[aetherspawn]

Copyright is what stops someone from copy+pasting a book that took years to write, then selling it $1 cheaper than the original author on Amazon or whatever and making a margin 1 million percent higher than the original author.

Imagine a society without copyright… only physically intensive jobs could make money because everything else would be pirated, ripped-off or free. Thus, only those who are financially independent could afford to publish. Because the world really needs more rich class propaganda…

[Lerc]

How many times were hugely popular books rejected before a publisher decided they were worthy?

Copyright far more protects the wealthy than the good. They don't need to sell your book, they just need to own the book that people are buying right now. Giving your book a chance to sell would dectract from those sales.

If there were no copyright anyone trying to sell the book $1 cheaper would be undercut by someone selling $1 cheaper them them, and so on. The financial incentive to do that goes away. People then choose to distribute based on different incentives, like the fact that they have seen something worthy that others should see. We have almost completely lost that today because the financial incentive doesn't care what it is as long as you buy it. That might lead to a world dominated by an optimisation for whatever it takes to get you engaged, or worse, addicted. That world might really suck.

There needs to be a way to support the creation of art. Copyright lets a few corporations decide the subset of available art is seen enough and available to pay for (in the hope that maybe some of the patment gets to the creator). It is not a system that works in the modern world.

[freejazz]

Well, there is nothing to distribute if the author is not incentivized to write... which you seemed to skip past.

[joquarky]

If money is the only incentive, then it's not a product of artistic work.

Also current copyright laws only exists to fulfill the constitutional mandate to promote the progress of science and useful arts. There are a lot of alternative ways to fulfill that mandate that don't include a lot of the baggage we have presently in copyright law which is now slowing down progress.

[freejazz]

>If money is the only incentive, then it's not a product of artistic work.

This is just bullshit and no one said it's the only incentive.

> There are a lot of alternative ways to fulfill that mandate that don't include a lot of the baggage we have presently in copyright law which is now slowing down progress.

such as??

[account42]

I hope you're not implying that post-hoc commercial exploitation via copyright is the only incentive for authors to write. Because we have a whole history worth of evidence to the contrary.

[freejazz]

I guess you'd prefer to enjoy significantly fewer works mainly consisting of stories told through oral tradition. Some of us like movies!

[Lerc]

Indeed, perhaps I should have said

There needs to be a way to support the creation of art.

[deaton]

Great, that way is called copyright. The author has the right to control who has the rights to distribute their work, and can require compensation in exchange for that right; what economists refer to as "selling".

[Lerc]

The entire thesis of my commrnt is copyright is not that.

It awards a few creators outsize rewards, but suppress creation of many more.

It does not petform the job that it is supposed to do.

[freejazz]

>The entire thesis of my commrnt is copyright is not that.

Your entire thesis is false on its face. One does not need a big publisher to get published or make there work available. You've also offered no other alternative wherein the other works not sought by large publishers will somehow be afforded equivalent treatment so your proposition is just ridiculous if not outright ignorant.

[satvikpendem]

People have been paid artists before copyright even existed, what some might call patronage.

[freejazz]

And?

[freejazz]

>There needs to be a way to support the creation of art.

Yeah, it's called "copyright."

[Morromist]

That's oversimplifying things.

Copyright doesn't actually stop me from pirating a book or an mp3 right now. Heck, I'll just download a book right now. Bam. Done. Some things are so difficult to keep from being pirated, such a photographs, that saying the copyright system protects photographers strikes me as a bit silly. It does protect some commercial photographers if a magazine wants to sell their photo sometimes, but that's a very very small slice of all the photos in copyright that are being shared online right now.

Also there are other systems that might protect an author's financials. Off the top of my head I imagine you could do a netflix model where every citizen pays some taxes to consume intellectual property like a utility. Then the goverment finds a way to measure what is being consumed and gives each author a share based on the rate of consumption. In fact the "intellegence is a ultility" ramblings of Sam Altmen sort-of point in this direction. But that's just one idea thought up early in the morning when its too hot to sleep properly. I'm sure there are many others.

[account42]

> Also there are other systems that might protect an author's financials. Off the top of my head I imagine you could do a netflix model where every citizen pays some taxes to consume intellectual property like a utility. Then the goverment finds a way to measure what is being consumed and gives each author a share based on the rate of consumption.

We already have these - CD taxes, government grants funded by general taxes, GEMA in Germany, even TV licenses.

They all universally suck and are extremely unfair in who gets paid by them.

[Jensson]

> It does protect some commercial photographers if a magazine wants to sell their photo sometimes, but that's a very very small slice of all the photos in copyright that are being shared online right now.

That is a very small slice thanks to copyrights. Without copyrights then corporations stealing from the small guy like this would be the majority of it.

[skinfaxi]

> Thus, only those who are financially independent could afford to publish. Because the world really needs more rich class propaganda…

Yes, all the rich class propaganda being pushed by open source developers working on software in their free time.

[satvikpendem]

It's funny because copyright only benefits the rich now. Record labels hold all the copyright to songs, same with publishers for books, Disney made sure it lasts over a hundred years. The days of copyright being held by individuals in any real sense is long gone.

[account42]

> Imagine a society without copyright

We don't need to imagine, this is how human society has worked for most of the run we have had.

[WarmWash]

I can't tell if this comment is satire or not.

You're speaking to the generation of pirates. What? Suddenly everyone is hanging up their high seas hat to capture the virtue signals of current sentiment?

[aetherspawn]

am I? Most guys on this forum would be younger than me and I definitely find streaming services easier and more convenient than pirating and wondering if I’m gonna catch computer AIDS.

[smolder]

Right, it's about incentivising intellectual work. While I have big issues with the copyright system, like all the extensions lobbied for by Disney and friends, it did enable a lot of good work to happen.

[skinfaxi]

> it did enable a lot of good work to happen.

How do we know that when we don't have a copy of the world without this regime? How much more and greater works could have been produced without such a repressive system?

A really successful work becomes part of the culture, and remixing, derivatives and other modes of integrating cultural artifacts are prohibited. Why should we allow corporations to own our culture?

[smolder]

Yeah, I can't AB test against a world without copyright at all, but I think there's sufficient evidence to believe that a lot of stuff would never have gotten done without copyright to ensure it could be done gainfully.

The importance of striking a balance between incentivising creation and enriching culture was why the original copyright term was dramatically shorter. The modern term of owners life + 80 years or whatever it is, is clearly ridiculous. 20 years before entering public domain seems pretty reasonable.

There's unfortunately also some pressure against people using legitimate public domain works. E.g. youtubers getting copyright strikes for playing public domain music because it's too similar to a specific copyrighted recording.

[account42]

> Yeah, I can't AB test against a world without copyright at all, but I think there's sufficient evidence to believe that a lot of stuff would never have gotten done without copyright to ensure it could be done gainfully.

The problem is that there is also a lot of stuff that never got done because of copyright. And the extend to which works that were funded by exploiting copyright would not have been funded in any other way is also questionable.

[andsoitis]

You’re arguing that freely remixing original work will give rise to greatness that’s even better than original work?

[skinfaxi]

Isn't most creative work synthesis rather than unique whole-cloth creation? Look at what happens with software when it is open sourced and allowed to be remixed freely. Are we better or worse off because of it?

[andsoitis]

There's nothing that prevents people from remixing things that are not copyrighted and create something amazing that others are interested in or of cultural value.

With open source, I should note, its remixing is in fact governed by copyright.

[satvikpendem]

What things are not copyrighted? Anything someone makes is immediately copyrighted. If you mean take a couple hundred years old content to remix, well, I don't find that very useful and certainly not how human history has worked all this time.

[ck2]

I think the idea is if "AI" can solve math proofs that humans haven't for a century then if "AI" freestyles stolen art and literature then it might create something as good if not better because of resources and processing power

There might be something to that logic but art and literature doesn't obey rules like math and copyright exists to protect creators

[satvikpendem]

Yes? I don't understand how this is even a question, this is exactly how it worked throughout human history.

[andsoitis]

In what way is copyright preventing it today?

[satvikpendem]

I can't make and sell a remix of an existing IP and even in cases of free distribution it can get dicey legally.

[ragequittah]

Possibly. Sort of like how Disney remixed basically everything from existing fairy tales for decades then made it so nobody else could.

[andsoitis]

That’s not accurate. All the Disney interpretations of pre-existing fairy tales also have takes by others, whether books, theatrical adaptations, or even movies! Take Snow White as an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White

So I’d be curious to hear about a counter example.

[ragequittah]

I guess I haven't looked into it much, but the chilling effect of having Disney lawyers scrutinize your project would be enough to deter most people. The slew of content coming out after these properties enter public domain from Disney is telling. But it's also just the irony that Disney used other people's stories to build their empire but then fought extremely hard so that nobody could use theirs for as long as society would possibly hold out (which in my opinion was way beyond the point of reason).

[deaton]

Go read a few fanfics and tell me you still think that theres added value.

[satvikpendem]

Quite rich coming from a creator apparently, only certain creations are deemed worthy by you, seems like it invalidates your entire stance on the sanctity of art that all these pro-copyright people seem to hold.