| >You're stance on this takes away the rights of creators. The creator's rights are no less important than the consumer's rights. My stance on the matter is that copyright takes away from the general public in the first place. It's not justified, and abolishing therefore means restoring it to the way it's supposed to be. Sorry, but I don't accept copyright as a given something whose abolishing we have to justify. On the contrary, the burden of proof lies on the advocates of copyright to show that it is justified to take away from the general public to hand a monopoly on non-scarce resources to private parties. And I am quite positive that it isn't. >Copying is not stealing technically but when something that is meant to be paid for gets copied and passed around free it does become stealing. No, it isn't. Stealing has a strict definition: I take something away from you, which you lack afterwards. Copying involves no loss. No, not "lost profits" either. It's bullshit. Applying the word to copying is just a pathetic appeal to emotion. Funnily enough, labeling us "pirates" in an attempt to villainize us has probably been the greatest thing the entertainment industry has ever done. It was adapted as a proud, if sometimes self-ironic label, and eventually spawned an entire political movement which now operates in pretty much all western countries with varying degrees of success. >Arguments about software being non-scarce don't apply. Oh yes they do. Waving them aside like that doesn't change the fact that existing software is most definitely non-scarce. There's no limit on how much you can copy it. What you are talking about is the creation of software, which falls under the same category as claiming that without copyright, there would be no music. >Should authors only be paid for one copy of their book? If you consider writing a book a service, then basically yes, s?he should be payed once. As every other artisan providing services is. There were even business models like that, with varying degrees of success (ask for sum $x, release book under public domain when $x is reached). >Why is it wrong to have a choice? If that choice conflicts with reality, then no, you can't have a choice. And reality is that you cannot and should not be able to stop copying and sharing. It's pointless and largely impossible without extremely draconian measures, and, again, highly unethical to attempt to do so. Oh, and you have quite a choice. You can either release your works and deal with the fact that they will be copied and shared - or you don't release anything. >so why is it that the anti-copyright crowd insists that creators should not have the choice to charge for what they create and should gladly give away their work for free. But we are not. We're just saying you can't stop us from sharing. Those are two different, though related things. I can only refer you to the GPL as a good example for this: while you cannot demand access to source per se (and you can charge for a copy of the program if you do so choose), you cannot demand that others stop giving access (share) either. It's basically the golden rule. I cannot demand you to give me a copy of your program. Neither can you demand that I stop giving a copy I received from where-ever to other people. Your rights stop where mine begin. Copyright infringes on my right to share. >But at the same time I don't see a way for me, as a developer, to continue to make a living off my work in a world where it's legal for anyone to distribute my work freely against my wishes. Well, that's a pity to heard but ultimately not of interest, as hard as it may sound. As I have said multiple times, distribution as a business model is dead. The horde of copyright-dependent zombies which are still crawling around are a danger to our future society and need to be put to rest as fast as possible. If you can't adapt and find new ways to make ends meet, then I'm afraid you will have to find a new job. |
If copyright is gone then everything is up for grabs and it can have unintended consequences that make the same people who were against it cry out for help. Right now the argument is framed in such a way that it only takes consumers and willing creators into account. There are people who create things that neither want to profit from them nor share them with the world. In a world without copyright you place much more of a burden on those people to lock away their work. Your diary is up for grabs in this type of world and if ever someone felt like publishing it as their own or selling it there'd be nothing you could do about it. That tutorial you wrote on your blog, the one that's free to access to anyone, well that just ended up in an O'Reilly book without credit and no one asked you. Sure, they won't make a killing off it in this world but it's pissing you off and you think "that's just not right".
I'm wondering if all these great ideals the anti-copyright proponents talk about are the true goal or if there's a little bit of jealousy, sour grapes, and inferiority complexes thrown in there. It kind of reminds me of the guy who works at the McDonalds drive thru who talks a lot of shit about rich people and how it's not fair and we need to spread the wealth while he just sits in his drive through hoping his bank account will fill up with piles of cash one day.
What is under copyright protection right now that we can't create around or over or through? Do we really need to base our work off of someone else's to make something better? Doesnt the greatest disruption come about as a result of inconvenient restriction?
Abolishing copyright sounds great and the ideals around it are just beautiful but the world isn't an ideal place and great ideals and philosophies don't really lend themselves all too well to reality when put into practice. So in the meantime why don't we jump back to reality and get SOPA voted down, lobby to scale back copyright instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water and generally just be more realistice about these things.