[lannisterstark]

I keep being genuinely baffled as someone who writes and has some minor published fictional works about how extreme people can get with this. Why shouldn't I have protection for works I created? What gives someone else the right to just take my story, add tidbits, sell it and make profit?

[EvanAnderson]

You’ve grown up in a world where the idea that someone “owns” a song, a story, etc, is culturally normal. That doesn’t make it a law of nature. It’s just your culture.

I find the culture of “ownership” of ideas morally repugnant. That’s not culture I perpetuate or encourage.

I’m willing to tolerate some of in the form of limited time monopolies if it benefits humanity.

[kelnos]

> I’m willing to tolerate some of in the form of limited time monopolies if it benefits humanity.

So in other words you are absolutely fine with the concept of the ownership of ideas, you just disagree on what the legal terms should be around it. Which is fine! I disagree with the current copyright regime too.

But I think having some form of (much more limited) copyright would benefit humanity much more than having no copyright at all.

[lannisterstark]

>I find the culture of “ownership” of ideas morally repugnant

I see that we're starting off with a misrepresentation already. Copyright isn't a patent.

Copyright isn't solely ownership of 'ideas,' it's ownership of actual work. You cannot 'copyright' an idea.

> It’s just your culture.

I'm sure when it's the 'culture' of every single country in the world, it's an alright culture.

>I’m willing to tolerate

> That’s not culture I perpetuate or encourage.

See what's great about this is that your extremist ideas are in a minority, and you do not get to make the laws. So what you're willing to 'tolerate' or not is irrelevant. No one is looking to you to 'encourage' or 'perpetuate' the culture. Demonizing artists by going "You don't own your own work, I should be able to own it, I made this!" will only get you so far.

---

You shouldn't have free reign to profit off of artistic hard work of someone else without a way for them to benefit from that as well.

[EvanAnderson]

> You shouldn't have free reign to profit off of artistic hard work of someone else without a way for them to benefit from that as well.

You were indoctrinated into this world view and believe it to be a natural law. I was not and I don’t.

You seem pretty angry that somebody would think differently, too.

I can’t conceive of looking at the world that way and being morally okay with it.

[kelnos]

Just goes to show you that morals are relative, and have no absolute standing as to what's "okay" and what isn't.

I'm not the person you're replying to, but I can say I'm not angry about this at all (frankly, it feels like you're the one with the axe to grind here). I don't know about indoctrination; certainly I am a product of my environment, at the very least.

But I guarantee you that if copyright weren't a thing, the catalog of creative works in the world would be a tiny fraction of what it is today. And that would continue to be the case unless the human race can get to a point of post-scarcity, where we don't have to work to put food on the table or roofs over our heads, or have a decently nice standard of living.

Because the majority of people in the world who make things that fall under copyright would not be financially able to keep creating those things if they couldn't make money off of it. And sure, there are sometimes ways to make money off creative works without relying on copyright, but I don't think those ways cover enough to be meaningful.

[lannisterstark]

>You seem pretty angry that somebody would think differently, too.

I'm not angry at all, I just don't see the world purely in black and white as you seem to do. On the other hand, you're the one throwing around words such as "indoctrinated" and all that.

I mean, you're the one who insinuated that it should be 100% okay for me to write a work with 100k words, and you taking those words, adding 200 more words, calling the story 'yours' and profiting off it. If THAT is what you believe 'natural law' is, then I'm absurdly glad that it does not work that way.

>I can’t conceive of looking at the world that way and being morally okay with it.

I can't conceive of having a morality that is basically "it should be okay to take/steal other people's works and do whatever you want with them, regardless of that person's feeling in that matter."

This is why we have open source licenses for people who WANT to grant others that ability to do so. You, as someone who has arguably been in the industry for so long, should be fairly familiar with it.

[jeroenhd]

We live in a society with certain ideas of copyright floating around since we were kids. Copyright is a very nice thing for artists to have and I understand why people get defensive about arguments for taking copyright away from them. However, the presumption that you can have copyright on a story is a very modern take.

> Why shouldn't I have protection for works I created?

It's hard to argue about negatives. In my opinion, the real question is: why should copyright exist in the first place?

Copyright in its modern form has existed for what, 400 years? It's not exactly a requirement for a culture to develop. Obviously, you want protection; many people do.

There are answers to this question. For one, big companies wouldn't be spending billions on movies, tv, and music, if piracy was legal. The internet allowing instant copies of any work has also changed the situation significantly. On the other hand, piracy is easier than ever, there is way too much free online content to compete with to warrant the prices of a lot of media, and piracy is already effectively legal enough that typing "<Movie name> 2023 free stream" into Google will give you a variety of piracy websites to choose from.

On the other hand, most of the internet is very copyright-hostile. From meme templates to fanfiction and embedding foreign site content, most online communities have a very relaxed take on what copyright means. Imagine what would happen if the person who drew the original trollface were to go around demanding copyright fees and starting lawsuits for violating the rights to his property!

> What gives someone else the right to just take my story, add tidbits, sell it and make profit?

What gives you the right to prevent them from improving your work? If I don't like one of your character and consider the story better if I put in a character of my own, who are you to decide what I do with this idea or not?

I'm not anti-copyright (although I think the current form is absolutely ridiculous with its "70 years after the death of the author" terms) and I do enjoy the feeling of having control over my works, but I can't come up with a good rational reason why I have the right to tell someone else what they can or cannot do with the works I create.

We probably need some way to protect small creators (Patreon and friends are an excellent development!) but I would prefer to live in a world where https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GFW-eEWXlc can exist without the ever-present threat of lawyers.

[lannisterstark]

>What gives you the right to prevent them from improving your work? If I don't like one of your character and consider the story better if I put in a character of my own, who are you to decide what I do with this idea or not?

If this were the case I'd just not publish, and keep my story with me, limited to a few people I trust. This is what you'll get if copyright wasn't there.

>On the other hand, most of the internet is very copyright-hostile. From meme templates to fanfiction and embedding foreign site content, most online communities have a very relaxed take on what copyright means. Imagine what would happen if the person who drew the original trollface were to go around demanding copyright fees and starting lawsuits for violating the rights to his property!

Most of the artistic internet doesn't contain works (outside of certain OSS communities) that may have taken someone years to complete and consists of hundreds of thousands of words. I'm amused that you should be somehow okay with the idea of taking a 300,000 words story, adding 10k words, modifying some bits, and selling it as "yours" and profiting off my work.

>Copyright in its modern form has existed for what, 400 years? It's not exactly a requirement for a culture to develop.

>In my opinion, the real question is: why should copyright exist in the first place?

I mean, you can just say that about modern forms of democracies and civil rights. Then why have them in the first place. We can have monarchies, autocracies, theocratic/thalassocratic republics just fine.