[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 If they do not promote progress then they should be revised or rescinded.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).