[mrdependable]

It's entitled for others to believe they have any say in what happens with the work of others. The world without these protections would be worse off by far. What I gather from what you are saying is that if I write a song, or a book, anyone else should be able to take what I've done and make their own money off it. By that logic, a publisher wouldn't need to compensate writers. Record executives wouldn't need to compensate musicians. Whoever holds the means for extracting value are at a huge permanent advantage.

We haven't gotten to where we are in the world today by giving the wealthy huge permanent advantages. Look at the explosion in innovation that has happened since public education has become widespread. It used to be only the wealthy that could afford to be educated. Part of what makes capitalism work at all is by not allowing the means to capture value to be monopolized.

[csallen]

Copyright is literally the granting of monopolies. That's the whole point of it.

Copyright benefits huge corporations way more than "the little guy." The biggest holders of copyrights and patents are huge corporations, many of which are often bought explicitly for the purpose of warding off competition from new upstarts.

These huge companies (e.g. Disney) also use their massive war chests to lobby the government into extending copyright terms. What used to just be 14 years of a limited monopoly has now been extended to hundreds of years. They're quite literally capturing and monopolizing the value.

When you look at what the average person does, generally speaking, it has little to do with patents and copyrights. The massive amount of creation and creativity we've seen online, with people riffing on art, music, video, code, etc., has largely involved infringing on copyrights held by the rich and powerful, and hoping to god we don't get sued.

Meaning:

(1) Copyright is in no way necessary for encouraging creativity, which was its original mandate. The evidence is in, and people create and innovate a ton without needing to have some sort of monopoly on everything they do.

(2) Far from protecting the little guy from the big guy, copyright has done the exact opposite, given the big guys huge legal recourse to sue little guys into oblivion, block innovation, block competition, and profit forever.

"The means of production" is an antiquated idea. Look at the reality on the ground. Producing and distributing has never been easier, never been more available to the masses, never been more popular. Big companies do not have a monopoly on the means. This whole copyright nonsense is an idea from the days when the printing press was a new invention, and the average person couldn't print. That's no longer true today.

Also, just from a theory perspective, we never made it so that you can copyright and patent recipes, no matter how creative they are. And yet, mom and pop restaurants have always flourished. Copyrights aren't enforced heavily in the software industry. In fact, just the opposite: we have open source. And yet, individual developers can thrive. This idea that without copyright, big companies are just going to steal everything from the little guy and the little guy will have no chance is just not true. The places where you see that happening the most are the places that have the strongest copyright protections, e.g. the music industry, the publishing industry, etc.

[mrdependable]

You say means of production is an antiquated idea, but the world you are using as an example of the idea being unnecessary is a world where copyright exists. The world would look very different otherwise, and you can actually get a sneak peek of what would happen by looking at AI companies. These are not people using ingenuity to capture value that no else bothered to. They are owners of massive capital training for free on everyone's work to not only capture their value in ways the little guy can't, but to replace them outright.

[csallen]

> * training for free on everyone's work*

"Training on other people's work" has always been free for anyone to do for the entire history of humanity, and that shouldn't change. You do not get paid just because somebody read your work and learned from it, nor should you, unless you want to gatekeep it and charge for access.

As Jefferson said, "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."

> …to not only capture their value in ways the little guy can't…

So what? Big companies can do things that little companies can't. That's always been true and always will be true. What does this have to do with copyright?

> …but to replace them outright

Computers replaced jobs. Cars replaced jobs. AI is replacing jobs. Etc. So what? What does this have to do with copyright?

[mrdependable]

An AI training is not equivalent to a human learning, despite how we like to anthropomorphize the process, and ideas are not protected by copyright in the first place.

Your point was that people that create something valuable are not entitled to stop others from capturing the value of their creation, ostensibly because they “don’t want to do the hard work.” My point is that even if someone did want to do the work, the benefit would go to the people with the money and infrastructure to act on it. In your vision, IBM would just take Windows and slap their name on it. Where would that have left Microsoft?

Computers and cars don’t rely on the intellectual output of others to function. AI still needs people doing the work that it is displacing, but it strips the economic incentive to do it.

[csallen]

> An AI training is not equivalent to a human learning, despite how we like to anthropomorphize the process

How is it different in a way that's relevant here?

> My point is that even if someone did want to do the work, the benefit would go to the people with the money and infrastructure to act on it.

That's not true. Millions of entrepreneurs every year create companies, and do hard work, and capture value, without having to rely on copyrights/patents.

> In your vision, IBM would just take Windows and slap their name on it. Where would that have left Microsoft?

In a different world, things would be different. So? That doesn't mean that world would be worse.

For example, imagine a world where recipes are patentable. The inventor of pizza would own Pizza, Inc., and no one else on earth would be allowed to make or sell pizza. It would be their intellectual property. And Disney would buy up tons of food patents and own an exclusive license to make french fries and cookies and milkshakes. And someone in that world would ask the same question you're asking, "Omg, without recipe patents, Gil Bates never would've been able to start Spaghetti, Inc., because The Olive Garden would've just been allowed to make spaghetti, too! What a nightmare!" But here we are, living in a universe where everyone can make spaghetti, and no one else has the right to tell other people they're not allowed to make spaghetti just because some other guy did it first. And it's just fine.

> Computers and cars don’t rely on the intellectual output of others to function.

Sure, different inventions work differently. What does that matter?

[mrdependable]

I suppose if Spaghetti Inc and Olive Garden were in the business of creating and licensing recipes, they would both be in trouble. But they are selling labor and ingredients, which is what people are paying for. Also, pizza and spaghetti have been around a long time and patents don't last forever, so I don't see how this applies.

Maybe a better example would be to explain how drug companies are able to cover the cost of research and development, or how Studio Ghibli is able to invest in animating a movie that anyone can sell. Should everyone provide the full suite of services a business needs in order to earn a profit? That seems like an inefficient way to organize the economy. The mechanical engineer also has to be a marketer or else he doesn't deserve to be paid for an invention? How does that make sense?

> Sure, different inventions work differently. What does that matter?

You cut the sentence that answers the question.