Why do you think copyright should be abolished?
Governments and private individuals already produce plenty of news without relying on income from copyright. The BBC is publicly funded.
Would you also complain that someone doesn’t understand bombmaking because they aren’t using it for their livelihood?
“Because I think people should work for free to entertain me”
People pirate because they want content that other people produced with the expectation of getting paid.
People like getting paid for their work. I suspect you do, too, but you think that people who do creative work don’t deserve to be paid because you are the consumer.
For movies: here is one (a Megaman fan film):
> http://bluecorestudios.com/videos/?watch=videos_10_megaman-f...
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcLqmH77g_s
See also https://megaman.fandom.com/wiki/Mega_Man_(Fan_Film)
It’s fascinating to see people in this thread pretend like art exists in a vacuum and act like the people who created it shouldn’t be involved in the equation at all.
Something tells me those same people would get very upset if we suggested their own work, code, or labor should be freely used by anyone who wanted to, including their employer. I’m guessing they like to be paid for their work. They just don’t like paying other people for their work.
> Should we fully subsidsize anyone who calls themselves an artist?
Why are you trying to talk about subsidies and how people identify?
You’re throwing out straw man arguments to try to distract from the real point: People get to decide how much to charge for their work. If you don’t want to pay that amount, you are not entitled to receive it for free.
The way some people are pretending like they have a moral entitlement to the labor of other people in this thread is wild.
> Something tells me those same people would get very upset if we suggested their own work, code, or labor should be freely used by anyone who wanted to, including their employer. I’m guessing they like to be paid for their work
For the record, I think it should work like this: I'm an artist. You want art from me. You tell me what you want, I create it, you pay me. This is straightforward and obvious.
> People get to decide how much to charge for their work. If you don’t want to pay that amount, you are not entitled to receive it for free.
It costs many dollars to make copy 1 of Y. You worked, you should get paid for copy 1.
It costs 0 dollars to make copy 2 of something. Anything you think you should receive above 0 for copy 2 is only justifiable with moral entitlements to the money of other people.
Yet another strawman! Nobody demanded ownership forever, but some form of compensation for things you enjoy.
> For the record, I think it should work like this: I'm an artist. You want art from me. You tell me what you want, I create it, you pay me. This is straightforward and obvious.
What you describe isn't art, but the service of creating an artwork on demand as a service.
> It costs many dollars to make copy 1 of Y. You worked, you should get paid for copy 1.
If we were doing that, society would be at a net loss, because pretty much nobody was able to pay the cost for an artwork upfront - a single movie costs up to several hundred millions of dollars to manufacture. This leads to a world where most media simply wouldn't exist. I doubt that's the one you'd prefer living in.
Instead, by spreading this amount over consumers, we can have accessible content for most people, and a way for artists to make a living from creating artworks as a service.
> What you describe isn't art, but the service of creating an artwork on demand as a service.
Not a strawman (and also relevant to copyrightable art) while copyright is able to used to enforce royalties. Fair compensation is 1 work = 1 payment, not 1 work = pay over 100+ years.
(Related aside: Private entities have the right to enter into contracts they wish (e.g. if you personally want to pay an artist over and over during your lifetime, fine), but when it seeps into law that enables third parties to sue, then it is no longer a private matter.)
> If we were doing that, society would be at a net loss,
> Instead, by spreading this amount over consumers, we can have accessible content for most people
Mass media dilutes art, makes it impersonal, limits attention span by encouraging a "fad/fashion" approach to creative works, and forces art to be subservient to things like advertising. You sure it wouldn't be a net gain?
It does make artists lives more difficult, but things that are more important to society are difficult as well, such as being a doctor, so ... no sympathy.
For things requiring lots of research and development, I think some mechanism should exist to document and extend the period, or "pay per year" scheme, but no longer than 30 years.
Pure straw man argument.
Nobody is talking about “automatic compensation”. Nobody is getting paid for putting “one make on a paper” if nobody wants to buy it.
People get to price their works. If you don’t like the price or don’t think it’s worth it, you don’t pay for it. Nobody gets “automatic compensation” if nobody wants to buy their work. These are such obvious ground truths that you’re ignoring for the sake of trying to make a strained point.
Sorry, you’re not entitled to the output of other people’s labor for free, just like I’m not entitled to the output of your labor for free.
Lots of drugs cost little to manufacture but lots to develop. Ideally the costs for robust research and manufacturing of pharmaceuticals would be shared by all people equally because we all benefit from improving the human condition... But they're not. And since pharmaceutical companies can't just blow a whole bunch of money on research for things that will bring them no money, they charge enough for the pill to make their money back, and unfortunately, usually, far beyond that until it's able to be made generically. I believe that windfall profits from prices that keep people from treatment are wrong. But allowing everyone to make new drugs developed by other pharmaceutical companies to sell at generic prices would just mean those companies wouldn't research new drugs... Win? Not without a way in-place to replace that research. And anyone considering some glib argument questioning the value of new drugs, you're full of shit. Not every new drug is a Viagra knock-off.
Lots of people in the tech crowd have adopted this convenient romantic notion that real art must be non-commercial, and that all real art is made by people toiling in obscurity, driven solely by the need for self-expression and the distant hope that they'll someday be discovered, become famous, and have their name in art history books... Or even that hobby art could replace professional art. That, of course, is complete bullshit. Art is no different than any other intellectual pursuit and equating VFX artists for AAA game titles and professional session musicians to weekend basement studio oil painters and people with hobby bands is like equating immigration attorneys writing depositions and technical writers to people who are serious about their personal fanfic blogs.
Saying we need to abolish copyright means the things that are copyrighted have enough value to want; demanding we do that without first demanding an alternate way to support people who do intellectual work is a self-absorbed demand for free stuff. Saying they should get another job and continue to produce that valuable work for free— like a public slave in ancient Rome— is not an answer any ethical adult could entertain in good faith.
In contrast, perhaps the average videogame might need only five years of copyright to sufficiently incentivize their production. Hypothetically. In such a scenario, there's no one-size-fits-all solution, so we need a different system than just a flat copyright duration.
[1] https://billwillingham.substack.com/p/willingham-sends-fable...
I'd also say that durations should be shorter than the original terms, due to the much higher volume of works produced today and greater accessibility of those tools. 5-10 from publication at the most.
After all, a massive supply of something with a relatively static demand simply means it has a lower value than it once did.
Copyright (and patents) are a limited monopoly granted by the state, thus they are inherently immoral, as everything that any government does, as they do that by the use of force.
Other way to look at it is that ideas are not scarce at all and it's copyright/patents/the government that creates scarcity where there's abundance.