The amount of resources the current copyright laws waste is surprisingly high.
"For software, the direct costs every year of defending infringement suits from so-called "nonpracticing entities" – better known as patent trolls – come to more than 10 percent of total annual R&D spending by all U.S. businesses."
[1] https://www.niskanencenter.org/faster_fairer/liberating_the_...
Are people really going to stop writing books, composing music, painting pictures, etc, without copyright protection? Not a chance!
Which concert is going to make boatloads of money, and which will barely be able to pay the electric bill? Copyright has nothing to do with it.
If a fan buys the second without realizing it is not a compilation album, should the Beatles not be able to defend their name being used to sell it? Or profit off of it?
Wouldn't trademark law apply there? And not copyright law?
I.e. anyone can take the open source software I create and do whatever the hell they want with it. (I use the Boost license, which is the most permissive.) I encourage you to, too, if you want to profit from my work :-)
I don't think there's anything special about musicians that makes them different from open source developers.
The closest analogue in FOSS is the forking or reuse of projects to intentionally cannibalize the original work - which is covered by less permissive licenses like AGPL.
Whether it's music or software isn't the point, it's about the rights of the original creator to control how the work is spread and copied, which can be a bigger deal when that impacts the ability of a creator to monetize it. Music is only substantially different than software in that it isn't maintained after creation that requires continual support payments by its consumers.
If you're in a position where you can freely distribute your work to others, you're in an incredibly privileged position to begin with.
> Music is only substantially different than software in that it isn't maintained after creation that requires continual support payments by its consumers.
That is indeed an oddity created by copyright law. Though nothing stops people from creating new versions of music (except copyright law, of course). People are still creating new versions of Debussy tunes. I'm a little tired of hearing various versions of "Roll over Beethoven", too.
> If you're in a position where you can freely distribute your work to others, you're in an incredibly privileged position to begin with.
A lot of people are paid very well to work on open source software. It's analogous to a lot of people being paid very well to perform music.
Some draw better than surviving members of the group they're covering.
Not really. The surviving members may be too lazy, incompetent or drug addicted to put on a good show.
But I can't see a Stevie Nicks or Amy Winehouse imitator doing that well :-) Their magic is pretty safe.
People proposing no copyrights always seem to focus on exploiting existing work, not on how new work will be created. It's expensive to create and promote it so why would anyone invest that money if they can't get it back? Are you counting on passionate independently wealthy hobbyists to create everything copyable for free?
Almost all successful open source software is protected by copyright and license terms that restrict its use. Would it really be just as good if it was all CC0 and no MIT or GPL?
They were overnight celebrities. Too fast to ascribe it to copyright. And radio stations played their music for free. A cult-like following immediately grew up around them. That wouldn't happen with a clone. Look at all the fan magazines at the time printing every detail about the Beatles - a clone would be totally ignored. The Beatles' success cannot be placed on the lyrics and arrangement, it's far more than that.
> not on how new work will be created
I work on open source full time. All the collaborators on D also contribute their work to the Boost license.
> Are you counting on passionate independently wealthy hobbyists to create everything copyable for free?
Microsoft (among others) open sourced much of its software. Lots of companies make their software available for free. Open source is highly successful, does not need copyright, and the evidence for it is overwhelming.
> Almost all successful open source software is protected by copyright and license terms that restrict its use.
My work is Boost licensed and copyrighted, simply because public domain is not recognized in many countries. The Boost license is the least restrictive of all the licenses.
Automatic copyright for some reasonable time, say 10 years, could be automatic and free. Renewals past that time (E.G. in 10 year blocks) should be exponentially more costly.
Yes, authors who make a living selling books would definitely stop writing books if they couldn’t get paid for it.
Hobbyist art will never die. But the definition of professional involves being paid.
Open source software is not a meaningful comparison to Harry Potter books or Marvel films.
Not many though.
Open source software has indeed been successful in the presence of closed source software.
However this is not true for films or books. Thus the fact that OSS is successful today is not evidence that books and films will be successful without copyright protection. It’s not evidence they won’t either. Thus it is not a meaningful comparison.
The economics of open source software and fiction books or film are wildly different.
This has an implicit metaphysics that remains un-examined.