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Our current copyright laws do nothing hut stagnate human creativity. As much as people like to believe they're creative geniuses, most creations tend to be based on previous creations.

Just look at the majority of popular music between 1955-1980 or later. Just about all rock music is either heavily inspired by or directly ripped off of blues. If copyright laws had been what they were today entire genres of music wouldn't exist.

Same goes for Hollywood, tons of movies are just wholesale ripoffs of older ones or 'heavily inspired by them'.

And i'm sure people on HN are likely familiar with such things as the 7 main literary archetypes and whatnot that apply to most human story telling in general.

The best kind of human creativity comes from building on what came before. Sure, we need a system to ensure creators are paid and have control of their creations, but our current system goes so far overboard it limits overall human creativity.

Profit should not come over the benefit of society and humanity, especially when there's room for both. I doubt anyone was really losing any significant amount of money by this channel existing, but somebody was gaining through its existence.

Disney's Grimm's based stuff is just about older now than Grimms' Fairy Tales were when Disney made those films.

Yet try and make any reference to the Disney version in your own production and see how fast the C&D's show up.

On that note, check out the Popeye version of the Aladdin and the magic lamp story. If you've ever read the original, you may notice the Disney version doesn't resemble it much, what the Disney version does resemble though a fair bit is the 1930's Popeye version of the story...which is actually quite good.

Actually, just check out any of those original Max and Fleischer Popeye cartoons...they're all pretty great.

In Japan, they have a much better culture around copyright, and I would argue it’s why Japan is such a creative powerhouse. In Japan, amateur artists can remix whatever popular characters they want, and make money off it, and it’s seen as a tribute to the original artists, not as “theft”.

Our copyright laws should be largely eliminated. Anything that isn’t basically an exact reproduction should be fair game. It would be good for the creative arts.

according to Tom Scott's very informative summary of all things youtube and copyright [1] there are seemingly reasonable alternatives to suddenly shutting down a whole channel - it seems like we're not getting the whole story as to why those were rejected or aren't being considered in this case?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU

Remember YouTube and its staff will never make decisions on the validity of copyright claims. They put their safe harbor position at risk if they do so. Instead they consider every copyright claim as valid unless legal proceedings tell them otherwise.

> They put their safe harbor position at risk if they do so.

Only if they don't comply with a DMCA takedown notice, which allows the supposed violator to claim responsibility. That is, whoever posted the video can say to Youtube "This video doesn't infringe on anyone's copyright, let them sue me if they disagree" and Youtube would be in the clear according to the DMCA.

From what we can see in this case, Youtube didn't receive a DMCA takedown notice, since they didn't make it available for the channel owner. Youtube has other internal processes (like Content ID[1]) to detect and remove copyright content, it looks like one of these processes is what triggered the copyright strikes.

[1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6013276

> They really need to start treating content creators with more respect and assume innocence until proven otherwise.

Doesn't DMCA and similar law strongly bias them in the opposite direction of having to assume guilt?

In any case, transparency seems like a good idea from the point of view of the outside world.

This is a common pattern where law/regulations meet monopoly power:

There is a Byzantine bureaucracy that no one understands. The monopoly blames the regulator. The regulator (if they speak at all) blame the monopoly.

It's the same way with banks. Any strange and irrational bureaucracy they throw at you is claimed to be legally mandated. This is kind of true, but disengenious.

Alas, yes. That's a big part of why I suggest that regulation, if we want any at all, should focus on lowing the barriers to entry and shy away from mandating specific behaviour.

The latter can be gamed by the people who can afford the good lawyers, and makes entry for newcomers even harder.

Your comparison to finance is apt. It's one of the worst examples of regulatory capture. And many people have very dangerous ideas, eg that deposit insurance is a good idea.

You need regulation with teeth, that is reviewed and updated dynamically with the marketplace it is regulating to ensure fair competition AND consumer benefit.

Right now we have regulations that heavily lag current realities and weak regulatory bodies that can be corrupted or lack power to effect change.

The alternative you mentioned of no regulation can't exist, because someone is always regulating the market, if not the .gov, then whoever has the biggest clout within the marketplace gets to play regulator and gatekeeper often to the detriment of the competition and consumers.

Financial regulators have teeth.

That's besides the point though. Large banks and regulators are, effectively, a single entity.

> The alternative you mentioned of no regulation can't exist, because someone is always regulating the market, if not the .gov, then whoever has the biggest clout within the marketplace gets to play regulator and gatekeeper often to the detriment of the competition and consumers.

Yes, exactly. I am suggesting that competition and low barriers to entry to ensure that it's _customers_ that are regulating the markets, whenever possible.

> You need regulation with teeth, that is reviewed and updated dynamically with the marketplace it is regulating to ensure fair competition AND consumer benefit.

I agree that regulation needs to have teeth. My favourite example of a jurisdiction with light regulation but lots of teeth is my adopted home of Singapore.

By and large, our government here leaves the economy alone, but when they implement some regulation, they do so properly and enforce it.

> Right now we have regulations that heavily lag current realities and weak regulatory bodies that can be corrupted or lack power to effect change.

Honest and competent civil servants are the rarest and most precious of resources. Arrange matters to economise on their time and energy.

An interesting example of that principle is in bankruptcy law. There are generally two ways to deal with a business can't pay:

(1) Cut a deal with the creditors

(2) Liquidate the business and pay off the creditors as much as possible according to the fine print signed

If the business in question is a going concern, (2) is a losing proposition, but its very possibility tends to encourage everyone involved to work out a deal under case (1). (And even if you sell off the business to the highest bidder in case (2), the new owner can opt to continue running essentially the same organisation, if that makes sense.)

In a sane legal system, the judiciary might be involved briefly for option (2), if current management is unwilling. But most of the time, all participants can just agree that negotiations failed, and proceed with orderly liquidation.

Now in eg the US that beautiful simplicity is marred by a third option, where a judge gets involved big time. Judges are (hopefully) almost the prototype of a highly trained, honest, competent civil servant.

Alas, the very existence of this third option, blunts the previously sharp incentives on everyone to get a deal done under case (1).

To come back to your point: it's also pretty obvious that there's many more opportunities for corruption and graft for the court appointed manager in the third case, than the simple auction of all assets in the second case.

I want to add that consumers are weak and voting with your wallet is often not possible in a constrained market, plus many consumers are stupid or "not rational" and make poor choices and are easily swayed by marketing.

Obviously we don't want to remove all avenues for self determination, but I don't think adhoc regulation or relying on consumers to reign in global corporations who now have market caps greater than GDPs of large countries is an effective option.

Finding good civil servants is difficult, but so is finding honest and effective businessmen who genuinely have consumer interest in mind.

Well, at least the honest and effective businesspeople have a chance of going bankrupt when they screw up. And consumers typically can choose a different provider.

You are right about constrained markets. Hence everything is conditional on my plea for opening markets. It can be hard to encourage new startups, especially in areas of the world or country with less of an established startup mentality; but it's generally much easier to encourage foreign companies to come, and to encourage companies from other industries to branch out.

For the latter, see eg when Walmart tried to do retail banking in the US. (Obviously, the established US banks used the regulation-happy American authorities to thwart that desire.) For more happy endings, see the kinds of industries Amazon is getting involved in.

I am going to add given that revolving doors and golden parachutes much of the C-level experiences, actual consequence is often something that many of the highest paid people in the world evade with ease. You can drive a company in to the ground and/or sexually harass employees, and still walk off with millions of dollars. At least with public servants, their position can potentially be term limited and subjected to a vote.

Constrained markets are not always or even regularly the fault of regulators. There may just be few options or only one option available, and the cost of entry to the market is extremely high. It's not just a matter of some plucky startup entering the market when the incumbent can bleed money for a a year or two to kill off any competition in that area, then jack up rates. You also have collusion issues, which often occurs in the oil industry and DRAM/flash memory markets, and even in places like pre-made ice markets. A startup may not just have to be better than the immediate competition, they may have to be better than an entire cartel set on destroying them, which is very difficult and anti-consumer. Imagine going up against Microsoft and Intel in the 90s, who literally had billions of dollars at their disposal to turn the market against you, and actively did so.

I agree with you that relying on startups alone is not enough.

Hence my heavy emphasis on foreign competition entering local markets; and of cross-industry competition. Like Walmart entering retail banking.

Microsoft and Intel are excellent examples! They were eventually toppled in their dominance, but it took quite a few years.

My argument is essentially that toppling Microsoft and Intel in about a decade is all we can hope for; and that it is enough.

Adding extra regulation mostly just gives the guys with the more expensive lawyers and lobbyists more tools.

It's not about honest individuals, nor smart consummers. It's about structures.

Trying to fix monopolies with regulators is like trying to fix monarchy with princes.

Regulators harden market structures.

Trying to fix monopolies by allowing them to continue to exist results in the monopoly continuing to exist. How is this better? There is nothing in a "free market" that disallows a monopoly existing or continuing to exist forever, buying and extinguishing all competition in its wake. It is essentially the end game, ultimate vertical integration and market dominance. You might say some startup is going to "disrupt" these incumbents, until we reflect on all the cool products bought and extinguished by the FAANGs. Basically you're relying on the monopoly getting lazy and hoping there's enough interest and capital available to do battle, all the while consumers get reamed for who knows how long.

Buying upstart competitors ensures that founders and VC are motivated to provide a steady stream of upstart competitors.

Ultimate vertical integration has been tried as a fad on and off. But it did not endure.

None of the FAANGs are all that vertically integrated. Apple doesn't even make their own hardware in-house, do they? (Foxconn makes most of the phones, don't they?)

If the monopolists are reaping excess profits (or having high costs) there's an incentive for new market entrants to come and take a share of those profits.

If the monopolists keep prices low enough that this doesn't happen, then consumers don't have too much to complain about, do they?

> but I believe there could be legitimate issues with the legality of publicly posting guitar covers as this person is doing on their channel.

In a legal sense, it is illegal unless they've paid the compulsory licensing fees.

That said, Youtube was once a place to find new stars who did covers, and many of them got famous. And now people who got famous like KHS do covers without any kind of issue.

https://www.youtube.com/user/KurtHugoSchneider

I just see it as the music industry locking the door behind the people who've already made it.

I am not from US, and I imagine you are, but it doesn't seem right that I cannot teach people to play instruments by playing a song.

Exactly, and YouTube, now an incumbent has the incentive to shut down the path they themselves used to become the monopoly.

You also would need the sync license for creating a video which includes the music.