point here is, except that for a lot of people's arguments to work here it is beneficial to ignore that copyrighted works are also a form of property.

Now someone will make the point that written works don't work the same as a table made by a carpenter and therefore it is unfair, even though stocks and bonds do not work the same as a small family mom and pop store which does not work the same as a table made by a carpenter which does not work the same as a painting by a famous painter which does not work exactly the same as the insurance business, and so on and so forth.

The fact is that there are many forms of business and property and they do not all work exactly the same, although their local differences tend to get smoothed out by the effects of accounting.

Obviously part of the way that the writing business works is formed by the laws and regulations pertaining to it. You would like to change that, but it seems disingenuous to argue that it should be changed because copyrighted works are not property. They function like property now that the owners lose after a variable amount of time, and even if the changes you wanted would be put in place they would still function like property - but with much less time before being changed to a public good.