I have a bad feeling about this

>What unit would you use to measure the value it provides, if not money?

I'm against quantifying it at all because, while useful, price is a very limited metric. There are numerous cases where you can increase the transaction sum and achieve 0 value increase, eg. monopolistic pricing in a market with inelastic demand or bad investing (destroying capital) or externalities, etc.

>I don't understand the point you're making. Obviously somebody thinks Microsoft's Android patents are valuable, or they wouldn't pay to use them. What do you mean by "would it create extra value?"

Nobody is "using them", in fact nobody knows what patents are in question, all that's known is that Microsoft forced different Android manufacturers to pay up for Linux kernel or they take them to court. That's textbook rent seeking. It's likely that Linux devs arrived at the solution independently (since IIRC it's unknown what patents are in question), or would have done so - so you can't make the point that without granting Microsoft a monopoly you wouldn't have Linux kernel.

>That makes no sense. Demand existing isn't enough for something to spring into existence. You make it sound like other people slaving away to create music, movies, and software is your birth right or something.

People choose to share their creations, once it's copied the copy is no longer their property. They can do whatever they want with their property but knowledge is a non-rivalrous non-excludable good (without infringing on excludable property of others) and creating artificial scarcities to sustain someones business model is ridiculous. Software can translate nicely to a no IP environment by SaaS, NDAs and open-source development financed by consulting. There are various routes for other industries, and many more can be created. I'm not sure about things like pharmaceuticals and maybe other industries have different conditions that would lead to catastrophic results, but that doesn't apply to software and entertainment, bankrupting Disney and Microsoft != bankrupting a company with 10 years of R&D in cancer treatment research.

"Government should never protect the producer."

At least we agree on something...

What is this madness??? I'm no Supply sider, but government does should and always will support producers. The question to me is only whether or not they'll just support monopolistic ones, or small ones and startups as well...

Does value need a standard or a measure? No.

Value is a different thing to different people.

Money is not required for value to exist.

There should be no intellectual property. There should be fair reward for positive contributions to society. Reward not protect. Provide an incentive rather than a pay off.

At the moment, society is based on money not value. It's founded on providing as little value for as much money as possible.

You're confusing use-value (the intrinsic value of something) with exchange-value (what the thing can be exchanged for - aka price).

Much of mainstream economics reduces the broad philosophical concept of value to the narrow economic concept of exchange-value or price.

And it's not warm and fuzzy: what's the "value" of an unpolluted atmosphere? What's the value of good health? These things generally defy attempts to be priced (though what attempts have been made are risible), yet are fundamental - perhaps even more so than money - to a decent human existence.

> Why are feet and miles the metric of distance.

Sorry to be glib, but as someone who lives with a sane system of units and measurements, I can't help but point out the irony of your statement.

But that's not the same thing, value is by definition subjective, and price does not express my valuation or your valuation of the items traded, it just expresses the intersection of supply/demand curve. Value provided by antibiotics is enormous and yet antibiotics are cheap. If we created a law saying that I have a legal monopoly on all antibiotics sales for the next 20 years, the price of antibiotics would go up but it's value/utility wouldn't have to change - we don't need to quantify that statement to evaluate it. It's still very high on your marginal utility list, so you pay more. And the GDP was "increased" (assuming the money spent was from savings/loan that wouldn't be spent in the time measured otherwise) but you aren't any richer, only the producer is, and he got rewarded for monopolistic pricing. Profit is a good incentive when the producer corrected the resource allocation to take capital to a more productive use under the market rules, but it can be perverted if you don't have competition putting pressure, have rent seeking or don't account for negative externalities.

"It's small, independent businesses and artists who shape, have shaped, and will always shape the world that you live."

General Electric, Du Pont, Mobil, AT&T, Sun, Oracle, Microsoft, and Google certainly have been overshadowed by the powerful snowflakes of the world!

Agreed that consumers can be sheep. Here's the problem though: the (BIG) producers are using various means inaccessible to smaller ones to change laws. And not in small way. And not in a way that benefits consumers.

People who get uptight about independent artists having their works digitally copied probably don't realize that this is a good thing. It means they are popular, it means people desire them, it means there is a market just waiting for you. Maybe it is time for a live performance, a tour, a gig, an exhibition, etc.

People seem to be so obsessed with selling copies of our work that perhaps they are forgetting what it meant to be an artist before easy, direct, reasonably faithful, copying was even "a thing".

Digital art, like code, is too easily copied to be controlled. As a programmer, I've come to terms with this. That doesn't mean that I won't ever make money, it just means that I'd make less than if there was a DRM system for everything that criminalized all of my users (note: users, not customers). And I'm OK with this. Perhaps this not OK with everyone (from the RIAA to the self-important programmer/artist), but I see fighting "pirates" as counterproductive and a waste of resources.

I work as a programmer full time. I get paid to do in-house company development. We don't sell any software, we sell physical products. I get paid for my expertise and for my ability to fix issues immediately.

I work as an open sourcer whenever-time. My work is free. Not "GPL", not "BSD". Free. As in, go, take it. No copyright asserted. Public domain where exists. WTFPL. Companies can steal my work and make it their own. They can modify it and resell it if they choose. It's financial suicide, right? It is, until you realize that programming is a skill that has to be paid for. Companies can steal and modify code IF AND ONLY IF they have someone to modify it. That means they are paying someone to modify the code. That means a programmer is still getting paid. The question is -- why can't that be me? Maybe I need to advertise myself as being the person you SHOULD hire instead of diverting company resources on acquiring an in-house person who is vaguely familiar with my code. What if they need a fix NOW, not 3 weeks from when I plan to release the next version for them to steal? They can escalate the priority with $$$. There are too many ways to monetize this.

This leaves me in an interesting position then. I'm the creator, and I'm getting paid for my services and my knowledge. I'm not getting ANYTHING for my product. Easy conclusion: if your only value is your product, and your product is free (or can, via Copy/Paste, be made free), then you are worthless.

If you're an artist, you have it even easier. Music will pretty much always sound better live, pictures of sculptures will never do them justice, a video of a play will never be the same as a live performance where you can see and smell the sweat, and seeing the paint on a framed, rough canvas will never be the same as 1000 DPI print.

In a way, this digital revolution has expanded art's ability to spread (unwillingly or not) but has also put a spotlight on novel ways of collecting payment for art and taken things back to a more traditional role. Like it or not, it is the result of the ability to digitize information. Make your peace with this system; anything else is just creating problems.

As opposed to people who produce food, or oil, or anything else ? But giving them artificial monopolies is bad - right ?

People who wrote Linux found a model that works without forcing other people to pay for it. They do rely on copyright to prevent "free riders" but even without it the financial model is the same, eg. FreeBSD, or any other non copy-left licensed opensource project that has a commercial story. It turns out that without software, hardware is pretty much useless, so even if you can't profit on software directly, you can expect things like OS development to be driven by hardware manufacturers.

Money they could earn if they had monopolies on OS kernels would be extremely higher - but market isn't about creating profit for the producers - it's about creating value for the consumer, and consumer would get the value even if he didn't pay for it - so they are getting screwed by rent seeking.

Sorry, English isn't my first language. I'm against focusing on quantifiable wealth exclusively. Eg. reading HN is worth something to me but I didn't pay any money to do it so it's worthless ? Price is only a reflection of market exchange values, it doesn't account for actual value to the consumers. Eg. food is extremely valuable but is also cheap.

Price/money is useful but the goal is to create value for consumers, not to suck them dry :) Profit is a market signal/reward for producers but that doesn't mean that it's == to value created for consumer (see my reply above about monopolies, externalities, etc.)

for me, discretionary time is real wealth

> 10 % of final price? Probably less

The only two people I know personally who have published books make more money from the amazon affiliate link on their blog/website to their book than they get from the publisher. I think it's standard to get 10% of the net per book which works out to between 0% and 5% of final price depending on the publisher.

It's not a sob story. It's basic logic. You haven't refuted anything I've said, except for claiming that the story is one given by the likes of Disney and the RIAA, which is irrelevant and untrue.

The only valid argument you've said is that people create art for reasons other than making money. Which is of course partially true. But obviously, to a lesser extent. I'm sure many people on HN would still program without getting paid for it, but there should be no doubt in a reasonable person's mind that overall less good software will be created, and many of those individual people, artists though they are, will create less software because of lack of time due to having a day job.

That's an excellent point.

My point was "less money goes into book in general -> we'll have less books".

You're right that there are other factors at play here, which are all intermingled. For example:

* It's easier to produce content now, bringing down costs.

* It's easier to reach a wide audience. Both because of the internet, and because people have more time to spend on content.

* Technological changes may make many new ways of making money, etc, and in general just change things.

...

Still, at the end of the day, an author has to sit down and write for 1000s of hours to make a book, and to do this over and over again to make a good book. If people can't make money from this pursuit, less people will be able to do it. Maybe in a few decades, there'll be other ways to get compensation for these pursuits that has nothing to do with copyright. I still think the mistake is to think only of the Disney's of the world without considering the tiny indie studios, the small-time authors, who barely manage to get by today. They must be a part of this conversation as well.

No, but the powerful organization they leave behind may do something with it. Or not.

I appreciate your sentiments - I really do. From my perspective, the inability of people to involve themselves in discussion both prevents them knowing me and also finding a better solution. My views on copyright are far more nuanced and forward-thinking than the rants against copyright that fill 20% of HN on any given day.

>And yes - the current urge is selfish - as you point out it grows out of having taken a freedom - not having worked to be 'granted' anything - and then had that freedom 'revoked'.

I suppose that is accurate as far as it goes, but labeling that "selfish" seems to be a point of view connotation rather than a necessary one. That is to say, whether or not a thing is a right or an overzealous demand is in the eye of the beholder.

And I unequivocally support the right of people to their culture, and I'm part of a world where that culture is increasingly free.

>But the desire to wipe out IP does nothing to put economic power into the hands of creative individuals

_Exactly._ It removes economic concern from the art. No more rock stars selected and groomed by the establishment; instead hard-working touring musicians.

The fear that seems to drive any continuation of copyright seems to be that artists will stop making art. The fear that seems to drive patents is similar; that our engineers will stop building things.

You can never stop humans from constructing beautiful things! It's in our nature!

I as an artist and an engineer _don't want my output to be property._

Any quantitative change of a couple orders of magnitude brings along a qualitative change.

I agree to a point, but I'm not so sure about this.

> Benevolence will not come from a political system or from the top down.

Here, you seem to be implying that incentives and benevolence are exclusive. The political (and economic) system can be set up so that it rewards benevolence, or it can punish benevolence. To get more benevolence, I think we must also work on changing the rules to encourage it. (As well as voting with our wallets for benevolent companies/authors/etc.)

Reminds me of the Confederacy from the prequels.

Oh yeah, those are forbidden.

Regardless, the Republic and Confederacy were both toys of the Emperor, so I guess Google and Firefox...

Ok I'll just leave.

Star Wars should be public domain though (the original 3 movies). Fuck infinite copyright.

Well, editing as response to a child comment makes this comment a useless space.

Cheater :(.

It's fascinating to imagine what the tech world might look like with no (or radically different) IP laws. I doubt it would be anywhere near as simple as the blog author makes out.