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Comment by pimmen | Hacker News Reader

The debate around copyright today is just so weird I think;

"I should be able to prevent anyone from producing anything too similar throughout my entire life, and my heirs should be able to stop them for another lifetime after I'm gone."

"Why?"

"Because the money they make is money I could've made."

"So, make another work that you can monetize?"

"But why would I work if I have to work?"

I can understand copyright to a degree, but the lengths we've agreed to in the West is absolutely ridiculous and ripe for abuse by companies that are built on aggregating IP.

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Agreed, and I also think this investment/lottery/entitlement mindset is toxic because it devalues the actual work.

Human progress, our progress, comes from the work being done, not the money that can be made from it.

While money also end up funding other work, it's blindingly clear through the distribution of money and the proliferation of various speculation markets, that actually doing work to earn money is almost seen as 'earning' it in a roundabout way.

All you really need to do if you have real money, is to do nothing at all. Because while you can earn even more by doing something, even absolutely safe positions will get you a higher lifetime income increase than the average worker can expect over their lifetime.

It's simple math that shows how extremely we've devalued work, and I believe it has a negative effect on lots of things, some that might even too obvious to be visible at all.

see also the financialization of the economy, where money chasing money is far far more valuble than building actual real things, in the real world.

> and ripe for abuse by companies that are built on aggregating IP

Guess who pushed the copyright laws to where they are now ...

>"So, make another work that you can monetize?"

How are they going to monetize it if the printing presses will just print the work for free?

That’s what I mean by ”to a degree”. If you get a few years of time with copyright and time to monetize it tgat’s not too stifling for creativity. If you however get two lifetimes that’s just silly.

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