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Comment by plmu | Hacker News Reader

Excellent. I hope more and more people start to see how absurd and evil the concept of "intellectual property" is. It should be totally rejected and any form of keeping useful information for yourself should be shunned and tabooized. In todays world, many have been programmed to believe that the would could not exits without such immoral restrictions, which is horrible.

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I can't imagine getting rid of it completely would have good effects, as it would make any large scale production impossible. You might still get a few blog post, but getting books produced will be tricky and something big like a movie might be outright impossible. This is doubly true in the modern digital world were everything can be copied in a fraction of a second and where the piracy site, not the authors, will be what bubbles to the top of the search results.

It could also result in far more draconian DRM, as that would be the only way left to protect your work.

Now drastically lowering the time of copyright might be well worth it, something in the realm of 20 years should be enough. As copyright needs to get back to a point where things you consumed in your lifetime, make it into the public domain in your lifetime.

> It could also result in far more draconian DRM, as that would be the only way left to protect your work.

There is no way to protect video, audio or text from being copied. DRM just prevents low effort consumer copying.

There are plenty of ways. Limit playback only to official DRM-locked devices and have those devices film the user. The moment a camera makes it into the picture you block their account for life. That's not even new tech, 3D face detection is standard part of many smartphones and laptops. And companies like Facebook have no problem locking you out forever from their services, for much milder infractions.

Or more practically, just look at cinemas. They already film the audience to prevent filming and with great success. While you still get illegal copies of a movie easily, it's only extremely low quality smartphone rubbish. The high quality piracy videos only shows up months later once the films hit streaming services or Bluray.

And all of that is just current tech, lets assume VR will become a success in the future. Now you have a device on your head that tracks every little one of your moves, including things like heart rate and eye-tracking. Furthermore, what streams to you isn't an easily ripable 2D copy of the movie, but the 3D view of sitting in a cinema. Good luck trying to rip that. And of course tamper proof hardware is a thing as well, so any attempt at opening it up will automatically self destruct it and phone home that you tampered with it.

Cinema rips were pretty bad even before cinema's started filming the audience.. Hardly worth watching.

Other than that, all DRM does it makes it harder, not impossible, to copy.

«Cinema's started filming the audience»?! You sign some consent form? In which country?

You're in their building, so I imagine your consent is stated as part of the ticket verbiage or in small print when you buy it. Regardless, closed-circuit cameras are pretty ubiquitous in private businesses, and have been for decades.

The idea of the poster was that customers are recorded during projection and that there is active real-time monitoring of said reception, e.g. to detect abuse.

So, "you are being watched as you watch". Not by an uncaring attendant, but by some actively processing automation.

>There are plenty of ways. ... have those devices film the user.

I think you've identified pretty much the only way (that I can think of, anyway). If you surveil all consumers and instantly arrest them the moment they make a copy, mission accomplished.

Short of that, though, as long as the data is being presented out in the open (light waves, sound waves, text), it's going to be possible to "rip" it.

And without copyright, modified playback systems with the restrictions removed could also be freely distributed so DRM becomes even less effective.

As a jumping-off point for thought: Piracy-by-default would work very well in a world where access to a work is not charged, but the social custom is that revenue is collected via pre- or during-production crowdfunding

You may see lower revenues, but how much cost is currently poured into resolving licensing / investing in DRM / etc, all for works to be pirated anyway?

While that is not fundamentally impossible, Star Citizen is so far the only crowdfunded thing I know that managed to collect AAA-game levels of money. Pretty much everything else isn't making nearly enough to actually finance the project and requires more funding outside of the crowdfunding. Furthermore, a lot of successful crowdfunding is build up on prior copyrighted work. People spend money on Star Citizen because they liked Wing Commander and Freelancer. Without copyright, those earlier works might not have existed to begin with or never gained the popularity they got.

Yes, AAA games and live-action movies are so costly to make that they generally wouldn't get traction on crowdfunding platforms if they insisted on full funding. So we get this middle-of-the-road solution where crowdfunding pays for a fraction of the costs, with the rest to be recovered via post-release sales. But other kinds of content don't have that issue to anywhere near the same extent.

You can't look at current crowdfunding levels in a world where the crowdfunded product is the exclusive "IP" of those receiving the money and then assume that tells you anything about a different world where there is no copyright and pre-funding creators is the only way to get new content of a certain scale. Or in other words: you're arguing that not having copyright would not work in a world built around copyright.

There's quite a bit of crowdfunded open content. It just tends to not work as well for the most costly to produce kinds of content.

Many ebook vendors I use (InformIT, Packt, No Starch Press, Pragmatic Bookshelf, Manning, O'Reilly Back in the day), work at piracy-by-default mode. Only InformIT watermarks PDF copies, and there's no DRM to talk about.

So, when you have good content with reasonable prices, people also come and buy.

Also, there are some eBooks in Kobo store devoid of any DRM. So, publishers are not forced to use DRM on Kobo, as well.

Another idea is serialization. You release your work little chunks at a time, and if it's not sufficiently supported financially, you stop. A lot of Patreon is effectively funded like this. Obviously the medium has to be amenable to this (e.g. novels, graphic novels, visual novels, some video games).

> something in the realm of 20 years should be enough.

God no. Right now, we'd be getting remakes from every piece of pop-culture that was semi-popular in the 80s-2002 time frame. Not just movies, but TV series, books, theatre, musicals, ...

Sure, copyright should be shortened, but I don't begrudge (eg.) a one hit winner making money off their hit decades layer. Life of artist is reasonable, I think. They take a gamble on a profession with risky pay-out; if it works out at least once for them, let them reap the benefits.

> Right now, we'd be getting remakes from every piece of pop-culture that was semi-popular in the 80s-2002 time frame

That's exactly what we are getting right now though. Looking at the top ten of the box office right now, only three are not part of an existing franchise. Three of them are reboots of 80s movies, four if you count comic books. Large IP holders recognize under the current system, it is much more profitable to exploit their existing IP than to come up with new concepts. If the copyright terms were significantly shorter, the pressure to be original would be far higher.

> Right now, we'd be getting remakes from every piece of pop-culture that was semi-popular in the 80s-2002 time frame. Not just movies, but TV series, books, theatre, musicals, ...

We are getting these things anyway, except that the originals are far less accessible than they should be. Entertainment trends are cyclical.

I meant a remake of Mr. & Mrs Smith; of Twins, of "Stop or my mom will shoot"... basically of everything that turned a profit, however meager. Moreover, those remakes will be oblivious to what made the original a success. E.g., we'd get Dave Chapelle offered a Seinfeld show, much in that style, without a view to why it was (considered) funny back then, nor with tailoring it to Chapelle.

Put differently: we'd be inundated with much worse schlock than we get now.

I think 30 years is a decent base in my mind. Let it be renewed a couple times for an extra years if the owners think it’s worth it. That way most stuff flows into the public domain but some works can keep creating value for their creator.

Upvote for 30 years. Try it for a while, if creative industries aren't meaningfully damaged by the reduced IP rights, then maybe even take it down lower to like 25 or even 20 years.

So shitty remakes is the reason why general poor population can never have access to information and education? Gotcha.

Those remakes are exactly why it shouldn't last much longer. As those remakes aren't actually about the work itself, but about the brand recognition that work has in the public consciousness. It's just free advertisement that you don't get with an original work, which is why remakes and sequels are so popular, even if the connection to the original is little more than the title.

It's not the job of copyright to allow people to get lazy or companies profiting forever from the rights they bought. The goal should be to encourage original works and current copyright isn't very good at doing so.

Also it's not like the author would go completely penniless here. Just because everybody can make a StarWars doesn't mean there won't still be a George Lucas approved canon-StarWars. Slapping the authors name on your product to declare it the "Read Thing™" might still be worth a bit and might frankly be better than today's sequels that happen completely without any of the original creators being involved.

It protects nothing important. That people must participate in selling their creativity and creative labors to eat is a more fundamental bug in society and as someone who makes a living off "IP" only I can't wait for the day that my life is secured by something other than armed threats of violence against people sharing ideas and information.

I've just spent 2 years writing something which ain't got anything else like it. It was technically pretty difficult and needed a lot of background knowledge.

Should I be disallowed to commercialise it?

I partly get where you stand but if I was in a society that you seem to endorse my first question would be, other than for the love of doing it, why sink so much effort into a thing only to get nothing back. It almost is the opposite of a meritocracy.

If you as a private person own a patent, you are losing it anyways...because you cannot fight some mega corporation in court to defend it. It's too expensive, and the biggest corps just take what they want due to having more financial resources.

Note that if you don't defend it in court, our justice system thinks it is less valueable to protect. Which in itself is kind of ridiculous.

Also, right to commercialization has nothing to do with intellectual property.

> If you as a private person own a patent, you are losing it anyways

There's always someone who just has to spread the despair and helplessness. Every bloody time. Tell me, in what way does this add to the discussion? I wish there was a ban on these kind of comments.

> right to commercialization has nothing to do with intellectual property.

I don't understand. If I don't own it I can't market it, right?

> There's always someone who just has to spread the despair and helplessness. Every bloody time. Tell me, in what way does this add to the discussion? I wish there was a ban on these kind of comments.

It you only want answers you like go talk to a mirror. The way this adds to the discussion should be pretty obvious, but let me spill it out: If one of the main arguments for IP is wrong it's costs/benefits have to be reevaluated.

At least a mirror won't tell me "you're fucked, give up now". In that sense, I can expect a less enervating response.

That's not what they said. They said "the power distribution is so skewed against actual people the current system must be destroyed as a matter of principle". What about that is hopeless? It offers a clear escape and very little ambiguity. If anything, it should be energising to a casual reader.

He said "If you as a private person own a patent, you are losing it anyways...because you cannot fight some mega corporation in court to defend it. It's too expensive, and the biggest corps just take what they want due to having more financial resources"

IOW he didn't say what you claim. Plus he gave no way forward to achieve his goals, and am I not in any position right now to Bring Down The Man, much as The Man may need it, so it was just a hopeless valueless post.

Within the larger context of this thread, the intent was clear. You yourself were responding to a post that gives this necessary context: Intellectual property is absurd and evil. The poster you reply to tells you why it is absurd and evil. Those two things together lead you naturally to the conclusion that it must be abolished.

As such, I would say what they said is absolutely what I claimed. I just explained it in plainer terms and without requiring you to (re)read the rest of the thread.

Edit: The fact that you summarised "this system must be destroyed" as "hopeless" says something about your own fundamental hopelessness and despair. Which you kind of ironically attributed to someone else.

> Intellectual property is absurd and evil

I don't agree, just the excessive enforcement of it may well be.

> The fact that you summarised "this system must be destroyed" as "hopeless" says something

No. What I said was:

> hopeless valueless post.

The post was valueless because it gives no direction, no means. And I detest such posts because they offer nothing useful. They are unconstructive. Hence are valueless.

With respect, if we can't even constructively discuss what you yourself said I think we will go nowhere and we are wasting each others' time.

I'm sorry that corporate intellectual property law is not the idyllic paradise you want it to be.

The solution is simple:

ONLY private persons should own patents, and it should be illegal even for employers or institutions (academic, research) to own patents of people employed to do research. At most companies and istitutions should be allowed to add a clause of "perpetual-free-usage of any patents of employees resulting from direct work" - but an employee or group-of-employees holdig a patent should still be able to license it to other companies too. If businesses are hurt, that's GOOD, most should not exist as coagulated entities.

We're not gonna have proper freedom preserving capitalism ultil we properly decentralize: we all work like swarms of 1-person-companies / solopreneurs contracting between eachother. (No, not the gig-economy, in that distopia we're all still slaves that can't band together to fight the masters.) Legislation will automatically have to be refacored to make this work. With some exceptions, only human individuals should hold most property, not companies and not institutions. Groups/collectives only when the group members directly worked together and know eachother.

And Intellectual Property would just "click in" in in such context. IP sounds hellish and disfunctional because our own practically techno-communist society (yeah, even USA is practically "communist" nowadays in a way - newsflash: "the reds" have won! even the f symbolism is there, "the red pill" is the good one now... all's backwards) is messed up. It makes perfect sense in a hyper-decentralized hyper-individualistic REALLY democratic and REALLY capitalist society.

As a musician and filmmaker I see it like this: once my work is published I stop to be in total control of it. That means I cannot control (or sometimes even know) what paths my works will take, how it is being understood, who will do what with it etc.

Of course I like to be credited for my work — but some fan adding my work to a pirate page would not be a concern but rather a bit flattering. What would anger me would be someone claiming credit for themselves, some rich company taking the material without paying me, things of that sort.

You can always publish it under a free license. Your choice, previous post can choose differently and charge.

Nothing wrong with expecting to get paid for your work. If as a consumer you don’t want to pay, stick to open source and freely licensed media.

You're being short-sighted if you think you're going to be able to sell material in the future if the recording company or studio goes out of business. The only reason they have money to support you is because the public supports them.

Huh? I do sell material right now without any recording company or studio in the loop. Why would that change if they go bust? If anything the demand for people like me would increase.

There are quite some hoops small self publishers have to jump through to get their music sold in a way it can actually interfere with the big corps in that space. These hoops are all there to make the market entrance harder, they are not there to protect artists.

Before refreshing the thread I wondered if I was overlooking something in your earlier post, it feels so strange to me to assume a record company/studio are involved!

>Should I be disallowed to commercialise it?

No one said anything about disallowing you from doing anything.

>my first question would be, other than for the love of doing it, why sink so much effort into a thing only to get nothing back.

Is it wise to sink your time into something you don't really like doing?

> Is it wise to sink your time into something you don't really like doing? If it pays your bills and gives you spare time to do what you like, then often yes.

So you're betting your rent money on future royalties which might never appear even if piracy were impossible?

> which might never appear

or it might. Your own answer acknowledges that with the 'might'. So yes, you measure the odds then throw the dice.

That's how businesses are created.

But I loved creating it - I said so! But that alone would not drive me to do it nearly as much as getting a more tangible benefit.

There are other business models than waiting on possible royalties, if you feel the need for additional incentives. People use patreon, eg.

> Should I be disallowed to commercialise it?

I believe you are mis-phrasing the question. What you're actually asking is:

> Should the state criminalize and punish people who make copies of my work, to facilitate my commercial activity with it?

And our answer is "No".

You can go ahead and engage in whatever commercial activity you like, based on open access to your work.

That's a constructive answer, so thanks, although I have to ask your view of how BSD was used by apple to build a massive fortune but without paying significantly back to the BSD community.

Overheard from an IP lawyer I stood near to once - something about f/oss software being incorporated into commercial products being a big issue (for the free stuff, not the company doing the 'stealing' of it). Your view?

This is the exact reason why copyleft licenses are important: you can reuse (A)GPL content, but if you do so the result must be given back to the community. If you're not going to pay anything, at least your product benefits everyone

The point is the licenses are irrelevant: The IP lawyer said they take quietly, they incorporate it into their products which they sell.

the licences are being ignored. It's what she said.

BSD content can be taken without contributing back, it's in the license. Copyleft content cannot. That's the main difference, and even Google doesn't want to touch copyleft content with a 10-foot pole because of the fear they'd have to share their internal sauce, so I presume companies still take licenses into account.

Stop ignoring what I said. It's not about BSD licenses it's about more restrictive ones

You:

> This is the exact reason why copyleft licenses are important: you can reuse (A)GPL content, but if you do so the result must be given back to the community

Me: the frigging licences are being ignored. Giving back to the community is not happening. Code is being stolen. Are you trying to ignore what's being said?

The way I see it the problem in both cases here is that the company is using stuff created by others but not giving the same freedom to users of ther derived work.

Without copyright this situation is a lot more equalized as now you can have people make modified versions of macOS and redistribute those legally - yes, not having source access makes that more difficult, but not impossible and even if you did need the source, it only has to leak once.

>BSD was used by apple to build a massive fortune but without paying significantly back to the BSD community.

Welcome to free software. :)

If you had to "pay back significantly" to use it, it would not be "free software".

It's regrettable, but it's the price of freedom. Whether that's worth it is subjective. Stallman's answer to this was the GPL. (I bet Apple wouldn't've touched BSD if it was GPL'd.) Newer, hybrid license have also emerged (like the MPL) that attempt to strike a better balance between freedom and back-contributions.

> based on open access to your work

Can I freely use your toilet then? your electricity? You pay for the plumber, why don't you pay for entertainment?

Scientific knowledge must be open, but most copyrighted work is entertainment.

> Can I freely use your toilet then? your electricity?

No because once you used them I don't have them anymore. There's a reason IP has different rules than physical property.

> You pay for the plumber, why don't you pay for entertainment?

Ok, that's a more appropriate analogy, but then again, should my plumber get a recurring fee for the work they already did, when I use the faucet to give drinks to my friends?

> No because once you used them I don't have them anymore.

I mean entering your house, doing my business in your toilet and leave. I won't take your toilet with me, I'll come back when I need it again.

> when I use the faucet to give drinks to my friends?

But your friends all have their own house with their own plumbing they paid him for, so he can continue making a living from his craft. Writing a book takes months or years, not 2 hours like repairing a toilet, so of course the author needs to ask for money from everyone who wants to access it.

> I mean entering your house, doing my business in your toilet and leave. I won't take your toilet with me, I'll come back when I need it again

We're moving the goalpost here. And we're still talking about physical property (or possession) vs. intellectual property. I suggest we stop with that line of reasoning/metaphor.

> But your friends all have their own house with their own plumbing they paid him for, so he can continue making a living from his craft.

Again, the metaphor does not hold. Such a situation only means that the plumber is the only plumber in town. If we have multiple plumbers (so we can stick to the metaphor) my plumber can't forbid me to use my plumbing for certain uses (like watering my plants or offering water to my friends for free or for a fee).

> Writing a book takes months or years, not 2 hours like repairing a toilet, so of course the author needs to ask for money from everyone who wants to access it.

So it's just a quantitative difference? I can pay 1 cent per 1000 toilet flushes then. Seems fair.

My point is, I think these kind of metaphors don't work here precisely because intellectual work is its own thing.

> I mean entering your house, doing my business in your toilet and leave. I won't take your toilet with me, I'll come back when I need it again.

If your use of my toilet doesn't affect me in anyway then I don't see why I should have a problem with that. If we are talking about you stinking up the place, using all my toilet paper and blocking the john whenever I need to go then we are talking about something very different from "IP".

> Can I freely use your toilet then?

You can freely use the design of my toilet, certainly.

> You pay for the plumber, why don't you pay for entertainment?

I pay for physical objects that are made for me, like books; and I pay when people come play their music (even if payment is not mandatory).

But TBH - I don't think that's the appropriate moral basis for things. For example, we don't pay for the huge amount of work our parents do for us; nor for the not-for-profit activities we often rely on etc. I would much rather support a non-exchange-based social arrangement.

I'm also write technical writing (including academic publications) and I do feel like I need to get monetary gains from all my works. But I also believe that copyright law is too restricted and too long (15 years after the death of original author/artist/writer/etc should be enough)

15 years period should be enough. If you haven't contributed anything to society within the past 15 years, why should you get to live off the 1 thing you did? Shouldn't you be incentivized to be productive? That's the point of copyright law in the first place after all.

It's extremely easy to say what you say without having written a book. Harry Potter into public domain I'm prob OK with but some people put years of their life into technical books. My father did.

EDIT: ach, didn't read your post propely - first line says " I'm also write technical writing (including academic publications)" so you have a strong position to hold your view - sorry

(deleted)

> Harry Potter into public domain I'm prob OK with but some people put years of their life into technical books. My father did.

So did JK Rowling. So what's the difference?

Yep, very good point. I take it back.

Some people put years of their life into fixing plumbing, should they and their heirs also profit from that plumbing?

I'm all for finding ways to reward people for creating things but that should not include restricting what others can create.

Fixing the plumbing usually takes much less time than writing a book, so recompensing the plumber for the time spent doing the plumbing in a one-and-done lump sum is much more tenable than doing the same for an author, who might have taken weeks, months or even years writing a book.

Plus fixing the plumbing usually only needs to be done infrequently, whereas a book is read in a comparatively short time, so from that point of view a consumer would also be willing (and able) to spend more per plumbing fix than per book.

So consequently you need some sort of arrangements that allow for splitting the necessary payment to the author up across multiple people and/or over time.

Additionally, artists often speculatively create works without knowing for sure whether the public will take any interest in their work, or not. Copyright certainly has its faults, but it does cater for precisely that scenario by ensuring that you can insist on getting paid afterwards if people enjoy and want access to your work, and you don't need to acquire all the necessary funding up front. If you can't come up with enough money, you can even "just" invest your spare time instead and still get paid back if the work turns out be successful.

Plumbers on the other hand I assume rarely have the desire to speculatively fix up other people's plumbing and then hope to get paid afterwards if they did a good job.

Rewarding artists after they've already produced the artistic work if they're successful also makes sense in that the quality of artistic output can vary, and so there's a bigger risk of disappointment if you need to pay far in advance, before the work has possibly even been produced.

And because the quality of an artistic work is also very much a subjective matter, it'd also be much more difficult getting your money back in that case, whereas plumbing can mostly be judged according to much more objective standards, so getting your money back – through the legal system if required - is again a more tenable affair.

Of course the existence of Kickstarter and the like or even just plain old pre-orders show that to some extent people are willing to take that risk of paying in advance, but whether that would be enough if it was the only reasonable source of funding for artistic works? It'd also mean that if you can't convince people to pay you in advance (and good luck with that if you're some unknown newcomer), then good luck getting any more money afterwards, even if the book/… then turns out to be wildly popular afterwards.

> Should I be disallowed to commercialise it?

ofc not

but since noone can ever prove that his was the first incarnation of an idea, nobody can be criminalized for also doing things in a certain way.

the concept of protecting invention for some time to facilitate reward is not without merit, but the implementation of IP law and practise has gone so far astray that it's overdue to rethink the whole thing.

Surely there is a middle ground between zero rights and early 1900s works coming into public domain in the 2050s.

You could offer a PDF version for free. And charge money for a printed version. It would probably result in more sales.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23073126

> I've just spent 2 years writing something which ain't got anything else like it.

With grammar like that, it's probably just as well.

Exactly. I'm in complete agreement. If someone else wants to give away their work for free, that's fine with me. But if I want to charge, I should be able to charge for my labor just like the farmer or the baker. Certainly they'll charge me for bread.

Writing is hard work. Writing books and getting them technically correct is expensive. This is very short-sighted.

creating nontrivial intellectual property usually takes a lot of work, work that has to be paid otherwise it could literally not be done, i.e. the great people who create those works could attempt maybe one such work and in most modern cases they would not get close to finishing it before they literally run out of money to pay for rent and food.

the system around intellectual property has some issues but some form of protection / ownership needs to be there.

if you had your wish and the concept of IP was treated as shunned and taboo you would quickly live in a world with vastly diminished amount and quality of art, science and technology.

There should be a fine line in intellectual property rights. I see where you are coming from - quite often intellectual property is used a a moat to protect insane revenues and, as a repercussion, delay or slowdown our progress as humanity.

But it is also use to protect unique creator revenue and encourage to create more.

If you ask where the fine line should be I have no immediate answer, but abolishing intellectual property rights just like enforcing them at all costs doesn't seem to be the optimal course of action to me.

I think that's pretty much the case for shortening time frame of IP rights. Which means, they shouldn't be treated as property has been traditionally treated. Although as a socialist, I think perhaps we shouldn't have time unlimited property rights (above certain reasonable boundary, say $10M) in general.

Interesting, but being very opposite of socialist myself I am wholeheartedly with you here on limiting timeframe of IP. It partially solves the problem.

And this arguably should be extended to tangible assets as well - I like Singapore model where housing property is sold for specific timeframe. It simplifies a lot of redevelopment.

Something like the homestead principle?

Not precisely so.

We tend to think of ownership as in absolute owning of an asset for indefinite time. For a lot of things in Singapore you can ownership (i.e. own it) in that sense, but after sone time you have either to return it or stop using (rendering it useless). This applies to assets like homes, cars, etc.

If it’s not feasible to enforce those policies, government just imposes hefty tax on assets, ensuring you extract (or contribute) sufficient added value from asset.

> But it is also use to protect unique creator revenue and encourage to create more.

This thinking is an artifact of an economic system so dependent on scarcity for its motivation that it is now generating most of the scarcity in the world.

We now have the technology for creative implementations of "From each according to its ability, to each according to its needs". Just keep track of how much each thing is used, and reward creators from a corporate-tax-funded pool. Every for-profit entity contributes proportionally to its profit, and can use any idea for free.

Even just having substantial "prizes" for the most widely used stuff (whether publicly or privately funded) would go a long way. (Most of our public funding for content creation now happens as grants, basically rewarding compelling ideas and then simply trusting that the reward money will be spent on doing worthwhile things. This does not work very well, for obvious reasons.)

What you say was partially implemented in USSR. It killed any productivity because author (inventor) is discouraged from doing more. Why bother?

Well said. The reality is that even in our current work without copyrigh a lot of value is added by creators who never see any real reward for it. Yet instead looking at how we can better reward creators we continue with continue with this insane system that has been shown be easily abused to concentrate wealth while having a massive cost for society by restricting what we all do and making everyone pay for enforcing those restrictions.

Such comments remind me provocateur methods used by police to suppress any legitimate critique. It works like this:

  1. there is some legitimate issue
  2. people protest (peacefully)
  3. a provocateur does something over the top (violence, absurd statements like "defund the police")
  4. legitimate protesters are discredited because of 3.

If you want to drastically reduce the number of new books, songs, content then sure.

Otherwise, I am having a really hard time understanding how can you suggest that I don't own the book I spend a *decade* to write. It is just as mine as the car you drive is yours.

To tighten regulations around intellectual property to make sure that it is not abused - sure.

To ban? Obviously never.

Most people writing books, e.g. these, https://www.oreilly.com/ would not do so if they could not monetize it - which would be even harder if there was no legal protection of the work they did. I don't like your idea at all.

Its funny that often the only people who think this are programmers. everyone else who hopes to make a living doesn't. ATM, not even the NYT Best Sellers make a livable wage and now with Dall-E, artists wont either. COVID basically killed a lot of musicians income. DJs and so on. Its probably also why media itself has achieved such a mediocre state, no authors, no novels, no adaptation. we are in a future which much of the current media is a sea of mediocrity. There's lots of content sure, but barely any that's worth a damn.

Interesting to call it evil, when your whole reasoning is driven by pure greed. I guess you don't see greed as something evil? Or do you think there is a human right to consume? That everyone has the right to experience and own everything for free, what others have created and worked hard for?

Anyway, "intellectual property" has proven to be a driver of quality, as the earned money gives liberty and time for the creators. I don't see how this is a bad thing. Sure, there are warts in the system and we should get rid of them, but not by removing the whole good side.

I think making books, and knowledge in general, available to everybody is an essential public service. At a time when disinformation is so widespread, actual data and understanding are essential weapons against it.

In that sense, these piracy sites are acting like global public libraries open to everybody with an internet connection.

At the same time, I feel the authors, researchers, editors, and other support staff that gift the world with knowledge should be rewarded for their effort.

It'd be great if there's an honor system that enables readers around the world to pay them some amount to show gratitude.

The current system is of two extremes -- either first pay the price set by the publisher to even browse a book (and that price is ridiculously high in underdeveloped countries), or get the full book without paying anything.

There should be a spectrum of rental and gratitude amounts in between. The publishers themselves can together set up such an online library to make it all legal. Not only will they help humanity, but they'll also get some of the revenue they're currently missing out on. A balance seems to have been struck in the music business with most of it being legal and accessible nowadays. They should do it for books too.

Right, fuck book writers and inventors.

Also, the information about nuclear, chemical and bio weapons should be accessible to everyone. Preferably as DIY recipes, that you can follow at home.

Bad example.

If a regular citizen can get his hands on tools/materials to make things like that, you are screwed sooner or later.

It seems I've failed to ridicule the top commenter enough.

what is sarcasm???

I call it Imaginary Property and refuse to call it anything else.

If you spend time learning, spend time putting together your knowledge, and spend time sharing, it is very sensible you expect some economic return if you choose to. Alternatively you can Open Source. It’s the authors choice.

But we live in an infant society, with many grown ups acting like spoilt childrens, saying “I want to get that fancy FAANG job, I want to be wealthy, and I expect to do it copy-pasting others people knowledge and infringing IP, but if someone else begs to differ I start whining”

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