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Comment by schrototo | Hacker News Reader

The thing that strikes me whenever I hear those crusty old old-media guys talking is that the reality of the generations growing up today is so entirely different. Nobody I know in my generation, regardless of where they stand on the political spectrum, gives a shit about copyright. Nobody. Everyone downloads music, movies and TV shows freely and without thinking about it.

That's not to say they don't ever pay for stuff, just look at the success of iTunes or the record-breaking opening weekends of popular movies. But the young generations fundamentally do no have any respect for copyright, especially if it restricts their abilities to enjoy consumption of content.

The times, they are a-changin', whether "the industry" likes it or not.

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I find the comments people make on YouTube around this non-understanding somewhat interesting. The "stealing" metaphor seems to have led to the unintended consequence that people are confused by what "copyright infringement" even means, thinking that maybe it only applies to something like plagiarism--- "stealing" a work by claiming that it's yours when it was actually made by someone else.

So the solution is to still post the video, but with a confusing disclaimer like, "this video isn't mine, all music belongs to [artist], no copyright infringement intended". Saying "no copyright infringement intended" while still uploading the video is strange thing to be doing, unless you have a nonstandard understanding of what copyright infringement means.

I find it funny that you think that's a misinformed view of copyright. That's exactly what copyright exists for in the first place. Not to provide a sales monopoly, but to provide the artist the right to take a claim against someone else if they pass off that artist's work as their own. If it went back to that and shorter terms we might actually see some innovation....Oh wait, it basically has outside the corporate content industry.

You are mistaken. Copyright is exactly about providing a temporary monopoly so creative people have a window to exploit their work commercially. The idea you are describing about credit/recognition is also recognised as a legal right in many places (typically called something like "author's right") but is different to and typically independent of copyright.

"Temporary"? 100 years is far from temporary.

I agree it's gotten a bit ridiculous, but I also agree with the substance of the historical correction: copyright was initially about providing a temporary monopoly on copying and distribution, not just for guaranteeing proper attribution. The original monopoly period was considerably shorter, though.

More ridiculous to me than the long terms is the perpetual extension - that copyright terms are increased regularly to prevent works from entering the public domain. The US Supreme Court ruled that protection "forever minus a day" (as Larry Lessig put it) is not incongruous with the definition of copyright as a "temporary monopoly".

I have a small hope that the recent review in the UK and our government's current political drive to win over small companies will act as some sort of catalyst for at least starting change in the right direction. Even more than the Gowers review a few years ago, this latest survey describes the current copyright system bluntly as being unfit for purpose in the Internet age. Combine that with the disaster on top of a screw-up surrounded by mess that is HADOPI in France (how many laws have they and their agents clearly broken now?) and we might actually make some headway in the coming months.

I may actually go and visit my MP to discuss this issue in person (as opposed to writing, which I have occasionally done in the past but which I suspect doesn't make the same impact as someone looking you in the eye and saying you're doing it wrong for reasons X, Y and Z).

I certainly agree that the current implementation in many jurisdictions is far from the spirit of the original idea and leaves much to be desired. Still, copyright isn't about an author's right to credit/fair attribution.

Window? 75 years after creator's death, you'd better say "barn door."

Copyright(s) come in two forms: (1) moral, and (2) economic. You are talking about the moral rights, OP is talking about economic rights. Both are part of copyright law (at least in Canada). Also IANAL.

I totally agree. I can't help but feel like they're holding on to "the way things were" because they've been through it. Children born today will - as they should - have a different perspective on IP and what it means and that's reflective of the movements that have been made in the last few years. These dinosaurs on stage can't comprehend change because they're so out of touch.

It's not true that no young people care about copyright. Young people have varying opinions too.

One could argue that young people are less supportive of copyright because they don't own anything that can be copyrighted.

...or as more of our culture becomes based around copyrights, what else do young people have to reference that is not syndicated or trademarked?

Our commons are the copyrights.

I don't know about that. I'm seeing more and more content made freely available for sharing. Take a look at some of the artists on Bandcamp, for example. These are mostly younger people, and plenty of them make their music available for free (thanks Petrychor!).

I honestly can't think of a time when I've seen a younger person strongly defend copyright, but that could be my bias.

I only knew 2 my age that defended copyright. And they were 2 brothers.

The reason they gave was that it was against the Bible to steal, and it was stealing. They were your standard crazed Jesus-freaks that are found every so often.

After their hundredth time telling X person they were going to hell for not believing the same exact way they did, everybody ignored them.

I hypothesise it's down to the ease of access to pirated content and the lack of money.

I am 19 and make enough that every time I want something (an album, movie, book) I can buy it and I do. I care about copyright, the reason most young people don't is because they don't want to spend their limited income on something they can get for free.

If you give a young person the income to purchase everything without meaning they have to limit their spending on something else I suspect the majority would buy it.

Whether the youth give a shit about copyright - or indeed any other issue - is neither here nor there. Policy should most definitely not be drawn up in accordance with what the young give a shit about. That would be disastrous.

The youth become the adults, and if the majority of the voting citizens dislike copyright, then you may see copyright wane in power. In theory, anyway.

I'm talking generally here: the fact that youth don't care about copyright is not an argument against copyright. Young people believe all sorts of things and have all sorts of ideals. As they grow up they (hopefully) starts to see the bigger picture: many of these positions will change as they mature.

Who is arguing against copyrights?

Please care to enlighten us as to what the "bigger picture" is?

I'm not arguing for or against copyright. I'm just saying that basing policy on what young people think/believe is not necessarily a good idea. Obviously as you grow up and learn more about the complexities and subtleties of a particular issue your position on it might change. Things seem very black/white when you're young, when in reality there's a lot of grey areas and a lot of different opinions, agendas and competing demands to account for. Your simplistic stance/solution might in fact be a hopelessly naive one that would in reality do more harm than good.

Edit: I cannot believe I am being dv'd for this. Are people seriously telling me they don't believe opinions and attitudes willl change as they get older? Do you think you're as wise as you'll ever be when you're young?

Your simplistic stance/solution might in fact be a hopelessly naive one that would in reality do more harm than good.

This is a mistake only young people are capable of making?

You are confusing young people with ignorant people.

Sure, every issue is always more complicated than people think, and I'm not saying that just ignoring copyright is necessarily the "right" thing to do.

But just think about this: I am 23 years old, I barely remember a time when there was no internet. Kids today grow up taking their iPods for granted. They take for granted that music, movies, media of all kind is digital. The take for granted that is easily shared. That there is no fundamental restriction on the consumption of content. Technologically we are at the point where virtually all content is available to virtually everyone at virtually no cost.

Politics and law do not matter. This reality is neither a good nor a bad thing, it just is.

I think perhaps you were downvoted because your posts were mainly attacking a straw man. I don't think anyone has been supporting the idea of basing policy solely on the beliefs of young people.

(FWIW I did not downvote you)

I didn't downvote you, because I think you're still adding to the conversation, but I don't necessarily agree with your reasoning.

While many young people's views will change over time on many issues, it seems kind of rude to assume that it's certain they will. For example (and this is not meant to be a comparison to copyright, just an example of attitudes not changing), while it appears to mostly be older people against gay marriage, that does not mean that younger people are misinformed and will change their minds on it as they grow older. Somethings are actually generational shifts in attitude, independent of the generation's age. I do agree that it's possible that the current generation may shift to a more conservative view on copyright as it ages, since that happens with many issues, but it can sound somewhat offensive depending on how you worded it. I think it's a point worth considering, but sadly many people will have a negative reaction against something that looks "You'll get it when you're older", and that may prevent them from considering the idea in a more neutral light.

As for whether it's correct, I'd lean towards "No". I think young people who grow up to produce content they want to commercially develop may, but that's likely going to be a minority. I don't think the majority that casually illegally download things without a second thought will have a change of heart. It being wrong just doesn't seem to enter most people's minds. I think part of the reason is the overly harsh propaganda against it. While there is a core ideal worth considering ("Artists should be compensated for their work"), the ridiculous exaggeration ("Pirating movies supports TERRORISM") leads to people ignoring the issue.

It's also worth noting that copyright law is not something that encapsulates the kind of deep wisdom that only age produces. Indeed, the very new and deeply intractable problem of the law vs. reality is that in the digital world, anything you do involves copies. Suddenly, there’s no part of human intellectual activity that’s outside copyright regulation. If anything, wisdom regards this with horror.

The current, and notoriously short-sighted beneficiaries of the copyright cartel see this as a good thing, as it appears to hand them a massive (and totally unearned) expansion of their power. The (mostly young) people who are most exposed to this hubris display a reassuringly mature recognition of this badness, and resist accordingly.

Good government (i.e. government of, by, and for the people) would avoid open conflict by adjusting the law to the benefit of the people's constitutional liberties, challenging the old commercial order to adapt peacefully or die gracefully. The fact that this isn't happening is de facto evidence of growing corruption. If anything, the wisdom of age makes this less - not more - tolerable as time goes by.

After all, there is no precedent (at least in America) that suggests a system providing total domination over all aspects of cultural and intellectual is a good and worthwhile thing. Indeed, much of America's involvement in the 20th Century revolved around violent opposition to the horrific and miserable places that did try to institute this level of control. Today, we're discovering that we can't even be 'friends' with countries that behave like this (Exhibit A: Egypt), since majorities everywhere find these orders deeply hateful, rendering them inherently unstable. Indeed, no modern totalitarian regime has survived for more than a few decades, let alone the lifetimes that democratic republics boast.

As a contrary point, when I was 18 I thought nothing of going on Napster and downloading every song I wanted to hear. Five or so years later I found I was uncomfortable with doing something like that and stopped doing even casual pirating. Not really as a rule, but because the act made me feel morally uncomfortable. In the intervening years I had thought more about the issues of compensation and false feelings of entitlement.

Please don't confuse this with endorsing the draconian punishments heaped on people who infringe on copyrighted works.

Laws in general seem to mostly ignore volunteer work, despite that having always been an essential part of community economies. That's just an area that hasn't sprouted many conflicts.

It seems to me that the new change is that suddenly, discovery and dissemination are enjoying large-scale volunteer effects, where previously it was just word of mouth. The pre-existing laws presume to deal with for-profit redistributors, and as such are hardly applicable.

The burning question in my mind is whether the volunteering will persist and suffice to meet the offering of the distribution business. Will it result in a karma economy, or will there be a new business area in archival? Will people tire of providing free service when they find themselves preoccupied with the worries of middle age, or will they merely scale back?

I think a lot of the new anti-intellectual property thinking is deeply flawed in that it seems to ignore a huge elephant in the room, which is that participation in the copyright regime is voluntary. If you don't like the license don't use the product. You can do this. What is happening now is that there are all sorts of compelling things floating around that were only ever produced because the producer understood that he would be able to profit off of it (because the law would stop people from being able to simply take the results of his effort without paying. Kids say "Hey I like that...but wait, I don't want to pay for it...oh, look it's digital so it's easy to take ...[insert some inexplicable leap of logic]... it must be moral to take it, too." Yeah, I think a lot of us do grow out of that, actually.

You think the Lord of the Rings movies would ever have been made without copyright law? What Kinsella is arguing is that we have no business setting up rules such that a project like that can be economically feasible. (That, I suspect, is likely because Kinsella is an anarchist. He realizes that his preferred system of government (that is, absence thereof) could not support IP; ergo, one must argue that IP is not a desired thing, cuz it sure ain't going to exist in utopia.)

It seems really poorly thought out. If you want copyright-free material, produce it! If you object to copyrighted material, don't consume it! If you're right about it being abhorrent in the digital age, then let all the abhorrers not buy it. It's so easy to just opt out.

If you buy Kinsella's argument, you don't need anything to change about the laws. Just don't participate in the copyright regime. If you really believe in his theory, the moral thing to do is boycott it all. If you say you believe in Kinsella's theory, but go ahead and copy and use stuff the author thought he was going to get paid for, it seem really, really likely to me that what you're really doing is just using intellectual blather to salve your looter conscience.

Even with copyright law, Lord of the Rings was almost not made.

Trouble struck when Marty Katz was sent to New Zealand. Spending four months there, he told Miramax that the films were more likely to cost $150 million, and with Miramax unable to finance this, and with $15 million already spent, they decided to merge the two films into one. On 17 June 1998, Bob Weinstein presented a treatment of a single two-hour film version of the book. He suggested cutting Bree and the Battle of Helm's Deep, "losing or using" Saruman, merging Rohan and Gondor with Éowyn as Boromir's sister, shortening Rivendell and Moria as well as having Ents prevent the Uruk-hai kidnapping Merry and Pippin.[9] Upset by the idea of "cutting out half the good stuff"[10] Jackson balked, and Miramax declared that any script or work completed by Weta Workshop was theirs.[9] Jackson went around Hollywood for four weeks,[10] showing a thirty-five minute video of their work, before meeting with Mark Ordesky of New Line Cinema.[11] At New Line Cinema, Robert Shaye viewed the video, and then asked why they were making two films when the book was published as three volumes; he wanted to make a film trilogy. Now Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens had to write three new scripts. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_film_tril...]

And because of copyright law, we now have a shitty screen version of Atlas Shrugged that takes place in the future? C'mon!

I am not advocating abolition, only reform. I am not sure it is even possible to create copyright-free material in the United States. The producer of the content would be required to explicitly waive copyright.

We just need to wait a bit longer for those crusty old-media types to die.

There's a lot of truth to this. In his seminal work "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" Thomas Kuhn pointed out that paradigm shifts (a term he coined) don't happen because lots of people who used to think one way start thinking another. Rather, a very select few who are capable of changing their minds start thinking differently, providing a guide around which new entrants can form their own opinions. This continues until the advocates for the displaced view have reduced themselves to a minority by literally dying off.

In other words, you never see a true paradigm shift take place in a single generation. Two or three is the more realistic norm.

No, retire. That said, 20 years is still a long time.

You're right about the times changing. But "the industry" has good reason to be concerned - in a world where people don't pay for their product (or certain aspects of it), they won't keep making that product. And I share their concern - I love movies/music/television/etc., and I'd really hate to live in a world without them.

I guess PBS is fucked, huh?

If PBS decided to ask for donations through some kickstarter like site (or through kickstarter) I'd be more than happy to donate some money. And, mind you, I don't even live in the US - I would probably have to download their programming.

It's 10 years since Metallica sued Napster. We just had a major motion picture (The Social Network), set in the past, where this event is in the past in the film.

If piracy could kill the music industry, it would have killed it by now. The music industry is not dead. Ergo piracy will not kill it.

The MPAA famously predicted that it would die due to home taping because of the VCR, only to go on and make billions from it.

The industry has always been short-sighted.

Your "concern" is a red herring. Revenues are steadily and broadly marching upward for the content industries, especially in areas where they have (been forced to) adapt to the changing times, e.g. mp3 sales, ebooks, on-demand movies, etc. It happened decades ago with audio tapes and VHS, and it'll happen again.

You are sort-of right about one thing: people won't pay for the overpriced legacy products to which Big Content clings, and those products will eventually die. Good riddance.

What if a hundred million people paid US$ 1 to help James Cameron make Avatar? Would you pay US$ 10 to help making a sequel to Tron with the creative freedom a Disney movie would never be able to enjoy? Just plug Kickstarter into Facebook and you have the tools to do it.

Without Disney overhead, I doubt it would cost US$ 170 million.

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