[breck]

> why we feel it's OK to pirate news articles, but not other IP

Who thinks this? I don't. I think copyright is wrong across the board. I would love if the same pattern of posting archive'd articles held for books, movies, et cetera.

I would love to change my mind on this, as it is a very unpopular opinion to have. But I have _never_ seen a morally or scientifically sound argument in favor of copyright law, and I've spent decades looking.

I think it subsidizes the creation of junk food content (superhero movies and clickbait news for example) while not contributing anything to the progress of science (paywalled scientific journals and textbooks). I shudder how much time I have wasted in my life consuming crap attention grabbing media and advertisements. I like to think if we lived in a world where everyone could be a publisher if they wanted to, the quality filters would be better, and information reaching us all would be more likely to be in our best interests.

[metabagel]

You can self-publish. Oh, you want to be able to publish other people’s work, and without their permission? How does that benefit the author?

[breck]

> How does that benefit the author?

You speak of "the author". But the current system does not benefit "the author". 1% of authors profit off copyright. 99% lose money on copyright (they pay more for copyrighted media than they earn from it).

Your question should be "How does that benefit monopolist authors"?

I agree, my idea would not benefit monopolist authors. They would lose the bulk of their revenue stream.

But it would benefit the average author whose cost of living would fall and information would start serving them more than serving business.

I am not downplaying the talent and hard work of successful monopolist authors. But I do not think the works they create are worth everyone giving up their rights to reshare and remix information. I believe the world would look very different post-IP. You'd probably have a new profession--small independent librarians (similar to data hoarders today)--who would help their local communities maximize the value they got from humanity's best information.

Maybe I'm wrong! Maybe the information ecosystem is better controlled and the genetic differences of monopolist authors are so stark that without the subsidies to this gifted class we'd all be worse off. But that's an argument based on outcomes and not principles.

> without their permission

The oxygen I'm breathing right now mostly was created by trees on land owned by others. But I don't ask for their permission to breath. Some things are just not natural.

I am not saying plagiarize. It is always the right thing to do to link back and/or credit the source. But needing to ask permission to republish something seems to go against natural laws.