[quacked]

Humanity hasn't caught up to the reality of the times; we should adjust copyright laws so anything over say 10 years old can be hosted for free on the Internet. We should have colossal databases of music, books, movies, etc. that can be freely traded and downloaded without breaking any laws. Maybe in the past the commerical protection of art and IP was necessary but with the Internet and AI I think we need to, as a species, get over it and focus on information archival and dissemination over protecting income streams.

[datakan]

10 years may be too little but generally I agree.

What's blowing my mind lately though is the people complaining about copyright today are some of the same people I saw 30 years ago screaming "Information wants to be free" and running around with the DeCSS code on their T-Shirts. But suddenly, now that they hate AI, copyright is important and the information should be locked away. I can't wait for this all to settle down.

[robrain]

It's possible to be opposed to excessive copyright and also be opposed to the mass theft of media for profit and subsequent abuse of copyright that the scrapers are guilty of. The AI pillagers are taking everything in, then gatekeeping access. And as they acknowledge with their "nothing after 2022" preferences, they (or their users at least) are salting the earth for future seekers of knowledge.

[datakan]

> It's possible to be opposed to excessive copyright

Define excessive. Who makes that determination and how?

[dredmorbius]

There's a substantial economic literature on this topic.

Among other factors: time value of money and future-value discounting mean that economically ever-expanding copyright terms offer virtually no present-value benefit.

Most works see virtually all of their economic value in the first few years of publication. There are some (rare) long-tailed exceptions. The original US copyright term of 14 years, with extensions, actually fits the economics pretty well.

What extreme copyright duration does do is:

1. Create vast copyright-holding monopolies, often of works for which authors were poorly compensated if at all. (For the latter: academic publishing.)

2. Create a vast category of "orphan works" which aren't or cannot be published, in the latter case because rights simply cannot be clearly established, or competing claims (survivors, estates, publishers) exist.

"Seventeen Famous Economists Weigh In On Copyright : the Role of Theory , Empirics , and Network Effects" <https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/articles/pdf/v18/18HarvJLTech43...> (2005)

"The true impact of shorter and longer copyright durations: from authors’ earnings to cultural creativity and diversity" Jimmyn Parc & Patrick Messerlin (2020) <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10286632.2020.1...>

Orphan Works: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_work>

[inigyou]

the people who are opposed to it

[Quarrelsome]

far too often people care about things for purpose, not because they care. There are things of equal sorrow that don't get cared for because it serves no purpose. If your cause isn't ammunition for something that people already want to do then it will struggle to gain traction.

For example, nobody cared about data centre water or electricity use when it was serving us up cat pictures. Collectively the past 20 years of doing that is still significantly more use than AI data centres so far. We suddenly care about it because its anti-AI ammunition, not because we care.

[riedel]

People must realize that it is easy to built some sentiment against on part of legislation that seems to restrict them, however, it is much more difficult to establish legislation that serves everyone. In the end we need smart people in politics and lawmaking instead of populists and libertarian cry-babies.

[myaccountonhn]

I imagine you're in favor of the artists being compensated in some other way then? Or should they just suck it up?

[inigyou]

I think part of the problem is that current copyright law doesn't compensate artists, only mega corporations who figured out the right bureaucratic tricks (copyright assignment) to get paid in lieu of the artists.

[ninkendo]

I think it’s pretty clear in GP’s first sentence that they believe artists should get compensation during the first 10 years. I personally would change it to something more like 20 years but I share the idea.