Those "rights" should not even exist to begin with. Nobody is interested in bending over backwards just to appease a bunch of aging monopolists. We want to explore the full potential of technology, not see it crippled by artificial limitations due to "concerns" over imaginary property.
Are mathematical theorems property? No, because someone who proved the theorem "owns" it just as much as someone who has studied the proof and learned it by heart. And what about independently discovered theorems? Who owns the idea in that case? Curiously when we talk about science where there is no money, the knowledge is ownerless, but when we talk about engineering where there is money to be made, suddenly inventions are property.
The moment "your" idea travels from your brain to my brain it becomes "my" idea too. Just like a digital file that gets copied from one computer to another is the exact same file, bit for bit. It's senseless to talk about "original" in that case.
>Also the presentation of something is an idea just like the something itself, so
This is exactly what copyright is. Copyright is based on the argument that the presentation of an idea is a unique correspondence to the idea, and constitutes a tangible item to which property value is attached. It's not intangible and ephemeral (an idea) or concrete and unremarkable (a piece of paper that the idea will be written on).
>Curiously when we talk about science where there is no money, the knowledge is ownerless
USDA grant disbursements for ag science alone would make your eyes bleed.
If Disney trains an AI good enough to just generate a good story then I think that everyone who fed training data into that model should get a piece of the revenue.
Except right now models are being released openly, with anyone being able to download and fine-tune the weights. Yes, they have licenses, but it's not like the licenses protect some core part of their business models. Whatever incentives they had to release those weights, they would mostly have the same incentives if copyright law disappeared overnight.
So, if Disney decides to incorporate a sailing boat in ther stories, does that mean that anyone who has been making sailing what it is in our culture (i.e. anyone ever been on a boat, built a boat, talked about boats etc) should get a cut? If not, why not?
Disney will just commission this art or figure out a neat trick to get artists to give them this permission. Then afterwards they'll turn around and license the model back to all those artists. And those artists are going to pay to remain competitive.
Congratulations, you've now created a monopoly or oligopoly. And the people who lose the most from it are the same artists that demanded this system, because free models will be illegal.
We're in the 21st century, the age of information and networked computers, and these people are trying to sell bits. It makes no sense. If your work is making bits, you need to figure out a way to get paid for the labor of discovering those bits, not the bits themselves.
Because god knows how easy it is to copy those bits after they've been found.
Writers make basically all of their money from copyright-related sources, but the median income from writing for full-time authors in the US is 20k [2].
My point is, copyright is a way to compensate creators for their work, but it's not the only way, and in practice for most people it doesn't do a stellar job.
[1]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2199058 [2]: https://authorsguild.org/news/authors-guild-survey-shows-dra...
Property rights are the basis for any society in which people have independence and autonomy. I think we should put software developers on sponsorship and donations for a year so that they understand the consequence of an economy like this.
Most of what we see today as the greatest art of all time was produced under this arrangement, so if we look purely at the outcome for society, the arrangement can't be that bad.
As if it's any different now. Wanna create something and need money to make it happen? Be prepared to enter into arrangements with rich investors and corporations and producers. The people with the money will literally get credited in your works.
> It's pretty funny how artificial is a pejorative in your world when it precedes 'scarcity' but not when it precedes 'intelligence'.
The "artificial" in intelligence is a technological limitation: it's not a real intelligence because we haven't been able to make one. The "artificial" in artificial scarcity is a condition humans impose on abundant resources in order to create an economy where there is none: we have the technology to copy and distribute these abundant resources but the monopolists won't have it.
So you bet it's pejorative.
> Property rights are the basis for any society in which people have independence and autonomy.
Sure. Real property like land and physical possessions. Not this imaginary property that only exists to let people turn abundance into scarcity.
> I think we should put software developers on sponsorship and donations for a year so that they understand the consequence of an economy like this.
I don't even disagree. Software developers are also creators that exploit their monopolies for gain. Personally I don't even believe in copyleft licenses, they only exist to fix copyright and turn it to our advantage. There should be no copyrights to fix in the first place.
There is no difference between the two. All property is 'imaginary'. Turning abundance into scarcity is literally the only reason to have property rights all the time, including in the physical world. Land isn't actually scarce in most places.
The reason we introduce scarcity and ownership for land as well as digital goods is exactly the same. because it gives the owner an incentive to tend to it. It lets you capture the value of the improvements you add to it. The enclosure of the commons didn't happen because the commons were scarce, it happened to create conditions for their development rather than their abuse.
Software developers who don't own their code earn 800 dollars on patreon will Microsoft makes millions of their labor. This is literally the economics of free software. It's the largest upwards distribution of wealth ever invented. Imaginary property, that is to say intellectual property, is the only thing that puts you on even ground with Microsoft. You want a world without it where hardware is the only thing that matters? Good luck competing.
No way. Physical things are scarce. This is basic physics. You cannot duplicate energy or matter. Two physical bodies cannot occupy the same space. Physical property is not even in the same conceptual space as intellectual property. Land isn't scarce in most places? Really.
Exactly none of the properties I just mentioned apply to any form of intellectual property. You can duplicate bits infinitely at negligible costs.
> Software developers who don't own their code earn 800 dollars on patreon will Microsoft makes millions of their labor.
Microsoft makes a zillion dollars off of free software labor because those developers were tricked into giving up their rights while simultaneously allowing Microsoft to retain theirs. It makes no sense to give away code unless everyone does. I have three answers to this:
Abolish copyright straight up. Now everyone's on equal footing with Microsoft. No longer a crime to use their proprietary code when it inevitably leaks and even make money off of it.
License everything under AGPLv3. They can't exploit your free labor if they refuse to touch your free software code. This is the approach I ended up choosing because I don't have the power to enact the previous solution. I don't think I'll ever license anything under a "permissive" license ever again.
Simply don't publish the code. Nothing wrong with keeping it private, for one's own use only. I do this too.