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by kube-system 724 days ago
Then those who wish profit without sharing will just offer SaaS instead of binaries. Exactly as they do with a significant amount of copyleft-licensed software today.

Pulling back copyright doesn't necessarily force people to share -- people can also keep secrets. A primary purpose of IP law is to encourage sharing.
1 comments
mindslight 723 days ago
The point is that if it is not actually working to encourage sharing, as is the case with DRM, compilation, or SaaS, then there is no longer a justification.
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kube-system 723 days ago
Is it not? The amount of media created and circulated every day today is far greater than at any time in the past.
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mindslight 723 days ago
Sure, but the media that will never enter the public domain is not being "shared" ?
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kube-system 723 days ago
Hopefully it does enter the public domain, and I'd be happy if that happened much sooner than it does today. But public domain rights are certainly not needed for people to enjoy the arts. Basically all popular media is enjoyed without the right of people to republish them. Ask anyone to list famous American media, and they will mostly list copyrighted works.
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mindslight 722 days ago
Sure. I think our disconnect is that I don't think it's appropriate to use the word "share" to describe this. Exchanging something for money is not "sharing", it's business. So when you said "the primary purpose of [imaginary property] law is to encourage sharing", I took that to be referencing when a work enters the public domain after the exclusive copyright term.

And my overall point is that a work that has been compiled/DRMed/etc will never enter (be shared with) the public domain even after the copyright term expires - rather it will still remain subject to the technical protections. And so I don't think it's at all appropriate to use the word "sharing" to describe such works.

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kube-system 722 days ago
The type of "sharing" that copyright was intended to facilitate is "make it part of the corpus of cultural works enjoyed by the people" in contrast to "art is something that rich people commission and then hoard in a palace". You can disagree with my choice of word if you want, it's orthogonal to the point I was making above -- people can access more media today than ever, art and culture is flourishing. Copyright (in general) is observably fulfilling the purpose it was intended to serve. Kings do not sit in their palace and listen to Taylor Swift and watch Marvel movies, the people do.

> compiled/DRMed/etc will never enter (be shared with) the public domain even after the copyright term expires - rather it will still remain subject to the technical protections.

You could argue da Vinci did the same with his underdrawings. And many other artists have similarly not shared their sources. You're making more of an argument about a right of collaboration, which is not only a completely different argument, it is the opposite of what copyright attempts to do, which is to give rights to the original artist.

If you're making the suggestion that artists should be compelled to share sources, I disagree and think that is extremely shortsighted. Sharing should be done voluntarily by the artist, and if they don't want to share their sources and methods, they shouldn't be required to. In absence of that right, chilling effects on artistic freedom are an obvious outcome. I love FOSS licensing, but those types of arrangements should be voluntarily chosen by authors, not compelled by the force of law.

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