Trap Streets

Got me!

>initially, like in the Statute of Anne it was to protect publishers so they could profit from the work

How do you reconcile that claim with the opening of the Statute of Anne:

>Whereas Printers, Booksellers, and other Persons, have of late frequently taken the Liberty of Printing, Reprinting, and Publishing, or causing to be Printed, Reprinted, and Published Books, and other Writings, without the Consent of the Authors or Proprietors of such Books and Writings, to their very great Detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families...

The problem was that publishers would just keep printing and selling, without compensating, or even informing the author. Copyright is a restriction on those who produce the physical artifact. It's probably one reason why those who produce the physical artifacts have been gobbling up copyrights for decades.

> it was to protect publishers so they could profit from the work

I don't see how protecting the publishers so they can profit from the work is any different than encouraging things to be made in the first place.

In a world with no big companies publishing and no copyright, the introduction of copyright allows authors to restrict copying and thus to get paid for their work. The introduction of publishers doesn't change this dynamic.

It moves writing from something that's done either altruistically or through patronage into the realm of something you can do as a business.

The people doing the printing get paid either way since they're charging you per page or per copy or whatever. They actually don't really care what the content is, how it's protected, etc. Their business model is predicated on real tangible things, namely paper and ink.

Writing isn't predicated on the restriction of real tangible things so much as intangible ones; a book is much, much more about the information it contains than the actual paper or bits that make it up. Which is why copyright is considered intellectual property, not real property.

OK so then why isn't the Constitution copyrighted? I mean, surely the government could charge plenty of money to access the text of it to all kinds of different parties. If you wanted to sue someone for breaching your rights, you'd have to pay! We could cut down on all these spurious "you violated my rights" lawsuits that tie up the Supreme Court every year by just charging $1mm and then only the most egregious violations would make it there and everything would run much more smoothly, right?

What is the tragedy of the commons whereby everyone uses the information contained in a map? There is no "commons" in ideas because a "commons" is absolutely a real tangible thing whereby when one person uses it, another cannot. The "commons" is originally a piece of land that is overgrazed because nobody has any incentive not to use it and every incentive to overuse it.

If you and I both have digital copies of a map does that somehow preclude another person? No, it does not. Since it does not, how is it in any way a tragedy of the commons? How is it possible for information to be over-used?

Using analogies to physical situations totally falls flat because in this case the thing is non-physical. It's the same "you wouldn't steal a movie" argument because copying a movie is not the same as stealing one!