Hacker News Reader

Comment by georgeecollins | Hacker News Reader

I love this quote: >> There’s a name for societies where a small elite own property and everyone else rents that property from them: it’s called feudalism.

View on HN

We're talking about art, music, literature, movies. There's no small elite; anyone can create intellectual property to sell, share, or rent.

I think this is a bit of a weak argument, the overwhelming majority of creative works are not sold by the creator themselves.

When a small time creator does sell something, they might even still lock it down! Serial keys and web-activation? That's the bread and butter for countless software titles.

I've now bought a blu-ray player 3 times from Cyberlink. What's going to happen to my blu-ray player when they go out of business? I doubt I'll be able to get it to play blu-rays at all unless I find a crack somewhere. The software I need to play the media I own is DRM'd lol.

Even VLC can play Blurays now, with the correct library and configuration.

Not properly.

Past works of significance, authors long dead, and copyright terms at the time of creation long expired, remain locked up, held most often not by the authors or their direct heirs, but by publishing monopolies which have snatched up rights.

Similarly for works created collaboratively as corporate works. The original creators never had an ownership interest, but simply saw wage compensation.

Good point-- an art form like movies is a level playing field where any individual can make a commercial work. That is why film box office is dominated by individuals and not large corporations.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com