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Comment by BelleOfTheBall | Hacker News Reader

That is a very dangerous way to approach copyright laws. They are definitely abused by corporations like Disney, infamously so, but abolishing them is absolutely not the answer. Art makers are already struggling en masse, taking away their ability to earn money off their work isn't an answer, especially if it's just to train a predictive text generator.

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Counterpoint: there's way too much "art makers", copyright is keeping the quality ceiling down, good content loses monetization game with spam - all while that "predictive text generator" is, for better or worse, pretty much the most magnificent piece of technology invented this century, and - for better or worse - it's likely to become next major shift to economy and life.

How do you believe copyright is keeping the quality down in particular? As I see it, the reason is marketability and trying to conform to standards. Making a new Marvel Movie is sure to have a payoff. Making Parasite MIGHT have a higher payoff, but the risk is way higher.

Removing copyright might help to get various more spin-offs and reiterations on previous work, which does increase the scope, but taking the ability for makers to profit from their work in a traditional sense, will bring us closer (back) to a time when commissioned artwork was the main art you saw

Letting "makers" (studios) profit from "their" (stolen by unbalanced contracts) work for unreasonable amounts of time has clearly proven to be a failure while crowd-comissioned spaces (patreon etc) are thriving financially AND artistically.

- HN on social media : The powers are too centralized, future is decentralization, question is how

- HN on free software: is good

- HN on copyright : WAY TOO MUCH PEASANTS CLAIMING INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS, RIGHTS THAT ARENT EVEN REAL, ART BE CENTRALIZED FOR MAXIMUM MONOPOLY

> Most benefits from the copyright system are accrued to large corporations

Citation fucking needed. Among those who study copyright and inequality, none suggest abandoning it [1][2].

Within the context of machine learning, one of the only pillars buttressing individuals against multi-trillion dollar corporations is copyright [3].

[1] https://journals.library.wustl.edu/lawreview/article/id/5108...

[2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/1339714

[3] https://sfstandard.com/2023/07/10/cruise-and-waymos-24-7-san...

To nitpick, the second article is from 1970, back then a concept such as the Amazon Antitrust Paradox [1] would cause burning at the stake in the legal field. Similarly, we also have an Elsevier Antitrust Paradox, a Nature(.com) Antitrust Paradox, and so on.

Just the fact that I cannot freely read an article published 53 years ago is beyond ludicrous. And also, if I pay JSTOR ($19.5/month) and read the 1970 article, do you think the money will go to Stephen Breyer [2], the author? No, 100% of the $19.5/month will go to Ithaka Harbors, parent company of JSTOR [3], that's where the "accrued to large corporations" lies.

[1] 2017, https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado..., Lina M. Khan is the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission since 2021.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Breyer

[3] "Ithaka's total revenue was $105 million in 2019, most of it ($79 million) from JSTOR service fees", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaka_Harbors

> the fact that I cannot freely read an article published 53 years ago is beyond ludicrous

And has as much to do with individual versus corporate power as the health of a single tree can speak for a forest.

Nobody is saying the current situation is good or even sustainable. OP just made a big claim for which there is no evidence, despite many looking for it.

"there is no evidence"

As quoted above, "Ithaka's total revenue was $105 million in 2019, most of it ($79 million) from JSTOR service fees". All those $79 million and more JSTOR has stolen from the authors. Although JSTOR should have been dissolved long before this for effectively killing Aaron Swartz. But yes, there is no justice in this world. I suppose that's my main contention, why pretend anymore, we live in a society, yada yada.

This isn’t a cogent argument. You’re identifying troubling behaviour. But it’s not being stitched into anything cohesive. Hiding bad rhetoric behind post-modernist nihilism is in vogue, but unproductive.

Not sure where you picked nihilism in my reply, referencing the "we live in a society" meme I actually smiled. Nevertheless, stopping the pretence today, painful as it is, realizing the state of the world is far from perfect, is the first step for a better tomorrow.

There is no political debate in which increasing the opposition’s nihilism is not advantageous. Nhilihism keeps people from thinking. It keeps people at home, away from voting booths. There is daylight between Panglossian utopia and dystopia. If you’re cynical, one of the most productive uses of your time might be engaging the other side and convincing them civic engagement is worthless.

Again, haven't brought up nihilism or cynicism.

Incidentally, just to give you some more to rummage about, staying away from the voting booth seems like the best thing to do and civic engagement is indeed worthless. Unless you are able to say and vote "No", effectively banning all the "sides" from political action, forcing new sides to emerge. No people will ever be free, representational democracy or not, if they can't even say "No". Not being able to say "No" is also the root of the cynicism.

I'm not sure how that has to do with abolishing copyright, when that mostly has to do with weak and skewed protections current laws offer. They're not allowed to take names off copyrighted text, which is partly why that name is still on that paywalled text. They're not effectively forbidden by law to purchase to become a corporate owner of copyright, which is how they get to paywall it in their name.

If they, in loose usage of the pronoun, were allowed to deface an art, papers, code, anything copyrighted, they will. Stripping copyright text could even become an "etiquette". Conversely, if they were not allowed to profit off of a thing, copyrighted, with appropriate enforcement, they won't. These should go without saying for core Internet users and software engineers.

I mean, haven't you heard what Oracle just said?

I never argued that copyright should be abolished, I was responding to a comment that essentially said that anyone who was opposed to copyright is doing so at the behest of large corporations at the expense of individuals, which is a really flawed and one sided way of looking at copyright laws, the first linked article you provided being a great example.

For the record, I can’t find a single large corporation pushing for the dissolution of copyright, and many clear examples of large corporations lobbying for increased copyright protections and terms. I thinks this puts the onus for providing evidence on those who would argue that corporations are completely failing to act in their own interest.

> I can’t find a single large corporation pushing for the dissolution of copyright

The defendant of every copyright infringement lawsuit.

Hacker News has at least two users!

Already copyright laws do not offer protection for writers (see the current [screen]writers strike [1]), visual artists, musicians (see the recent Taylor Swift re-recording debacle [2]), not to speak of the "lower" arts, crafts & merch, where colossi such as H&M and Zara steal art, designs, concepts regularly [3] (not to even mention the sweatshops).

Copyright laws, or in fact generally laws, are for the rich and powerful, perhaps even for the corporations, not the individuals, since they paid for them to be so [4], it's just us, individually, the hoi polloi, who are still trapped into believing that there is rhyme or reason to our current system.

The joke is that while our system extolls itself as the most efficient system in history, based on competition of equals and free markets (two contradictions in terms contradicting each other), it harbours terrible inefficiencies such as the copyright laws, the patent system, and so on.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Writers_Guild_of_America_...

[2] https://www.vox.com/culture/22278732/taylor-swift-re-recordi...

[3] https://www.boredpanda.com/zara-stealing-designs-copying-ind...

[4] The Power Corporations Have In Changing Laws, https://www.npr.org/2021/04/02/983925056/the-power-corporati...

Ask someone on the screenwriters' strike if they'd rather copyright was eliminated so they didn't get paid at all...

Most of them already don't get paid, hence the strike [1].

[1] "Writers say they want a living wage as streaming devalues their work even as it demands more of their time.", https://www.indiewire.com/news/business/writers-strike-2023-...

No, they get paid but would, understandably, like to be paid more. Something which would be even less likely to happen if copyright was abolished so anybody could use their output at zero cost.

From what I understand they are not getting paid since the paradigm changed: "the way it's changed is most of these streaming services focus on a metric called ARPU, which is the average revenue per user", "the main difference is it used to be that the incentives were linked. So the writers and the studios were trying to get people to watch the show and get high ratings and get people to pay attention to the show. Today, the streamer is trying to get people to subscribe to their service, so they're looking more at the aggregate of the service versus the individual show." [1]

[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/05/03/1173612099/why-writers-are-ha...

I'm not sure quite why you're continuing to post articles explaining why writers get paid less as streaming services' revenue is less linked to the ratings of new shows as an argument in favour of marking down the value of the intellectual property they create to zero...

My original point still stands. Ask the writers. They're not getting paid nothing yet, and they won't approve of your passionate advocacy of a future in which they are paid nothing.

I'm not quite sure why you are not understanding that with the streaming model of business the writers, and even the actors, no longer get residuals, here is another article [1]: yes, they get paid nothing.

I am advocating for the abolishment of copyright laws, not for not being rewarded for one's work.

[1] Euphoria actress Sydney Sweeney revealed in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter that "They don’t pay actors like they used to, and with streamers, you no longer get residuals.", https://nofilmschool.com/streaming-services-residuals

I'm not sure why you are not understanding that not getting residuals is not the same as not getting a salary or a per writing contribution payment. Or that production companies are not paying these salaries (and the rest of the production budget) out of the kindness of their hearts, but out of revenues accrued from networks and streaming services having to pay to screen their shows.

Or that writers will not be paid anything (and certainly not by streaming services) in a copyright-free world in which anybody is allowed to use any creative work in any way free of charge. The abolition of copyright laws is literally the abolition of virtually[1] all existing rewards for creating IP.

This is not complicated stuff: if it's genuinely news to you that writers aren't working for free, perhaps you are not the person to lecture us on how copyright should work.

[1]I guess writers could still ask for donations. They could do this already, but they prefer negotiating with networks for higher pay packages...

If it's genuinely news to you that exploitation is a normal day-to-day part of any industry, perhaps these pointless replies should end here.

Yes, writers have been working for free [1].

[1] "In October 2015, Wil Wheaton created a stir when he declared that he had turned down an offer to write for the Huffington Post. He refused, according to him, because they had declined to pay for his work, in keeping with their policy of reimbursing writers with "exposure" in lieu of payment." https://www.vox.com/2016/2/26/11106006/writing-for-free Guess what writers who aren't famous have to do? Work for free, for "exposure".

Strangely, it is not news to me that exploitation is a normal day-to-day part of any industry .

(This is why I have not made any statements to that effect, never mind done anything as ludicrous as post articles about unionised screenwriters seeking to negotiate a higher pay rate as evidence that "most" of them earned "nothing")

And this is also why I am not advocating a copyright-free world in which HuffPo has the right to sell ads around everything Wil Wheaton ever wrote without paying him a penny or even seeking his permission. Guess what writers whose work isn't copyrightable will be paid in? That's right, "exposure", and not even exposure with much prospect of paid compensation if their work takes off.

Hope at least you are getting paid and you don't deploy such ridiculous amounts of bad faith for free.

My reply from above "Most of them already don't get paid, hence the strike" was specifically in the context of the streaming platforms not paying residuals in the same manner the studios do, hence the reference to the article.

What I find most funny is that you don't even know or care about alternative solutions, you just assume the copyright laws is for the best in the best of all possible worlds [1] and anything else would be chaos.

[1] Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide

What I find most funny is that you're implying there are alternative solutions that you do know and care about.

And yet instead of addressing my actual objection - that screenwriters seeking to get paid more for co-creating IP would be unlikely to see abolition of IP protection as a solution - by articulating those alternatives and how it would allow them to get paid more, you chose to assert they don't get paid.[1]

I mean, I'm not the one advocating the radical change here, even though actually I don't "assume that the copyright laws is for the best in the best of all possible worlds". So it's not really incumbent on me to answer my own objections by imagining screenwriter-satisfying solutions involving the abolition of copyright. If you actually had one and were able to advocate it with as much zeal as you have defended the claim "most of them already don't get paid" this might be a more interesting discussion.

[1]doesn't really matter if you were doing so "specifically in the context of streaming platform residuals" since whether or not they get residuals from a particular media type is irrelevant to the fact screenwriters are not in favour of proposals which would entail them losing both the residuals they do get and their job

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The laws themselves are dangerous and encourages the myth of ideas being akin to somebody's personal property.

since when is struggling artist making use of the copyright system. They are protected by it entirely in theory alone, they aint taking someone to court.

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