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Comment by beedogs | Hacker News Reader

I'm honestly starting to think this planet would be better without any copyright protection at all.

Nice thought until you spend a large sum of money to create something personal and someone copies it and starts stealing your potential audience.

If there are no copyrights, who would be stupid enough to continue acting as though there was?

In turn you'd get other things people spent large sums of money creating.

Eventually you would get no people spending anything on creation because it would simply be cheaper to use something that someone else has already created.

There are some forms of art which can survive on minimal economic returns. There are other forms of art which will not.

There may be different ways to make non-minimal economic returns without copyrights.

Fair thought, but here is another one: Don't hate the game, hate the players. Yes there are problems with copyright protection laws, just like anything man-made. Except, the bigger problem is in people, their ideologies and cultures. Those who think it's okay to rip someone's work and put their name on it, that's where the real problem is.

The game rules are in place, some abide by them and some don't.

It's funny, when you pour your blood sweat and tears into creating something you certainly feel a sense of ownership over the damned thing; it's your baby. But at the same time, witnessing much of the absurdity emerging out of the current state of copyright law, I'm starting to wonder whether you might be right.

I just have no idea how such an economy might operate and still remunerate creators for their work.

Humans created way before any one invented money. What you mean is, the high end wont get filthy rich. Real creators and innovators rarely think of the money, yet still create.

If it really is your "baby", then keep it to yourself, keep it safe. I wouldn't let any baby of mine out in to any marketplace alone.

For most of history, artists operated under the patronage system and were paid to create works. Almost every dead artist from the pre-copyright era who is still revered today was either a product of the patronage system or born into a wealthy family.

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