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Comment by matheusmoreira | Hacker News Reader

Even 10 years is too generous. I'd rather make it 0 instead. I said 10 years because it's what would make copyright tolerable. The right thing as far as I'm concerned is abolishing it straight up. 10 years is a reasonable compromise.

Remember, copyright exists at all because we allow it. The raw reality these monopolists face is that public domain is the default state of all information. We're all just pretending that we can't easily copy this stuff. The social contract was: we pretend we don't know how to copy their stuff, they get to make their money and then the works enter the public domain. They're clearly not keeping up their end of the social contract. Why should we? We should all just stop pretending we're dumb enough not to download their stuff at zero cost.

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> Even 10 years is too generous. I'd rather make it 0 instead. I said 10 years because it's what would make copyright tolerable. The right thing as far as I'm concerned is abolishing it straight up. 10 years is a reasonable compromise.

That's not a reasonable compromise. Your proposal of 0 years in a nonstarter, and walking slightly back from that is still a nonstarter. It's pretty clear your prioritizing only your own interests and desires, and not even really thinking about anyone else's.

For instance: have you considered that abolishing copyright would abolish the GPL, too? As in, you'd have no right to demand the source to modified GPL code that was distributed. The foundation of the GPL is copyright.

Copyright was created for good reason. It is not reasonable to get mad and burn it all down without considering those reasons, and the other effects burning it down will cause.

> Remember, copyright exists at all because we allow it. The raw reality these monopolists face is that public domain is the default state of all information. We're all just pretending that we can't easily copy this stuff.

We're also all pretending that we can't easily kill other people (btw, we totally can, and you probably regularly operate a 3,000lb death machine).

> The social contract was: we pretend we don't know how to copy their stuff, they get to make their money and then the works enter the public domain. They're clearly not keeping up their end of the social contract. Why should we? We should all just stop pretending we're dumb enough not to download their stuff at zero cost.

They're advocating for their interests, "we've" advocated for ours, so stuff is entering public domain (Steamboat Willie is almost there, and there are no copyright extensions in the works to keep it there).

The correct solution is to dial back the previous excesses in term lengths to something long enough that it wouldn't imperil investment in the production of new works (which can be hundreds of millions of dollars per).

> That's not a reasonable compromise. Your proposal of 0 years in a nonstarter, and walking slightly back from that is still a nonstarter.

On the contrary. Copyright itself is a non-starter. Remember, public domain is the natural state of information. They're the ones who need to convince us to respect whatever social contract they seek to impose. They are doing such a horrible job at it that it can be argued that copyright infringement is civil disobedience and a moral imperative.

> It's pretty clear your prioritizing your own interests, and not even really thinking about anyone else's.

I am. I don't really care about the "interests" of some perpetual information monopolists at all. The fact they even exist at all is offensive to me. I'd rather they didn't.

> For instance, have you considered that abolishing copyright would abolish the GPL? As in, you'd have no right to demand the source to modified GPL code that was distributed.

Yeah. See my other post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35703409

> Copyright was created for good reason. It is not reasonable to get mad and burn it all down without considering those reasons, and the other effects burning it down will cause.

The reasons don't matter. The actual implementation does. That's why 10 years is an exceptionally generous compromise. It's the only thing that would allow these monopolists to continue existing. If that's rejected, the only reasonable alternative is for society to stop recognizing copyright as legitimate and go back to treating everything as public domain by default.

The social contract was: we'd pretend we couldn't copy this stuff, you'd make your money for a while and then your work would enter the public domain. You and I are both gonna be long dead before we see any of those public domain benefits and that's if they don't keep perpetually extending the duration into functional infinity. Clearly they're not keeping up their end of the contract. So why should we keep ours?

> We're also all pretending that we can't easily kill other people (btw, we totally can, and you probably regularly operate a 3,000lb death machine).

You're seriously comparing the killing of human beings to the copying of bits. I'm not sure I want to continue this debate.

> On the contrary. Copyright itself is a non-starter.

Clearly it is given that we are currently living with it.

On the contrary. Copyright infringement is the norm. People infringe copyrights all day every day and they don't even realize it. You infringe copyright every single time you "save as" a picture you like from the internet. You infringe it again if you send that picture to your family and friends via a messaging service. Made a funny meme? It's a derivative work, copyright infringement. It's the 21st century, all of this is normal and expected, it happens at massive scales and not a single person loses a second of sleep over any of it.

It boggles my mind that people think they can own and control this stuff. Think of the tyranny necessary to prevent that and enable something as archaic as copyright to work in the 21st century. You'd have to destroy computers as we know them today. You'd have to destroy our computing freedoms and everything the word "hacker" stands for to achieve such a dystopia. You'd have to turn computers into passive content consumption appliances fully owned by corporations.

> Remember, public domain is the natural state of information.

Nah, decaying is the natural state of information. It requires non-trivial effort to keep information available for reading and interpreting. Even paper, one of the best mediums for storing data over time, decomposes if not actively protected.

What does this have to do with anything?

Libraries handle the preserving and sharing to the public of information. In spite of copyright, not thanks to it.

Historically they literally copied one book into paper to duplicate/preserve it. That would be copyright infringement now.

And more recently copyright holders are trying to delete any archives that could be used for that purpose like the internet archive or LibGen. In other media we have game roms and copies of shows being illegal. Same treatment if it has been a week since release or it's been 20 years and you can't get it legally from anywhere.

It was basically impossible to survive solely as a writer until copyright. Imagine publishing a book in the 16th century. At best you'd get some royalties from the initial publisher. After that if you work becomes popular every printer across the continent can start printing copies without paying you anything. That's obviously a huge impediment to innovation and progress.

So? There are plenty of written works from before copyright. There would be more if we had been better about preservation. People will still write without copyright. Maybe the quality will even go up as there are fewer incentives for quantity over quality.

If your argument for copyright relies on protecting speicific jobs then you have no argument. Jobs become obsolete all the time.

If you want welfare then argue for that. Best if it isn't restricted to a small class of people.

> People will still write without copyright

Yes. Way less of them do cause very few people could afford to write.

> Maybe the quality will even go up as there are fewer incentives for quantity over quality

Maybe people who write/etc. time on average produce better quality than those who can only dedicate a few hours per day for it. Also you want to eradicate entire creative industries like cinema and television for no apparent reason.

> If your argument for copyright relies on protecting speicific jobs then you have no argument

No my argument is that copyright protection (including patents) was one of the main driving forces behind the progress of human progress over the last 300-500 years. Obviously the current system is not perfect, I'm not saying it is... Overall it still made the world a much better place than it would have been without it.

Then let's agree to limit it to 10 years. That's a tolerable amount of time. More than enough for these corporations to turn a profit many times over.

Humanity would be more than happy to make that effort if there was no risk of getting sued to oblivion for it. There's more than enough distributed storage capacity out there to hold it all. Copyright holders are the ones who are outright hostile to any and all preservation efforts, to the point preservation of culture is an argument for getting rid of copyright.

Preservation has nothing to do with copyright. Buy a book, and preserve it yourself. Done.

Oh, but you're only arguing against copyright so you can freely take others work without remuneration. IF you're a creator, and you believe that copyright shouldn't exist - everything you produce, please... put it in the public domain and see what happens.

Preservation across long enough timelines requires duplication as well as sharing between people.

> Preservation has nothing to do with copyright. Buy a book, and preserve it yourself. Done.

Wrong. My house burns down, the book is gone. Your advice is worse than using RAID is as a backup solution.

Preservation requires multiple independent redundant copies widely distributed over large geographical areas, cryptographically verified. Surely you can see how that flies in the face of copyright, a legal mechanism to give authors a monopoly on the production of copies.

Truth is bittorrent did more for preservation of culture that copyright ever did. You could even quantify how well preserved the data was since you could count how many redundant copies were present in the swarm.

Cryptographically verified? How did we do it all these years?

And I would like a source for your claim regarding BitTorrent.

> Cryptographically verified? How did we do it all these years?

Yeah, how did you? Data can get corrupted, you know. Things like hashing and error correction are essential.

> And I would like a source for your claim regarding BitTorrent.

Launch any torrent client. There will be an indicator of how many complete copies exist amongst the peers in the swarm. The higher the number, the more well preserved the data is. Really simple. It's also self-healing since you can check the data and fix errors by downloading the damaged blocks again.

Bittorrent is essentially the Linus Torvalds "real men publish things online so the whole world can mirror it" approach to backup and preservation. Shame copyright holders had to ruin it.

> Copyright itself is a non-starter.

Sure...in your fantasy land. In the real world, it's not (because, as a sibling comment noted, it's the status quo and not even a very controversial one at that).

> That's why 10 years is an exceptionally generous compromise.

Being selfish but calling it "exceptionally generous" doesn't make it so. It just means you're deluded or a liar.

>>> Remember, copyright exists at all because we allow it. The raw reality these monopolists face is that public domain is the default state of all information. We're all just pretending that we can't easily copy this stuff.

>> We're also all pretending that we can't easily kill other people (btw, we totally can, and you probably regularly operate a 3,000lb death machine).

> You're seriously comparing the killing of human beings to the copying of bits. I'm not sure I want to continue this debate.

Come on. All I was doing was show that you're confused and you don't really seem understand the implications of the arguments that you're making.

If there's any reason to not continue this "debate," it's that you're unreasonable and will likely stubbornly stick to your unreasonable position.

Wanting to control what other people do between themselves is being selfish. Ignoring the absurd demands of such a person is not.

The only valid argument for something like copyright would be that it improves society as a whole. I don't think it does. I have not seen any evidence that it does. I have seen plenty of evidence how it hurts everyone. That some benefit or even rely on it is absolutely completely irrelevant.

> Sure...in your fantasy land. In the real world, it's not (because, as a sibling comment noted, it's the status quo and not even a very controversial one at that).

> deluded or a liar

LOL I'm deluded? You're the one who believes in owning numbers.

Let's talk about the real world then. In the real world, barely anybody even knows or cares what copyright even is. Copyright infringement is the norm. People infringe copyrights all day every day and they don't even realize they're doing it. They infringe copyright when they save pretty pictures off the internet, when they print screen Instagram posts because the app won't let them download the photos. They infringe copyright when they create funny memes and share them with friends. They infringe copyright when they listen to some illegally uploaded music on YouTube. Could even argue we infringed each other's copyrights when we quoted each other's posts. All of this is happening every single day at unprecedented scales and exactly zero people lose any sleep over it.

You see, in the real world, copyright is so irrelevant it barely even registers in people's minds. Copyright infringement is the custom and banning it is like banning alcohol consumption. This is the real status quo. Nobody really gives a shit about "creators", "authors" or whatever. People do what they can do and what they want to do. The world changing technology that is computers allows them to freely manipulate information so that's exactly what they do. Information is infinite, it's numbers. No amount of copyright will ever change that. You'd have to completely destroy computers to roll the world back to a state where copyright matters.

> All I was doing was show that you're confused and you don't really seem understand the implications of the arguments that you're making.

Only thing you've shown is you don't understand what you're talking about. We're talking about ownership of ideas, naturally infinite, intangible. You move the argument to the scarcity of the physical world and then compare copyright infringement to killing people.

The fact you even think you can "easily" kill someone is notable. Have you ever killed someone? Killing another human being fucks you up for life. Even when you're justified in doing so. Pulling the trigger on a weapon even in self defense has significant psychological costs. It gives people PTSD. You can find accounts of soldiers whose entire jobs were to use weapons to kill others -- it fucked them up for life. Militaries all over the world have to literally dehumanize the enemy in order to soften that blow to people's psyches because otherwise you'll get soldiers who have the enemies in their sights but are unable to pull the trigger.

Killing people is universally understood to be a terrible thing even when you're right. That you're even putting this in the same conceptual space as something so victimless as copyright infringement is straight up offensive. I'm honestly too angry to even argue coherently. Not a single person in this world loses any sleep over copyright infringement. Only lawyers even understand exactly what that even is.

What are the "good reasons" you speak of? It seems like the primary purpose of copyright is to help enrich individuals or corporations (and only the ones who have the resources to fight legal battles). Most people on the Internet completely ignore copyright in their everyday life. And most of the time, nobody really cares, not even the owners of the copyright.

You’re clearly someone who just wants to consume content without rewarding the authors for it. There’s no point arguing against a position that’s fundamentally flawed.

Do you wanna know how many thousands of dollars my Steam account is worth? My PSN account? My physical video games and media collection? How much money I've spent on streaming services? For your information, I'm one of the idiots who was dumb enough to buy Windows Vista Ultimate. I have the shiny box and discs to prove it.

Not a single person on this website can accuse me of not supporting creators. I do it willingly, even though I don't believe in copyright, because I don't believe in punishing creators for flaws of the system. I do it even though I know deep down I'm getting an inferior product: "pirates" get blu-ray remuxes free while I get shitty ass Netflix video with compression artifacts in 90% black frames.

That's absurd. I don't pirate, I pay for content because the cost is pretty much negligible to me. I'm happy to reward authors for creating content I enjoy. But I agree with grandparent: copyright is immoral and it should be abolished for the benefit of humanity. We can share culture with the entire world at pretty much no cost at all, having copyright laws that put it out of reach of only the poorest for the exclusive benefit of a few rich is bullshit.

Would you be pleased if that applied to all of your work too? That immediately anyone can start taking your work and making money off of it?

Copyright at least makes big players pay the original creators for the rights to the works. Netflix going ahead and making money off of subscribers while paying nothing to creators would be a significantly worse situation.

> Would you be pleased if that applied to all of your work too? That immediately anyone can start taking your work and making money off of it?

Sure. From now on I either release my software as AGPLv3 or I don't release it at all. Truth is even if someone violates my license I'm not gonna waste my limited time on this earth litigating against them in court over it. I have better things to do.

Stallman would disagree but I think licenses like GPL shouldn't even exist at all: they all depend on copyright to enforce their terms and copyright shouldn't exist in the first place. It's fair as long as nobody is protected: billion dollar corporations can make money off my code but I can make money off of theirs too. Netflix code gets leaked? Oops, looks like it's our code now.

Also, Netflix literally exists to solve the problems created by copyright itself. It's ironic how it was ultimately destroyed by copyright holders when they pulled their precious content and started their own shitty streaming services instead. Were it not for copyright, we'd all be using peer to peer technology invented decades ago to consume content much more efficiently. Everything humanity ever created would be available at our fingertips.

I don't know about Stallman, but, as I interpret it, Bradley Kuhn agrees with you.

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2022/mar/17/copyleft-ethical-...

> From now on I either release my software as AGPLv3

Why not just make it public domain? That's the default in a world without the right of ownership of code.

> Oops, looks like it's our code now.

How would you make money of it? It's not like you can sell it.

> Were it not for copyright, we'd all be using peer to peer technology invented decades ago to consume content much more efficiently

What content? How would it be paid for, since there's nothing that could be sold?

Even hobby movies are done to make money.

> Why not just make it public domain? That's the default in a world without the right of ownership of code.

Because if I do that I'm just unconditionally transferring wealth to corporations just as you claimed. No point in doing that while they still get to be "all rights reserved". It's only fair if nobody's protected.

> How would you make money of it? It's not like you can sell it.

By using it to do improve our own systems. Apparently what the GPL already provides used to be the norm back in the day before copyright protection was applied to software. We should go back to those days.

> How would it be paid for, since there's nothing that could be sold?

Selling copies after the fact doesn't make sense. Paying for the product before the work is done does. Crowdfunding, patronage. I'm sure they'll figure it out if they have to.

> Crowdfunding, patronage. I'm sure they'll figure it out if they have to

So basically every creator would have to have a rich patron/be funded by a government/etc. who would obviously generally want to impose their own agendas?

> Crowdfunding

So unless an author already has a widespread reputation and a large group of people willing to support him he has no right to benefit from his works? Somebody who is completely unknown but ends up publishing a book which ends up widely popular gets absolutely nothing?

I find it inconceivable bizarre that anyone would ever want to live in such a dark and intellectually subdued world for some ideological reason. I mean abolishing copyright would throw us back to the 15-16th century just with internet instead of the printing press...

But most of that happens already? That's how record labels and publishers do business. You are already living in that dark an intellectually subdued world. A few examples I remember:

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-legal-war-over-disco-elysium-rea...

https://kotaku.com/witcher-author-threatens-cd-projekt-red-w...

https://www.dualshockers.com/nintendo-copyright-strikes-laws...

> Copyright is not in place to protect the authors, but to protect the corporations that own the rights.

The system is not perfect, obviously. There are problems that need to be addressed. But I refuse to view the world in black and white terms

Copyright does protect the author or at least most authors to varying degrees. Just go around and ask any author whether they'd prefer the entire concept of copyright to be abolished because it's used to "protect the corporations"...

> You are already living in that dark an intellectually subdued world

And I'm certain it could get even darker with no copyright protections at all.

> I refuse to view the world in black and white terms

But you are "certain" copyright is good, and removing it would be terrible. That's awfully close to painting things in black and white.

> Just go around and ask any author

I put all my work under open source licenses and creative commons. If copyright disappeared I would just continue to do so. Corporations would be screwed, but art can go on without them.

> So basically every creator would have to have a rich patron/be funded by a government/etc. who would obviously generally want to impose their own agendas?

Already a thing. They even have an euphemism for it: "producer". Every time you watch a film or something, look for the producers in the credits. Those are the guys with the money.

Generally their agenda is just to make more money. This is a relatively benign agenda and in certain cases allows (or used to anyway, not sure about nowadays...) authors a high degree of creative freedom.

If it's no longer possible to make any profitable movies whatsoever, just try to imagine what happens...

Well they managed to realize a couple of decent movies in the USSR so maybe the situation of 99% government or interest group funded cinema and TV production won't be utterly terrible just very miserable.

> Even hobby movies are done to make money.

Not all of them.

Thos who do want to make money will need to adapt to other business models - probably something closer to crowdfunding or patronage. How exactly is irrelevant for copyright reform as the law should not concern itself with protecting specific jobs.

> Netflix literally exists to solve the problems created by copyright itself

You do realize that barely any of that content they provide would even exist without copyright. There would be two outcomes either movies only get released in cinemas and the original copy is for projection is heavily guarded with not official "home video" releases at all or no movies with a significant budget ever get released.

> Everything humanity ever created would be available at our fingertips.

Yes but "Everything" in that situation would only be a marginal proportion of what is available now. Forget expensive movies/tv shows/etc. how could even any writer make a living on his own without having to rely on some reason patron or a full time job like back in the 16th century?

You're telling me these creators can't find a way to continue working without copyright? Come on. Even big companies use stuff like kickstarter and patreon to raise funds. They'll be fine.

Bold of you to assume that content hasn't been lost. No amount of money is bringing it back. Copyright has nothing to do with it.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/501607/wipe-out-when-bbc...

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/missing-pieces/lost-mov...

This already happens today.

Copyright does not protect authors, it protects publishers. This is justified as protecting authors in the very narrow sense that authors did get to negotiate with publishers first, but at the most disadvantaged position they will ever be at in their career. They have to pay, but they can pay a pittance and authors will take it because they have no better options.

The low- or zero-copyright world would at least end the practice of publishers buying rights to works and then pushing the artists who made them out of it. For example, there are loads of unfinished trilogies whose authors would love to finish them, but the publishers don't want them to, because they consider it a lost cause. Nor do they want their authors self-publishing or going with another outfit, so they won't revert ownership back to the artists, because an unexploited, worthless copyright is still worth more as part of a horde of gold that they sleep on.

No copyright means publisher can just take that draft, edit it and publish giving 0 to the author.

Any anyone can take their edits and republish. Yes, this means the original author will need a different business model. So what?

NDAs would still apply even in a zero-copyright world. Of course, there's the related question of whether or not publishers would actually agree to nondisclosure in said world, and whether or not authors would care to actually refuse publication agreements that lacked them.

The thing about publishers is that none of them are interested in publishing without copyright. Authors have inherent advantages in their craft that would at least leave them with something in a zero-copyright world - you can still crowdfund literature, and that's why you see plenty of self-published authors but not that many self-published filmmakers[0]. But publishers can't - all the things that make them money require not just copyright, but also sublicensing rights on derivative works. In the zero-copyright world they're all fighting to republish things that people already have. So they need copyright ownership with licensing terms that subtly disfavor authors instead.

That being said, I'm not an advocate for zero-copyright. That's the nuclear option. But it does need to be pared back to protecting artists from publishers[1], rather than protecting publishers from readers.

[0] YouTubers and TikTokers don't count, that's a different medium.

[1] And, also, Amazon and friends

Netflix subscriptions wouldn't exist in this situation, your example is flawed

I'm capable of pirating and yet I have a Netflix subscription because the service is better and I like some of the shows they produce. There's still a customer base, it's just not held hostage.

> Remember, copyright exists at all because we allow it.

Yes?

Yes, and we can make it stop existing if we want to. Even without a billion dollar lobbying campaign. It's called civil disobedience. Convince yourself some law is fundamentally flawed and shouldn't exist, make the choice to disobey and accept the consequences.

> Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law. - Martin Luther King Jr.

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