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Comment by kenjackson | Hacker News Reader

And the South would still have slavery.

You need to ask the supposed victims of said crime, not the beneficiaries of it.

right, and the victim has generally been labels/publishers and not producers. producers, people who produce wealth. we're witnessing the death of a certain class of middlemen who are no longer necessary, not the death of the production of art.

You don't think getting rid of all IP would hurt producers?

It's unclear to me how one would make any money with movies and books when anyone can replace my name and give it away as theirs.

> when anyone can replace my name and give it away as theirs.

Nobody in their right mind ever pretended this is the way to go. However patents, DRMs and artificial limitations on the diffusion of digital goods do way more harm than good.

Sorry, someone had mentioned getting rid of all IP protection, and I mixed it up with the actual article.

I have no problem with ending patents... across the board. Although I'd like to see a change in copyright law too. One that works better for compa ies and consumers.

because that would be fraud.

Is it fraud if there's no intellectual property of any kind? If there's no intellectual property can't I rearrange the letters in any way I choose?

I can see how you would think that, since owning your reputation could be considered a form of intellectual property. but the two areas of law are separate.

author's rights / moral rights can subsist if copyright goes...

It's called a creative commons attribution license. Personally if we operated under the assumption of "once it's released, it's gonna get copied" then entertainment would be released in a completely different fashion.

The human history have always had some goods and services that everyone needs but no one wants to personally pay for e.g. history, archeology, free community park, national defense etc. How are these services supported? Either through patronage or government funding. I guess at some point in future we'll have to give music and movies the similar treatment.

http://mises.org/daily/1356

note that the other problems are microscopic next to national defense.

The problem with this attitude is that absolutely everyone, including the RIAA lawyers and Microsoft programmers, "pirated" and "stole" music, software and other digital "goods" at some point. I'd like to see someone who can rightfully pretend to be unilaterally a "victim". This is a fiction, like "digital piracy".

Unilateral victimhood seems like a high bar, unless your name is Jesus.

You forgot RMS.

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