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Comment by rustcleaner | Hacker News Reader

So what it sounds like is copyright stifles societal growth to ensure the originator gets his rent? Copyright is more than paying "fair share," the enforcement apparatus puts a large opportunity cost which is ordinarily unaccounted for. I am less likely to innovate and iterate if I have to navigate patents and copyright compliance, as all of that is administrative cost and the legal risks are well and above R&D costs. I argue it creates an environment of not bothering, when one has to tip-toe on egg shells to avoid massive liabilities in suits coming out of nowhere from trolls and such.

If I built a binary Linux distro, you know damn well ZFS will be in the kernel, it will be hosted on only .onion and .i2p, and all Linux Foundation and Oracle Corp C&D emails will be published with sensibly witty lampooning comments.

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It sounds like one party is getting all the advantage of a piece of IP without having to make any investment in it's generation, which is a competitive advantage.

Or that you can't squat ideas and memes, and you actually have to materially produce to get [super]wealthy.

And you should never publish your new ideas and memes, to ensure your keep your technological advantage.

That's the idea behind patents. You get a period of what is essentially monopoly license in exchange for the idea being made available to the public. The issue with copyright is that it lasts far too long now compared to the original length (14 years in the US), which throws off the balance.

> So what it sounds like is copyright stifles societal growth to ensure the originator gets his rent?

Even this feeble pitch would hold a lot more weight if companies either couldn't own copyright or couldn't purchase the copyright. As it is it's more like a corrupt rent-extraction scheme with government backing.

> So what it sounds like is copyright stifles societal growth to ensure the originator gets his rent

If you’re ignoring copyright and IP rights while catching up? That’s just freeloading, you need someone to pay for all the research/innovation.

> if I have to navigate patents

Albeit still more likely than if you have no funding? Investors don’t have as many incentives to provide that if they can’t get a return.

Of course you need a balance, over restrictive IP protection might be as bad as not having it at all.

> If you’re ignoring copyright and IP rights while catching up? That’s just freeloading, you need someone to pay for all the research/innovation.

This is not true. Everyone, everywhere, who created any thing ever, built it on the backs of [millennia of] previous creators.

History teaches us that innovation flows in the absence of restrictions - including rent-seeking. Conversely, modern history teaches us that IP gets in the way everywhere it can.

Innovation and progress happened at a snail’s pace (by modern standards) before IP rights (at least rudimentary) became a thing. Not saying there was a causal relationship necessarily but if we look at some of the most important inventions like the steam engine it’s unlikely that it could have been invented and perfected at the time it was without patents.

It’s rather [extremely] simple and obvious , generally R&D requires significant investment. If you can’t get any return on your investment, you won’t invest.

Of course there needs to be a balance to minimize rent seeking beyond a certain point.

From what I understand, it was possible to build fantastic steam engines only after the patents expired. Before everyone was sitting on pats of it unwilling to cooperate like stubborn children.

Charles Dickens writes a book. Everyone copies and sells it without permission. Charles Dickens starves. Charles Dickens either becomes a factory worker or dies. No more Charles Dickens books.

Robbert space industries.

People paid for something that took forever to materialize but were somehow excited to be part of the process.

Innovation right there!

People like Charles Dickens books.

The first publisher to get a hold of one would have a massive advantage.

Publisher pays Charles Dickens to only provide his newest work to them. Many publishers want this privilege, there is a bidding war.

Publisher sells millions in the first week, eventually other publishers get in on the action but it takes time to typeset, print and ship the books. The book is the talk of the town, consumers want one now.

Publishing house doesn't make outsized profits years after the authors death and instead has to compete on the quailty of its publishing in the free market.

Rent seeker has to get a factory job or dies. The market is brimming with high quailty editions of each authors work available to everyone at a price point they can afford.

> Publisher sells millions in the first week

That’s not how it worked back in the 1800s, that’s not even how it works now.

In any case Charles Dickens would have earned less than he did and a larger proportion of surplus would have went to printers and publishers. How is that in any way a positive thing?

And of course without physical distribution your “business” model is even more absurd (being very absurd to begin with).

I’m not sure if you are aware (presumably not) but that’s how publishing worked in the 1500s. Cervantes got a lump sum for the Don Quixote (and his other books) and he was never able to sustain himself by writing and a had to have a daytime job.

His books were (relatively) extremely popular at the time and no publishers outside of Spain paid him anything. It seems rather absurd that even someone like him could never make a comfortable living by writing?

> Rent seeker has to get a factory job or dies

These bizarrely unhinged anti IP takes are truly something else..

I mean sure the “fair” duration of copyright is up for discussion, author’s life + 70 years is probably excessive.

Cervantes wrote what, 5 books and some poems that weren't well recived.

Why does that level of effort entitle someone to a "comfortable living"? That's on the order of a few words a day.

Shakespeare wrote 39 plays and 154 sonnets. He didn't need a day job beacuse he wrote full time. He didn't enjoy copyright protection and was fine.

> Why does that level of effort entitle someone to a "comfortable living"?

Because people enjoyed his books and were willing to pay for them? (But all the profits when to the printers in Belgium etc)

> That's on the order of a few words a day.

That irrelevant. It’s about the value/utility you provide and not the amount of labor.

Also you(or me) really have no clue how many words he wrote per day even if that were relevant. Maybe he wrote a dozen drafts for each book which he discarded, how would that change anything?

I mean… if you wrote down 500 words per day would you believe that you deserve to be paid more for that than Cervantes for e.g. 0.01 of his words?

> Shakespeare

Ran a theater (together with his partners) i.e. he was both the writer and the publisher.

His final theater troupe was sponsored directly by the King (previous one by the Lord Chamberlain) and had a royal patent and operated in a heavily regulated market. So surely not a very good example?

Or is patronage and a system heavily regulated by the government preferable to legal copyright? Because that the only realistic alternative besides having no content.

> entitle

What entitles you to the content of your bank account or retirement savings? Maybe even your house? What kind of a question was that even? (I don’t really get it)

it doesn't sound like it but it is it.

The talking point is always focused on rewarding those who did the work but that I have to pay to enforce the scheme and the cost of going without if we don't get permission is also not important at all.

Funny as hell to pay so that it can be assured I don't get to use something.

I think we should find ways to at least judge some technology valuable enough to buy it into the public domain at sensible but non-negotiable rates.

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