Copyright made sense before computers existed. Back then it was still possible to infringe copyright. For example, people could copy books by hand. However, the scale of such operations was small. To operate at massive scales you had to be a major industry player and own machinery such as printing presses. It's trivial to enforce copyright against such huge targets. Therefore, artificial scarcity was easy to create and it made sense.

Fast forward to the 21st century. Networked computers exist and everything is data. Filling up an entire hard drive with copies is as easy as copy paste. It's trivial to duplicate information and transmit data to other computers. People now have worldwide networked computers in their pockets. People now infringe copyright on a massive scale without even realizing what they are doing simply because technology has changed the way people perceive copyrighted works. Nobody really thinks before downloading stuff and sending it to their friends even though this is unauthorized copying and therefore copyright infringement. Nobody thinks before editing some picture and making a funny meme out of it even though it's a derivative work. Nobody thinks before reposting someone else's work on social media. Copyright infringement has become natural.

The truth is computers make a mockery of copyright. The fundamental notion behind copyright is artificial scarcity. Computers make data infinitely abundant. It's incredibly subversive technology. Before computers you needed expensive hardware and logistics to produce and distribute a million books or a million records. With computers it's a trivial task. The world has been changed forever and there's no way to go back.

They're definitely trying to rewind the clock though. To create artificial scarcity of data in the 21st century, free computing must be destroyed. We must not be allowed to run arbitrary software or make our own software. Hacking as we know it must come to an end. They must lock down computers so that we can only run software they approve, software that obeys them instead of us, software that only copies when they authorize. This is completely aligned with government interests in banning civilian use of cryptography.

I say computers are too important to allow them to become mere tools of aging industries and oppressive governments. Copyright makes no sense in the 21st century, it's time to abolish it. The alternative is to give up our computing freedom. I'd rather sacrifice the entire copyright industry than live in such a bleak future.

Copyright is also a tool that corporations use against other countries via political pressure by the US government. These corporations are extremely rich, they can afford to lobby the US government to the point it applies pressure on foreign nations. I've posted about this before:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28946738

I wish I could find one particular news article I remember reading years ago. It was about some MPAA official who came to my country to lobby the government on their copyright interests. Some journalist approached him and asked him point blank if he thought this should be a priority in a country that fails to offer even basic infrastructure such as sanitation to its entire population. Obviously he had no response.

Copyright holders also lobby governments in order to extend copyright duration indefinitely. They have effectively robbed us all of our public domain rights. I've written about this before too:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29426856

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28813563

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28518061

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28413192

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22757439

You can see everything else I've posted about this using this query:

https://hn.algolia.com/?type=comment&query=copyright%20mathe...