[loupol]

Agreed on all points, the tweet feels like an allergic reaction to what copyright has morphed into, which is a tool for big corporations to extract money from existing IP for an insanely long duration.

But it's important to remember that no copyright at all would hurt small and medium creators immensely. Big corps could just pick things that are trending up, rip them off instantly and scale their ripoff much better thanks to their great workforce and marketing reach. That would create a big disincentive for independent creation of IP.

Like you, I would just prefer if copyright was kept in place but its duration decreased drastically compared to now. It doesn't seem likely given the lobbying strength of the corporations that benefit from the current situation sadly.

[naasking]

> But it's important to remember that no copyright at all would hurt small and medium creators immensely. Big corps could just pick things that are trending up, rip them off instantly and scale their ripoff much better thanks to their great workforce and marketing reach

The big assumption in this argument is that large corporations that depend on copyright would still exist, but it seems pretty clear that they would not. If copyright didn't exist, then there would be nothing for them to monetize. The first broadcast, distribution or performance of a work could recorded/copied and redistributed with no penalty, so large corporations are just as disadvantaged as small players. How do you see large corporations forming and perpetuating themselves in order to exploit these smaller players?

[snowwrestler]

Large-scale distribution is expensive and complicated. Companies don’t need to control copyright to make money doing it. In fact digital distribution companies make way more money today than copyright holders. Look how much Google, Apple, Amazon, etc are worth, compared to the labels. Spotify alone has more annual revenue than all the big music labels combined. Copyright is the legal lever that allows labels and artists to make a claim on some of that distribution revenue.

This is in fact the origin of the legal concept of copyright: established printers who had more money and equipment than authors would print up copies of popular written works, distribute and sell them, and return nothing to the author.

[bloppe]

> Large-scale distribution is expensive and complicated.

Not anymore. Most CDN's will do that for free. Distribution is easy. Spotify makes money because open source pirating networks attract the attention of law enforcement.

[johnnyanmac]

At the scale of Spotify and FAANG, hosting that data gets really expensive, really fast. It's again, why Amazon is a trillionarire from giving "cheap server data" to billionaires.

It's also tech literacy. Artists under may be able to host their own servers, but not well. They'd be the biggest targets of all the big hacks (which still happen to said billion dollar corps in 2023), you would want someone who can secure them for you. And they may not know how to host a server to begin with.

[naasking]

You don't even need to host data and worry about scalability, you can exploit distributed networks like ipfs and BitTorrent.

[naasking]

> Large-scale distribution is expensive and complicated.

It is in fact neither expensive, nor complicated, eg. napster.

[johnnyanmac]

I wouldn't call Naptster simple just because it's P2P. And P2P is in fact way more complicated and difficult to do right than a dedicated server. I hope I don't need to describe every disadvantadge and why even Spotify decided to stop using P2P (which isn't purely a control move).

[naasking]

It's simple now because it's effectively a solved problem: your client just uses one of the many robust P2P protocols available.

[saaaaaam]

> Spotify alone has more annual revenue than all the big music labels combined

This is very much not the case. In fact Spotify’s revenue in its last full year was less than half of the combined revenues of the three major record labels for a similar period.

Spotify generated €11.7 billion in revenue in 2022, approx $12.9 billion.

Universal Music Group generated €10.3 billion in revenue in 2022, approx $11.3 billion

Warner Music Group generated $5.9 billion in their fiscal year ending Sep 30 2022

Sony Music generated ¥1.3 trillion (approx $10.1 billion) in their fiscal year ending March 2023.

Total revenues of major labels: $27.3 billion.

Spotify: https://s29.q4cdn.com/175625835/files/doc_financials/2022/q4...

UMG: https://www.universalmusic.com/universal-music-group-n-v-rep...

WMG: https://investors.wmg.com/static-files/f35e3e8a-8ae2-4960-95...

Sony: https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/pdf/22...

[malwrar]

> Large-scale distribution is expensive and complicated

Maybe centralized distribution. Bittorrent appears to be a fairly cheap and reliable method for serving content that scales nicely as more people join the swarm.

[johnnyanmac]

cheaper but unreliable.

And at that scale for serving other businesses, people will start being more concious about what and how they seed. People already get into drama over that as is.

[sensanaty]

Maybe if we lived in a world that never had copyright law to begin with, but we don't. We live in a world where trillion dollar entities like Microsoft & Disney exist. Even if you abolished the concept of Copyright, Patents and all the rest of it now at this very moment, these companies would still have trillions in their coffers with which they could do plenty of harm to smaller entities. You think Microsoft, who already have a habit of harvesting as many things as they can en-masse, isn't gonna be able to do anything to harm the smaller players? You think Disney isn't just gonna go out and straight up hoover up every single byte of music & video in existence that they can get their hands on and start reselling it?

> ...then there would be nothing for them to monetize...

... other than the works of every single person they could possibly get their hands on, as is happening with the AI companies.

[Mountain_Skies]

Break them up as part of the process. It's well beyond the time that should have been done anyway. Trillion dollar corporate entities shouldn't exist nor should any of them have ever gotten anywhere close to being over 1% of GDP. Just look at the weirdness that happens in South Korea with Samsung having so much control.

[naasking]

> Even if you abolished the concept of Copyright, Patents and all the rest of it now at this very moment, these companies would still have trillions in their coffers with which they could do plenty of harm to smaller entities

And they would slowly dwindle and die as their revenue streams dried up. I'm still not seeing the issue. They're already "harming" small creators in these same ways, particularly because extended copyright means we can't have derivative works, thus stifling innovations of smaller creators right now.

> You think Disney isn't just gonna go out and straight up hoover up every single byte of music & video in existence that they can get their hands on and start reselling it?

Reselling what? Something you would be able to download for free on the Internet if copyright didn't exist? An open source Spotify would immediately pop up that would only charge you enough to cover hosting. What commercial enterprise do you think could compete with that long-term?

[snowwrestler]

> An open source Spotify would immediately pop up that would only charge you enough to cover hosting. What commercial enterprise do you think could compete with that long-term?

What you are describing is a commercial enterprise.

[naasking]

Only charging for hosting costs is not a commercial enterprise, more like a non-profit.

[sensanaty]

> And they would slowly dwindle and die as their revenue streams dried up

Presumably they wouldn't just do literally nothing in this new Copyrightless world, I imagine with their trillions of dollars they can come up with new business ideas in this new world devoid of intellectual property rights.

> They're already "harming" small creators in these same ways, particularly because extended copyright means we can't have derivative works, thus stifling innovations of smaller creators right now.

Okay, but I don't get what type of innovations - other than AI chatbots, and I mention this with a huge asterisk because all people are asking for is for these trillion dollar corporations to pay the people who's work they're benefiting from - are being stifled right now? There's more media than ever before and it's only accelerating despite all the claims of stifled innovations. Genuine question, do you have a list of things that you'd say are being stifled by over-aggressive Copyright laws? Even if we venture out of Copyright and into Patents and Big Pharma, I especially can't imagine many people who have the skills necessary to come up with new medicines doing their work for no compensation.

> Reselling what? Something you would be able to download for free on the Internet if copyright didn't exist?

But who would create all of this free music for the open source Spotify to gobble up? Sure there'll be a chunk of people out there still creating things because they want to create things, but they also have to put food on the table at the end of the day, how are they gonna do that if everything they ever produce just gets swallowed by the black hole known as the internet? Why would anyone create anything at all, if the moment they do it gets redistributed to everyone else for free? Even open source licenses often come with strings attached, I can't imagine that most people would be happy with all their work being gobbled up without even acknowledgment of where the work comes from, which is already a part of the most commonly encountered OSS licenses.

I just don't see how this world you're envisioning can exist in a non-Utopian non-post-scarcity world where the majority of people are living paycheck-to-paycheck and are barely scraping by as is.

> An open source Spotify would immediately pop up that would only charge you enough to cover hosting.

Who'd wanna pay for that, if you can just download the music yourself?

> What commercial enterprise do you think could compete with that long-term?

You're literally describing a commercial enterprise here, the only difference being that the OSS version of Spotify just doesn't pay artist's for their music (ignoring that Spotify already barely pays artists anything). Spotify already charges people to cover hosting (+ employees and all the other associated costs), is an OSS version of Spotify that just pirates their catalogue really innovative to you? Cause that's exactly what you've described here.

[naasking]

> Okay, but I don't get what type of innovations - other than AI chatbots, and I mention this with a huge asterisk because all people are asking for is for these trillion dollar corporations to pay the people who's work they're benefiting from - are being stifled right now?

Software, music, graphics are all subject to substantial restrictions on new works because of copyright. You don't even notice it because it's become so normalized.

> Sure there'll be a chunk of people out there still creating things because they want to create things, but they also have to put food on the table at the end of the day

95%+ of musicians don't make money from music distribution, they make it from performances when touring. Eliminating copyright would have no impact on this. It's the same reason open source developers can still feed their families.

Graphic artists would still be commissioned for custom works, although AI will now eat into that too somewhat.

Many, many people would continue to write, compose and create art despite no financial incentives. Just look at all of the fanfiction and fan art out there.

> Who'd wanna pay for that, if you can just download the music yourself?

You absolutely could, but people often pay for extra convenience: an easily searchable index, music recommendations, playlists that can sync across devices, and so on.

> You're literally describing a commercial enterprise here,

I'm more describing an almost non-profit that provides a convenient interface. Spotify isn't just charging for hosting, it also has to pay licensing fees for music rights and profit margins for investors. Neither of those factor into this new fictional world we're discussing.

I'm not sure why this OSS version of Spotify has to be "innovative", the innovation is the low cost access to all of humanity's musical creations.

Copyright was intended to advance progress in the arts and sciences, but it's honestly doing the opposite, and has been for quite some time.

[malwrar]

> Okay, but I don't get what type of innovations are being stifled right now?

I think they mean derivative works. If one wanted to make e.g. a fan-made Star Wars movie or open source version of a closed source game, under the current regime they could and have been sued into oblivion. Tons of examples of this occurring for media. In software, copyright is used by trillion dollar entities to bully smaller projects aiming for things like interoperability to be distributed.

[Centigonal]

H&M, Shein, etc are not IP-based organizations - their value comes from their massive and highly efficient production, supplychain, and distribution networks. They steal or dupe many of their designs, usually from smaller creators, designers, and boutiques. A no copyright environment would benefit businesses like this.

[naasking]

Sure, and benefit all of us in turn given the lower costs for nice clothing due to economies of scale. That's ostensibly the point of copyright, no? To benefit society by advancing useful arts and sciences.

So boutique designers that can charge high prices due to artificial scarcity would not be a thing. If there are no more boutique designers, then these firms will have to commission designers themselves, or we rely on open source design work, eg. students who are learning design, enthusiasts, and so on. I'm not really seeing a real downside here. Yes, things would be different, but would they be worse? I don't think so.

[johnnyanmac]

>hat's ostensibly the point of copyright, no? To benefit society by advancing useful arts and sciences.

Do people forget that copyright was made to protect the investor first, and then to progress society second? If the inventor has no incentive to invent, you can't benefit and advance society off their shoulders. So the inventor gets their due payment, then after benefiting for most their life or so (14 + 14, in a time where life expectancy was 40 years old), release to the public around the time that person is retired or dead.

The downside is that the spark would never come in a lot of places. You can't lower the cost of what doesn't exist.

[naasking]

> If the inventor has no incentive to invent

This is not correct. It's a failure to understand that invention does not come only from external motivation, but also, possibly mostly, from internal motivations. The motivation to understand the world, to improve people's lives, to build something cool, useful or meaningful. It's a huge motivation behind the success of OSS.

I don't understand how people can just completely ignore all of the evidence that the world would not collapse if IP rights were significantly relaxed or even eliminated. People wrote, painted and composed music long before copyright. Sometimes this work was commissioned, sometimes it was done purely for pleasure. Some of the most creative periods of human history took place when there was no notion of IP rights.

> Do people forget that copyright was made to protect the investor first, and then to progress society second?

I don't think this is correct either. The whole purpose of giving inventors/authors these rights was to promote progress. The inventor comes second, not first:

> The Congress shall have Power [...] to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

In other words, "we grant these rights to authors and inventors in order to promote progress of science and useful arts", ie. these rights are conditional on the understanding that they promote progress. If they do not promote progress then they should be revised or rescinded.

[johnnyanmac]

>It's a failure to understand that invention does not come only from external motivation, but also, possibly mostly, from internal motivations. The motivation to understand the world, to improve people's lives, to build something cool, useful or meaningful. It's a huge motivation behind the success of OSS.

It could be and is possible. But many important inventions weren't made by the rich elite that never had to worry about paying monthly expenses (many also were. But it just feeds back into the elite that way, which people seem to have in this topic). You're not going to get innovation from someone who's worried about if they can make rent that month. That's generally why entrepreneurs of all kinds either seek such funding with a pitch or simply work in industry in R&D. Both are ways to survive before the big break.

>The whole purpose of giving inventors/authors these rights was to promote progress. The inventor comes second, not first:

Sure that's the government's first angle. But the government has many other ways to promote progress; it won't be the biggest loser if copyright breaks down, especially not in such a globalized world.

Inventors are the target audience of these laws to incentivize them to invent. So I the spirit of the law the inventor comes first. Similar to how gambling laws audience is to protect the vulnerable despite the real reasons government banning them coming down to a lack of ability to properly tax (and probably some puritanism value too).

[dventimi]

Please. They don't have highly efficient production. What they have is access to cheap labor overseas, maintained again by the government. It may not be patents and copyrights, exactly, but it's the same basic idea: the government picking winners and losers.

[beej71]

Is the argument here that without copyright the works would be effectively worthless, so the corporations couldn't make money off them?

[chrismcb]

Basically. Studios wouldn't invest 100s of millions of Dollars to create blockbuster movies of they couldn't get their money back. Personally I like watching blockbuster movies. Same goes for almost anything that takes time to create.

[sharperguy]

As a consumer why would I pay spotify $15 a month for ripped off content that doesn't even go to the artist, when I can just paypal my favourite artists $5 now and again, giving them infinitely more revenue from me than spotify does even now, while I torrent/share/sample/remix/cover their entire collection?

[sojuz151]

For convince? There is a single app with all the music, recommendations, and everything. Also, Spotify would be far cheaper. Most people would just use the app with the biggest catalogue, and not a single dime would go to the artists.

[sharperguy]

Currently due to copyright enforcement, alternative distribution methods such as torrenting are being made as inconvenient as possible to use. If legal enforcement was relaxed, there would quite quickly be some really nice convenient apps and probably a healthy level of competition and interoperability.

[iwontberude]

Unfortunate not convince

[johnnyanmac]

>why would I pay spotify $15 a month for ripped off content that doesn't even go to the artist

because if you listen to more than 3 artists, the ripoffs are cheaper. And as is, Spotify has original music but barely pays the artist.

Sad fact is that very few people care about who is behind the art they consume. Maybe they care about celebrity gossip, but that's it.

>while I torrent/share/sample/remix/cover their entire collection?

under this theoretical system, the 90-9-1 rule applies. Very few people will bother producing their own music, so the worries of pirating is way bigger than non-corporations remixing/covering

[chrismcb]

You can do that... But it isn't easy, for you nor for the artist.

[myaccountonhn]

That’s what they already do today. OpenAI is an obvious example in our industry but another one is where companies steal clothing designs from indigenous communities all over America. These people can not really defend or assert themselves in US copyright system, so US companies just engage in full on resource extraction without any compensation.

[sveitly]

New or traditional stuff? Copyright shouldn't be how you defend your traditional stuff. It's more something for the Protected Designation of Origin / PDO

[chrismcb]

Clothing design is difficult to copyright. I'm pretty sure just about anyone can defend themselves in the US copyright system. Sure it becomes difficult when you are a small fry (whether indigenous or not) against a big fish, but it can be done.

[soerxpso]

> But it's important to remember that no copyright at all would hurt small and medium creators immensely.

This doesn't refute the tweet. You're just saying you want a monetization strategy that enables an information business model that you like (small/medium creators) instead of one that you don't like. It's still not a moral right, and your belief that the law should help artists is not innately superior to a belief that the law should help Disney or that the law should help corn farmers.

Additionally, it's arguable that copyright is needed for small/medium creators to succeed. Most successful independent creators monetize through patreon or personal commissions, neither of which are actually hindered by lack of copyright.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

nowhere in that commenters post did they mention preference, they made an observation. You're the one trying to apply feelings to it.

[dventimi]

It's not so much an observation as it is a claim. You can't observe something that isn't there, after all.

[grungydan]

>Big corps could just pick things that are trending up, rip them off instantly and scale their ripoff much better thanks to their great workforce and marketing reach.

Except that they are already doing this, and since money == "justice" in this country and most of the rest of the world, their big bag of money means that you have zero realistic chance in winning any attempt at suing them for doing so.

Copyright is a great conversation to have, but it's a bit like sitting around talking about how to best dry off a plate in the Titanic dining room.

[LocalH]

The DMCA has also been abused far past its original intentions. It was basically originally intended to stop people copying DVDs. Now it's used to protect these asinine little "digital locks" inside of everything that prevents independent repair by pairing parts using cryptographic exchanges.

[fsflover]

> But it's important to remember that no copyright at all would hurt small and medium creators immensely.

This is false: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15309950

[chrismcb]

Piracy isn't what the OP is talking about (at least I don't think they are) what they mean is a bigger business will come and steal the small/medium content. Since they are bigger they can do a better job of selling the content than the small/medium person.

[dventimi]

No, they can't do a better job of selling it, not if the corporation has shareholders to look after.

[dventimi]

Hang on. How would there even be big corporations to hurt small and medium-sized creators, without copyright?

[User23]

Trade secrets can exist without any supporting legislation.

[GavinMcG]

But copyright doesn’t deal with secrets. Just the opposite: it gives control over something that one has made public and attaches upon publication.

[User23]

Sure, but it’s an alternative way a large SaaS provider might attempt to defend whatever competitive advantage its code provides. I’m not saying it’s equivalent or even as good, just that a company with good data controls could probably grow large absent IP laws.

We’d probably also see rapid advances in homomorphic encryption to enable deployed software.

[dventimi]

Trade secrets are practically impossible to maintain without supporting legislation.

[chrismcb]

This seems like an odd comment. Yes there is law that protects trade secrets. But you still need to keep the secret a secret. If the secret gets out, it is no longer a trade secret.

[dventimi]

The point is that it's difficult to become a big corporation without a monopoly, and it's difficult to maintain a monopoly without government help through patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Trade secrets--which have got nothing to do with with patents, copyrights, and trademarks and I should have just said has much--are another way to maintain a monopoly without government help, but trade secrets themselves are difficult to maintain if the secret gets out, and it almost always gets out.

[Brian_K_White]

Corporations get everyone to do things they don't have to against their own interests all the time.

All day every day every industry every level.

"How?" is infinite different ways not any particular one.

Usually it's down to something being 0.001% prettier or more convenient or even a totally fabricated impression that everyone else does it (which then becomes true but is only true after the idea was used).

They sucessfully harness the desire for conformity in some people and also the desire for non-conformity in other people, at the same time for the same products.

They completely effectively harness countless well studied aspects of human nature.

If you're like me, sitting here writing about how cynical and manipulative they all are, they have angles that work on that too.

[dventimi]

> Corporations get everyone to do things they don't have to against their own interests all the time.

Not without government intervention, they don't. In fact, they wouldn't even exist without government intervention.

[Brian_K_White]

Harnessing knowledge of human nature does not require government support. Governments don't create human nature.

They use the government where possible, but as just one of countless tools. They don't always get what they want from the governemnent, yet they still make money. As often as not, corporations end up making more money as a result of losing some fight with a government.

All they need to make money is activity. Any activity, even "the government just took away something we were using and dinged us for $200M" 6 months later they are worth twice what they were before, because that was big activity.

If the government takes away a toy they were making money from, they just figure out some other new toy, and in the end the shake-up and (forced) opportunity for change was worth more than what they were making from the status quo.

[dventimi]

> Harnessing knowledge of human nature does not require government support

Yeah but fencing it off from others does require government support. If it's human nature to create, it's also human nature to copy. If you create some new worthwhile invention, I'll just copy your invention without even asking you, and without the government there's nothing you can do to stop me.

[Brian_K_White]

No, it does not. It's just one of countless levers.

There are countless things anyone can copy or do for free already right now, that countless people pay a company for, for no reason at all. No government enforcement of anything involved.

[FrustratedMonky]

It is currently so pro-big business, I would not be surprised if a modern 'free' market economy Republican, would think the original arguments to create copywrite, sound socialist.

[Mountain_Skies]

You'll never win against Big Business while you're still stuck in the half century obsolete paradigm of the Democrats not being a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Business Inc just like that Republicans are.

[posix86]

Not just small, also big companies. Why spent billions of dollars researching a new technology when, as soon as you figure it out, someone else copies it for a millionth of the cost? The dominant strategy will be just to wait for others, which might slow progress a lot.

[thereddaikon]

You're thinking of patents which are similar but concern technical inventions whereas copyright is for creative works. And then you have trademarks which are for business branding. They are all government enforced monopolies on ideas but different kinds of ideas, each with limitations and with the intent to facilitate economic activity. Reforming copyright shouldn't have an effect on patent law.

[LtWorf]

Copyright and patents aren't the same at all.

[kasey_junk]

But they protect creators in the same sorts of ways.

[goodpoint]

No, they were supposed to protect creators. Now they protect big corps and harm small ones and people.

[chrismcb]

I'm not sure how they (copyrights? Patents?) Harm small ones and people?

For copyrights it works be nice to get some of our culture sooner, but I don't think it harms us. Same for patents. You can make an argument that both should be shorter. I would also accept that software patents shouldn't exist)I think they are definitely rubber stamped to much) but how is the small creator harmed?

[LtWorf]

They patent anything, and DCMA takedowns are basically random. After that, if you can't afford lawyers you're screwed regardless of the validity of the claim.

[goodpoint]

Orgs with big budgets create large patent portfolios that use as a legal weapon against small companies. It's widely documented.

[kasey_junk]

I don’t know how you can hold the position that copyrights do that but patents don’t.

[goodpoint]

I never said that and I don't. Both copyrights and patents are being weaponized by big players.

[johnnyanmac]

so... like copyright?

[dventimi]

Well, they're the same at least insofar as they're government-granted monopolies.