[zasdffaa]

I've just spent 2 years writing something which ain't got anything else like it. It was technically pretty difficult and needed a lot of background knowledge.

Should I be disallowed to commercialise it?

I partly get where you stand but if I was in a society that you seem to endorse my first question would be, other than for the love of doing it, why sink so much effort into a thing only to get nothing back. It almost is the opposite of a meritocracy.

[atoav]

As a musician and filmmaker I see it like this: once my work is published I stop to be in total control of it. That means I cannot control (or sometimes even know) what paths my works will take, how it is being understood, who will do what with it etc.

Of course I like to be credited for my work — but some fan adding my work to a pirate page would not be a concern but rather a bit flattering. What would anger me would be someone claiming credit for themselves, some rich company taking the material without paying me, things of that sort.

[freetanga]

You can always publish it under a free license. Your choice, previous post can choose differently and charge.

Nothing wrong with expecting to get paid for your work. If as a consumer you don’t want to pay, stick to open source and freely licensed media.

[xhkkffbf]

You're being short-sighted if you think you're going to be able to sell material in the future if the recording company or studio goes out of business. The only reason they have money to support you is because the public supports them.

[atoav]

Huh? I do sell material right now without any recording company or studio in the loop. Why would that change if they go bust? If anything the demand for people like me would increase.

There are quite some hoops small self publishers have to jump through to get their music sold in a way it can actually interfere with the big corps in that space. These hoops are all there to make the market entrance harder, they are not there to protect artists.

[crtasm]

Before refreshing the thread I wondered if I was overlooking something in your earlier post, it feels so strange to me to assume a record company/studio are involved!

[cookiengineer]

If you as a private person own a patent, you are losing it anyways...because you cannot fight some mega corporation in court to defend it. It's too expensive, and the biggest corps just take what they want due to having more financial resources.

Note that if you don't defend it in court, our justice system thinks it is less valueable to protect. Which in itself is kind of ridiculous.

Also, right to commercialization has nothing to do with intellectual property.

[catchclose8919]

The solution is simple:

ONLY private persons should own patents, and it should be illegal even for employers or institutions (academic, research) to own patents of people employed to do research. At most companies and istitutions should be allowed to add a clause of "perpetual-free-usage of any patents of employees resulting from direct work" - but an employee or group-of-employees holdig a patent should still be able to license it to other companies too. If businesses are hurt, that's GOOD, most should not exist as coagulated entities.

We're not gonna have proper freedom preserving capitalism ultil we properly decentralize: we all work like swarms of 1-person-companies / solopreneurs contracting between eachother. (No, not the gig-economy, in that distopia we're all still slaves that can't band together to fight the masters.) Legislation will automatically have to be refacored to make this work. With some exceptions, only human individuals should hold most property, not companies and not institutions. Groups/collectives only when the group members directly worked together and know eachother.

And Intellectual Property would just "click in" in in such context. IP sounds hellish and disfunctional because our own practically techno-communist society (yeah, even USA is practically "communist" nowadays in a way - newsflash: "the reds" have won! even the f symbolism is there, "the red pill" is the good one now... all's backwards) is messed up. It makes perfect sense in a hyper-decentralized hyper-individualistic REALLY democratic and REALLY capitalist society.

[zasdffaa]

> If you as a private person own a patent, you are losing it anyways

There's always someone who just has to spread the despair and helplessness. Every bloody time. Tell me, in what way does this add to the discussion? I wish there was a ban on these kind of comments.

> right to commercialization has nothing to do with intellectual property.

I don't understand. If I don't own it I can't market it, right?

[sgift]

> There's always someone who just has to spread the despair and helplessness. Every bloody time. Tell me, in what way does this add to the discussion? I wish there was a ban on these kind of comments.

It you only want answers you like go talk to a mirror. The way this adds to the discussion should be pretty obvious, but let me spill it out: If one of the main arguments for IP is wrong it's costs/benefits have to be reevaluated.

[zasdffaa]

At least a mirror won't tell me "you're fucked, give up now". In that sense, I can expect a less enervating response.

[krageon]

That's not what they said. They said "the power distribution is so skewed against actual people the current system must be destroyed as a matter of principle". What about that is hopeless? It offers a clear escape and very little ambiguity. If anything, it should be energising to a casual reader.

[zasdffaa]

He said "If you as a private person own a patent, you are losing it anyways...because you cannot fight some mega corporation in court to defend it. It's too expensive, and the biggest corps just take what they want due to having more financial resources"

IOW he didn't say what you claim. Plus he gave no way forward to achieve his goals, and am I not in any position right now to Bring Down The Man, much as The Man may need it, so it was just a hopeless valueless post.

[andrepd]

I'm sorry that corporate intellectual property law is not the idyllic paradise you want it to be.

[einpoklum]

> Should I be disallowed to commercialise it?

I believe you are mis-phrasing the question. What you're actually asking is:

> Should the state criminalize and punish people who make copies of my work, to facilitate my commercial activity with it?

And our answer is "No".

You can go ahead and engage in whatever commercial activity you like, based on open access to your work.

[zasdffaa]

That's a constructive answer, so thanks, although I have to ask your view of how BSD was used by apple to build a massive fortune but without paying significantly back to the BSD community.

Overheard from an IP lawyer I stood near to once - something about f/oss software being incorporated into commercial products being a big issue (for the free stuff, not the company doing the 'stealing' of it). Your view?

[rakoo]

This is the exact reason why copyleft licenses are important: you can reuse (A)GPL content, but if you do so the result must be given back to the community. If you're not going to pay anything, at least your product benefits everyone

[zasdffaa]

The point is the licenses are irrelevant: The IP lawyer said they take quietly, they incorporate it into their products which they sell.

the licences are being ignored. It's what she said.

[rakoo]

BSD content can be taken without contributing back, it's in the license. Copyleft content cannot. That's the main difference, and even Google doesn't want to touch copyleft content with a 10-foot pole because of the fear they'd have to share their internal sauce, so I presume companies still take licenses into account.

[zasdffaa]

Stop ignoring what I said. It's not about BSD licenses it's about more restrictive ones

You:

> This is the exact reason why copyleft licenses are important: you can reuse (A)GPL content, but if you do so the result must be given back to the community

Me: the frigging licences are being ignored. Giving back to the community is not happening. Code is being stolen. Are you trying to ignore what's being said?

[shrimp_emoji]

>BSD was used by apple to build a massive fortune but without paying significantly back to the BSD community.

Welcome to free software. :)

If you had to "pay back significantly" to use it, it would not be "free software".

It's regrettable, but it's the price of freedom. Whether that's worth it is subjective. Stallman's answer to this was the GPL. (I bet Apple wouldn't've touched BSD if it was GPL'd.) Newer, hybrid license have also emerged (like the MPL) that attempt to strike a better balance between freedom and back-contributions.

[account42]

The way I see it the problem in both cases here is that the company is using stuff created by others but not giving the same freedom to users of ther derived work.

Without copyright this situation is a lot more equalized as now you can have people make modified versions of macOS and redistribute those legally - yes, not having source access makes that more difficult, but not impossible and even if you did need the source, it only has to leak once.

[worldshit]

> based on open access to your work

Can I freely use your toilet then? your electricity? You pay for the plumber, why don't you pay for entertainment?

Scientific knowledge must be open, but most copyrighted work is entertainment.

[klez]

> Can I freely use your toilet then? your electricity?

No because once you used them I don't have them anymore. There's a reason IP has different rules than physical property.

> You pay for the plumber, why don't you pay for entertainment?

Ok, that's a more appropriate analogy, but then again, should my plumber get a recurring fee for the work they already did, when I use the faucet to give drinks to my friends?

[worldshit]

> No because once you used them I don't have them anymore.

I mean entering your house, doing my business in your toilet and leave. I won't take your toilet with me, I'll come back when I need it again.

> when I use the faucet to give drinks to my friends?

But your friends all have their own house with their own plumbing they paid him for, so he can continue making a living from his craft. Writing a book takes months or years, not 2 hours like repairing a toilet, so of course the author needs to ask for money from everyone who wants to access it.

[klez]

> I mean entering your house, doing my business in your toilet and leave. I won't take your toilet with me, I'll come back when I need it again

We're moving the goalpost here. And we're still talking about physical property (or possession) vs. intellectual property. I suggest we stop with that line of reasoning/metaphor.

> But your friends all have their own house with their own plumbing they paid him for, so he can continue making a living from his craft.

Again, the metaphor does not hold. Such a situation only means that the plumber is the only plumber in town. If we have multiple plumbers (so we can stick to the metaphor) my plumber can't forbid me to use my plumbing for certain uses (like watering my plants or offering water to my friends for free or for a fee).

> Writing a book takes months or years, not 2 hours like repairing a toilet, so of course the author needs to ask for money from everyone who wants to access it.

So it's just a quantitative difference? I can pay 1 cent per 1000 toilet flushes then. Seems fair.

My point is, I think these kind of metaphors don't work here precisely because intellectual work is its own thing.

[account42]

> I mean entering your house, doing my business in your toilet and leave. I won't take your toilet with me, I'll come back when I need it again.

If your use of my toilet doesn't affect me in anyway then I don't see why I should have a problem with that. If we are talking about you stinking up the place, using all my toilet paper and blocking the john whenever I need to go then we are talking about something very different from "IP".

[einpoklum]

> Can I freely use your toilet then?

You can freely use the design of my toilet, certainly.

> You pay for the plumber, why don't you pay for entertainment?

I pay for physical objects that are made for me, like books; and I pay when people come play their music (even if payment is not mandatory).

But TBH - I don't think that's the appropriate moral basis for things. For example, we don't pay for the huge amount of work our parents do for us; nor for the not-for-profit activities we often rely on etc. I would much rather support a non-exchange-based social arrangement.

[andrepd]

Surely there is a middle ground between zero rights and early 1900s works coming into public domain in the 2050s.

[xhkkffbf]

Exactly. I'm in complete agreement. If someone else wants to give away their work for free, that's fine with me. But if I want to charge, I should be able to charge for my labor just like the farmer or the baker. Certainly they'll charge me for bread.

Writing is hard work. Writing books and getting them technically correct is expensive. This is very short-sighted.

[hansel_der]

> Should I be disallowed to commercialise it?

ofc not

but since noone can ever prove that his was the first incarnation of an idea, nobody can be criminalized for also doing things in a certain way.

the concept of protecting invention for some time to facilitate reward is not without merit, but the implementation of IP law and practise has gone so far astray that it's overdue to rethink the whole thing.

[ahmadmijot]

I'm also write technical writing (including academic publications) and I do feel like I need to get monetary gains from all my works. But I also believe that copyright law is too restricted and too long (15 years after the death of original author/artist/writer/etc should be enough)

[alexb_]

15 years period should be enough. If you haven't contributed anything to society within the past 15 years, why should you get to live off the 1 thing you did? Shouldn't you be incentivized to be productive? That's the point of copyright law in the first place after all.

[zasdffaa]

It's extremely easy to say what you say without having written a book. Harry Potter into public domain I'm prob OK with but some people put years of their life into technical books. My father did.

EDIT: ach, didn't read your post propely - first line says " I'm also write technical writing (including academic publications)" so you have a strong position to hold your view - sorry

(deleted)

[klez]

> Harry Potter into public domain I'm prob OK with but some people put years of their life into technical books. My father did.

So did JK Rowling. So what's the difference?

[zasdffaa]

Yep, very good point. I take it back.

[account42]

Some people put years of their life into fixing plumbing, should they and their heirs also profit from that plumbing?

I'm all for finding ways to reward people for creating things but that should not include restricting what others can create.

[iggldiggl]

Fixing the plumbing usually takes much less time than writing a book, so recompensing the plumber for the time spent doing the plumbing in a one-and-done lump sum is much more tenable than doing the same for an author, who might have taken weeks, months or even years writing a book.

Plus fixing the plumbing usually only needs to be done infrequently, whereas a book is read in a comparatively short time, so from that point of view a consumer would also be willing (and able) to spend more per plumbing fix than per book.

So consequently you need some sort of arrangements that allow for splitting the necessary payment to the author up across multiple people and/or over time.

Additionally, artists often speculatively create works without knowing for sure whether the public will take any interest in their work, or not. Copyright certainly has its faults, but it does cater for precisely that scenario by ensuring that you can insist on getting paid afterwards if people enjoy and want access to your work, and you don't need to acquire all the necessary funding up front. If you can't come up with enough money, you can even "just" invest your spare time instead and still get paid back if the work turns out be successful.

Plumbers on the other hand I assume rarely have the desire to speculatively fix up other people's plumbing and then hope to get paid afterwards if they did a good job.

Rewarding artists after they've already produced the artistic work if they're successful also makes sense in that the quality of artistic output can vary, and so there's a bigger risk of disappointment if you need to pay far in advance, before the work has possibly even been produced.

And because the quality of an artistic work is also very much a subjective matter, it'd also be much more difficult getting your money back in that case, whereas plumbing can mostly be judged according to much more objective standards, so getting your money back – through the legal system if required - is again a more tenable affair.

Of course the existence of Kickstarter and the like or even just plain old pre-orders show that to some extent people are willing to take that risk of paying in advance, but whether that would be enough if it was the only reasonable source of funding for artistic works? It'd also mean that if you can't convince people to pay you in advance (and good luck with that if you're some unknown newcomer), then good luck getting any more money afterwards, even if the book/… then turns out to be wildly popular afterwards.

[MYEUHD]

You could offer a PDF version for free. And charge money for a printed version. It would probably result in more sales.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23073126

[scoot]

> I've just spent 2 years writing something which ain't got anything else like it.

With grammar like that, it's probably just as well.

[enasterosophes]

>Should I be disallowed to commercialise it?

No one said anything about disallowing you from doing anything.

>my first question would be, other than for the love of doing it, why sink so much effort into a thing only to get nothing back.

Is it wise to sink your time into something you don't really like doing?

[unglaublich]

> Is it wise to sink your time into something you don't really like doing? If it pays your bills and gives you spare time to do what you like, then often yes.

[enasterosophes]

So you're betting your rent money on future royalties which might never appear even if piracy were impossible?

[zasdffaa]

> which might never appear

or it might. Your own answer acknowledges that with the 'might'. So yes, you measure the odds then throw the dice.

[plater]

That's how businesses are created.

[zasdffaa]

But I loved creating it - I said so! But that alone would not drive me to do it nearly as much as getting a more tangible benefit.

[enasterosophes]

There are other business models than waiting on possible royalties, if you feel the need for additional incentives. People use patreon, eg.