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by mwally 4476 days ago
Copyright is an obsolete concept that is no longer beneficial to society, and needs to be abolished entirely.

I expect this to happen in my lifetime, and people will look back on these days as a dark-ages where information was controlled and entertainment was not on a donation-only basis.

Copyright is like debt-collectors, the system only continues to operate because people keep paying. The sooner we all stop paying for content, the quicker the system will go away.
2 comments
tzs 4476 days ago
> The sooner we all stop paying for content, the quicker the system will go away

How do you suggest content creation be funded? Or do you think content should only be created by hobbyists for fun?

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api 4476 days ago
"entertainment was not on a donation-only basis."

So you're willing to do your work on a donation-only basis then? Have fun paying the rent, raising kids, getting health care, and saving for retirement.

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dllthomas 4476 days ago
"So you're willing to do your work on a donation-only basis then?"

I don't see why anyone wouldn't be, provided the donations were sufficient. Of course, that is unfortunately unlikely to be the case with the current setup for a number of reasons.

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api 4476 days ago
That's what I meant. I've done open source work on a donation-only basis before. I ended up with stuff that was used by tens of thousands of people and ended up earning the cost of a pizza and a six pack. You can't make a living in sub-Saharan Africa off that kind of economics.

There have been artists that have made money off donations before -- Trent Reznor and Radiohead come to mind -- but these are huge artists. If they release something on a donation basis and 0.00001% of people donate, they do pretty well. Only a tiny fraction of the top 1% of artists can do this.

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dllthomas 4476 days ago
I think we're agreed on this point. Uncoordinated donations aren't a real solution at all - that top 1% doesn't really need money to keep producing anyway (not that I begrudge them it!).

Existing approaches to Coordinated donations (KickStarter/IndieGoGo) do better than uncoordinated but not better enough.

I didn't really expect you to disagree, was just trying to clarify.

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