Poll: Would you prefer no copyright to current copyright laws?

Of course it doesn't. But societies opinions are complex, hard to measure, harder to explain how you measured, and impossible to measure with receiving accusations that how you measured was biased.

This provides an interesting insight in an a simple quantifiable way that provides some interesting information.

This. I quite like that the code I write is copyrighted without effort from me. Maybe do the 14+14 with implicit copyright?

I registered copyrights for software I wrote when I was a 12 y/o kid (a kid who was interested in intellectual property law, to be sure, but still a kid). It wasn't that difficult.

You're welcome to license the things you work hard to create under permissive terms. I like knowing I can send a C&D to a billion dollar corporation and generally expect action. As it is, plenty of people find their art in department stores sent in by people who didn't have permission. A simple notice deals with it.

What do creators do when those billion-dollar corporations have no risk from selling their art, which has an opportunity cost to make, without permission or compensation? It may cost little or nothing to reproduce, but it's not free to create. Control over reproduction makes the creation viable. Otherwise, they have to spend finite time and energy on other things to survive.

I see Patreon as being in two separate businesses

- Providing an easy way to setup a recurring donation to an artist. This would probably benefit.

- Providing an easy way for artists to sell a stream of digital works. This would probably not benefit.

I'm not sure how much of patreon's income comes from each business, and the answer depends on that.

I think it would. A lot of people on Patreon have a very simple model: you pay to get access to the highest quality version of the thing and you get access before everyone else.

To give an example, I support a singer that puts out a few songs every month. When she publishes something she includes the wav and a link to the unlisted YouTube video. Then a few weeks later she makes the video public and she puts up her song everywhere.

After following her for a while on YouTube I eventually became a supporter because I want her to continue making great music.

> They get paid by selling, directly or through middlemen, hard or digital copies of their work

Yes, but if other copies of this were essentially free, they wouldn't be able to sell these copies! (Or at least, probably only a small fraction).

> or simply get paid to create in the first place, via services like Patreon or by commission.

I'm a big Patreon fan and the rise of Patreon makes me very happy. However, it's worth noting that there are some problems with this model - for example, only art that pleases wealthy people will tend to get made under this model - it's better economics to target people living in rich Western countries over people living anywhere else. Also, only art that is kind of "acceptable" will tend to get made.

Art that is more experimental, less likely to be immediately popular, less likely to immediately catch the eyes of the rich audience - that kind of art will become less prevalent.

Pirating movies is not the only way to violate copyright law.

Taking photos of things without the correct permissions (freedom of panorama) sharing copyright protected things on social media

I don't know anyone who doesn't violate some aspect of the law.

There exist a class of people who absolutely do believe that the creator of a work doesn't "own" that work and has no entitlement to the profits of duplicating and distributing that work.

I've applied the "free-est" license that I can to every bit of "intellectual property" I've ever made-- be that the Perl Artistic License for software or a Creative Commons public domain dedication for music, photos, and non-software writing. I don't believe I'm "owed" anything by anyone for the ideas I've chosen to publicly express.

One could argue that the things I've produced are "worthless", since I'm a rank amateur at everything I do, and that the gesture is meaningless on that basis. I don't think that changes the nature of the gesture, personally-- I worked as hard on the works I've created than anyone else, and I don't feel at all entitled to "protections".

One could also argue that it would be different if I "made my living" from creating "intellectual property". I have specifically avoided that in my life because I don't believe that's a morally right way to "make a living". I can't tell you how I'd feel if I couldn't "make a living" exploiting copyright protections because I'd never do it to begin with.

Edit: My attitude does mean that some business models simply wouldn't exist. I'm not saddened by that, and I don't think humanity is any the poorer for it. Artists will still express themselves, whether they're paid for it or not. Patronage models existed before copyright and drove the creation of many great works. There are other ways that works can be created besides a royalty-based model.

IMO, copyright needs to be much shorter. Once you share something with society, which is the mechanism through which your thing becomes successful, you give up control.

If you publish a great novel, I don't see why I shouldn't be able to write a sequel or short story, as long as I'm not passing myself off as you. For that matter, I don't see why people shouldn't be able to rewrite parts of a story. The original doesn't suddenly go away, it's just been forked. Maybe the fork is better and people enjoy it more. Let the best story win.

Anti-copyright people seem to exist in a world where the only people who make things do so at big C&D-happy corporations. They mistake the cost of reproduction with the cost of creating and think the creating will happen with no control over reproduction.

We didn't always have this system. Things still worked.

Removing copyright may let a better system be out in place

There a billion books, songs, blogs, software projects, paintings, photos, and other copyrightable things no one ever made a dime off and most of the creators aren't homeless. It can be made while working another job, raising a family, dealing with life. The only people making money off this stuff are the very few you hear about. And the people that "dedicate all their time" to it will, of course, tell you it's the only way to make stuff as great as theirs (via twitter, from a private island, while doing anything but creating), and enough people believe that is true to keep the money machine churning. Creativity isn't going to dwindle away with no laws "protecting" it.