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Comment by Dutchie987 | Hacker News Reader

When the world changes through time, perhaps the rules of society can or even should change with them. The fact that some rules were applicable in the past is not a guarantee those same rules can be used immutable in perpetuity.

As I see it, the Constitution should be re-evaluated once in a while and adapted to the modern world. There are (again, just my opinion) a lot of rules in there that were very useful and important in the past but shouldn't be in there anymore, or even state the exact opposite of what they do now.

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Again, you're not really saying why. What about this example is relevant? This just sounds a bit like a memorised response.

Fair enough. I think copyright (and by extension intellectual property) is not all that important to promote the arts, and the actual implementation in the law is (in my opinion) very flawed.

In the modern age it costs nothing to duplicate knowledge. That should be reflected in law. I'd like to see society work towards making life in society better. One of the ways to do that is to give freely to society. If we recognize intellectual property at all (I'd rather we'd not) then the time to reverting to public domain should be significantly shorter.

> I think copyright (and by extension intellectual property) is not all that important to promote the arts

The obvious counter is: if I spend 5 years writing a brilliant musical, and someone else takes the script and score and produces it worldwide, where is my incentive to make such a brilliant thing? You seem to be promoting a world where people with resources can steal the best and latest free ideas out there and commercialise them. I don't see how that would work.

> One of the ways to do that is to give freely to society.

People can give freely right now. You're talking about forcing people to not be in control of their work.

I think the distinction is a pragmatic vs. idealistic worldview. I would also like to live in a world where people create just for the sake of creating. It has a very zen-like quality to it and there are some people who approach their work that way. Artists, authors, musicians, and software engineers wouldn't need to sell their labor because they do it freely for the sake of their passion. But there are also people who look at work as a means to an end. For many, that end is protected by intellectual property rights. The law is meant to help both groups contribute to the betterment of society. As it stands now, you don't have to hide any of your work behind copyrights if you choose to be the former. The latter is still incentivized to create due to the protections of the law. The current structure (while it can be improved on) is an either/or choice.

There is a trend in societies that don't respect intellectual property rights and it tends towards less innovation.

This is a strawman. I don't think anybody was claiming the laws are immutable. The document referenced was the Constitution, which has very specific processes related to the very opposite point.

What is being brought up, and seems to be lost on many, is that the law that governs copyright has an underlying principle that is not addressed in the video in discussion. That video seems to have an erroneous view of the intent of the law. As a consequent, the position in the video isn't particularly valid.

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