[grumbel]

I can't imagine getting rid of it completely would have good effects, as it would make any large scale production impossible. You might still get a few blog post, but getting books produced will be tricky and something big like a movie might be outright impossible. This is doubly true in the modern digital world were everything can be copied in a fraction of a second and where the piracy site, not the authors, will be what bubbles to the top of the search results.

It could also result in far more draconian DRM, as that would be the only way left to protect your work.

Now drastically lowering the time of copyright might be well worth it, something in the realm of 20 years should be enough. As copyright needs to get back to a point where things you consumed in your lifetime, make it into the public domain in your lifetime.

[rightbyte]

> It could also result in far more draconian DRM, as that would be the only way left to protect your work.

There is no way to protect video, audio or text from being copied. DRM just prevents low effort consumer copying.

[grumbel]

There are plenty of ways. Limit playback only to official DRM-locked devices and have those devices film the user. The moment a camera makes it into the picture you block their account for life. That's not even new tech, 3D face detection is standard part of many smartphones and laptops. And companies like Facebook have no problem locking you out forever from their services, for much milder infractions.

Or more practically, just look at cinemas. They already film the audience to prevent filming and with great success. While you still get illegal copies of a movie easily, it's only extremely low quality smartphone rubbish. The high quality piracy videos only shows up months later once the films hit streaming services or Bluray.

And all of that is just current tech, lets assume VR will become a success in the future. Now you have a device on your head that tracks every little one of your moves, including things like heart rate and eye-tracking. Furthermore, what streams to you isn't an easily ripable 2D copy of the movie, but the 3D view of sitting in a cinema. Good luck trying to rip that. And of course tamper proof hardware is a thing as well, so any attempt at opening it up will automatically self destruct it and phone home that you tampered with it.

[dncornholio]

Cinema rips were pretty bad even before cinema's started filming the audience.. Hardly worth watching.

Other than that, all DRM does it makes it harder, not impossible, to copy.

[mdp2021]

«Cinema's started filming the audience»?! You sign some consent form? In which country?

[bshipp]

You're in their building, so I imagine your consent is stated as part of the ticket verbiage or in small print when you buy it. Regardless, closed-circuit cameras are pretty ubiquitous in private businesses, and have been for decades.

[mdp2021]

The idea of the poster was that customers are recorded during projection and that there is active real-time monitoring of said reception, e.g. to detect abuse.

So, "you are being watched as you watch". Not by an uncaring attendant, but by some actively processing automation.

[shrimp_emoji]

>There are plenty of ways. ... have those devices film the user.

I think you've identified pretty much the only way (that I can think of, anyway). If you surveil all consumers and instantly arrest them the moment they make a copy, mission accomplished.

Short of that, though, as long as the data is being presented out in the open (light waves, sound waves, text), it's going to be possible to "rip" it.

[account42]

And without copyright, modified playback systems with the restrictions removed could also be freely distributed so DRM becomes even less effective.

[half-kh-hacker]

As a jumping-off point for thought: Piracy-by-default would work very well in a world where access to a work is not charged, but the social custom is that revenue is collected via pre- or during-production crowdfunding

You may see lower revenues, but how much cost is currently poured into resolving licensing / investing in DRM / etc, all for works to be pirated anyway?

[grumbel]

While that is not fundamentally impossible, Star Citizen is so far the only crowdfunded thing I know that managed to collect AAA-game levels of money. Pretty much everything else isn't making nearly enough to actually finance the project and requires more funding outside of the crowdfunding. Furthermore, a lot of successful crowdfunding is build up on prior copyrighted work. People spend money on Star Citizen because they liked Wing Commander and Freelancer. Without copyright, those earlier works might not have existed to begin with or never gained the popularity they got.

[account42]

You can't look at current crowdfunding levels in a world where the crowdfunded product is the exclusive "IP" of those receiving the money and then assume that tells you anything about a different world where there is no copyright and pre-funding creators is the only way to get new content of a certain scale. Or in other words: you're arguing that not having copyright would not work in a world built around copyright.

[zozbot234]

There's quite a bit of crowdfunded open content. It just tends to not work as well for the most costly to produce kinds of content.

[zozbot234]

Yes, AAA games and live-action movies are so costly to make that they generally wouldn't get traction on crowdfunding platforms if they insisted on full funding. So we get this middle-of-the-road solution where crowdfunding pays for a fraction of the costs, with the rest to be recovered via post-release sales. But other kinds of content don't have that issue to anywhere near the same extent.

[bayindirh]

Many ebook vendors I use (InformIT, Packt, No Starch Press, Pragmatic Bookshelf, Manning, O'Reilly Back in the day), work at piracy-by-default mode. Only InformIT watermarks PDF copies, and there's no DRM to talk about.

So, when you have good content with reasonable prices, people also come and buy.

Also, there are some eBooks in Kobo store devoid of any DRM. So, publishers are not forced to use DRM on Kobo, as well.

[singron]

Another idea is serialization. You release your work little chunks at a time, and if it's not sufficiently supported financially, you stop. A lot of Patreon is effectively funded like this. Obviously the medium has to be amenable to this (e.g. novels, graphic novels, visual novels, some video games).

[Beldin]

> something in the realm of 20 years should be enough.

God no. Right now, we'd be getting remakes from every piece of pop-culture that was semi-popular in the 80s-2002 time frame. Not just movies, but TV series, books, theatre, musicals, ...

Sure, copyright should be shortened, but I don't begrudge (eg.) a one hit winner making money off their hit decades layer. Life of artist is reasonable, I think. They take a gamble on a profession with risky pay-out; if it works out at least once for them, let them reap the benefits.

[grumbel]

Those remakes are exactly why it shouldn't last much longer. As those remakes aren't actually about the work itself, but about the brand recognition that work has in the public consciousness. It's just free advertisement that you don't get with an original work, which is why remakes and sequels are so popular, even if the connection to the original is little more than the title.

It's not the job of copyright to allow people to get lazy or companies profiting forever from the rights they bought. The goal should be to encourage original works and current copyright isn't very good at doing so.

Also it's not like the author would go completely penniless here. Just because everybody can make a StarWars doesn't mean there won't still be a George Lucas approved canon-StarWars. Slapping the authors name on your product to declare it the "Read Thing™" might still be worth a bit and might frankly be better than today's sequels that happen completely without any of the original creators being involved.

[zozbot234]

> Right now, we'd be getting remakes from every piece of pop-culture that was semi-popular in the 80s-2002 time frame. Not just movies, but TV series, books, theatre, musicals, ...

We are getting these things anyway, except that the originals are far less accessible than they should be. Entertainment trends are cyclical.

[Beldin]

I meant a remake of Mr. & Mrs Smith; of Twins, of "Stop or my mom will shoot"... basically of everything that turned a profit, however meager. Moreover, those remakes will be oblivious to what made the original a success. E.g., we'd get Dave Chapelle offered a Seinfeld show, much in that style, without a view to why it was (considered) funny back then, nor with tailoring it to Chapelle.

Put differently: we'd be inundated with much worse schlock than we get now.

[acomjean]

I think 30 years is a decent base in my mind. Let it be renewed a couple times for an extra years if the owners think it’s worth it. That way most stuff flows into the public domain but some works can keep creating value for their creator.

[catothedev]

Upvote for 30 years. Try it for a while, if creative industries aren't meaningfully damaged by the reduced IP rights, then maybe even take it down lower to like 25 or even 20 years.

[ATsch]

> Right now, we'd be getting remakes from every piece of pop-culture that was semi-popular in the 80s-2002 time frame

That's exactly what we are getting right now though. Looking at the top ten of the box office right now, only three are not part of an existing franchise. Three of them are reboots of 80s movies, four if you count comic books. Large IP holders recognize under the current system, it is much more profitable to exploit their existing IP than to come up with new concepts. If the copyright terms were significantly shorter, the pressure to be original would be far higher.

[jdright]

So shitty remakes is the reason why general poor population can never have access to information and education? Gotcha.

[gatlin]

It protects nothing important. That people must participate in selling their creativity and creative labors to eat is a more fundamental bug in society and as someone who makes a living off "IP" only I can't wait for the day that my life is secured by something other than armed threats of violence against people sharing ideas and information.