Also, with apologies for the whataboutism, we unfortunately finance thugs all day every day (my internet provider, German government and pension, Deutsche Bahn, etc are massive extortionists); it's not really black and white.
I write this out of pure sympathy for the incredible work that I know gamedevs do, I'm not associated with Rockstar at all.
That is why that logic is broken. You’re just supporting the next wave of abuse for GTA7 not helping out employees.
In fact, even the people who made the game (did the actual work, not managers, advertisers, etc.) don't get to decide.
Correct me if I am wrong but the programmers, designers, artists have already been paid and any money from sales goes to the company and its execs/shareholders.
(And yes, employees can also be shareholders but they almost always own such a tiny share it does not really matter. In a just world, ownership would be distributed automatically according to time_worked * skill_level.)
EDIT: I might have overstated by saying it doesn't work but it definitely doesn't have the same level of effect as people collectively saying "this behavior is wrong and you will be punished for it, regardless if I buy the product" (for example by editing laws). It also doesn't allow any control over how the money is distributed among those who worked on it (compared to for example adding a law that limits absolute/relative spending on marketing - whether you think it's a good idea or not).
Some companies may share a profit. I heard that Activision used to pay some of the revenue from Call of Duty to the developers, although I can't confirm it. And it was a long time ago, not sure if they still do.
1) A lot of people would immediately stop contributing to open source. In fact i ahead have because ML is being used to launder my work to use it without resourcing my licenses. Same with any other area where people share their work for free. It would all be monetized by those with access to better advertising.
2) Anything published would be immediately scooped up by the big players. How would a small competitor like Nebula compete with YouTube if YouTube took all its content and offered it for free with ads?
3) How would you even know who the original creator was if those stealing the work stripped away attribution? They already do but at least you have some limited ways to fight them.
2) what do you mean "scooped up"? What's to stop a small platform from providing the same content that a large platform does, if we've done away with intellectual property?
3) I'm confused. If you're paying somebody to create a proposed work, and then they create it and get paid for doing so, and then nobody is allowed to restrict access to it, where does the theft come in?
You have to understand in this world, advertising and network effects are much stronger than building a good product.
2) Again, advertising, cost of storage, having a better (meaning more addiction inducing) algorithm, etc.
3) You said it yourself, people have to create something first (which will be stolen or as you phrase it, unrestricted) so they can prove themselves so that anybody pays them to produce the next thing. Or would you pay a random guy with no credentials and no portfolio claiming he can create what you want?
Or what if somebody creates something really good but it's a one off. He changes hobbies, has children, has to care for an elderly parent, ... and doesn't have time to create more. Should he not get paid for the value of his existing work?
Your take basically means people will only get paid as long as more value can be extracted from them and then they're no longer economically viable so screw them.
Somebody else owning the solution to our problems is why we tolerate such abuse. Otherwise we could cut out the abuse parts and solve the problem directly.
3) I was unspecific about how much money they'd get ahead of time versus upon completion because I figure that ought to be a case-by-case thing.
The idea that people should be able to live well based on having done good work in the past is a good one. Let's make that happen, but why should it have anything to do with property? If I build a particularly strong bridge which surpasses expectations re: longevity shouldn't I get the same retroactive compensation as somebody who wrote a particularly good book? If I publish freely the cure for a disease, should society not reward me to a greater extent than if I sold the patent to a company that will decline to act on the discovery because it's more profitable to treat that disease than to cure it?
The things you seem to want from intellectual property are important, but pushing the concept of property beyond what is natural for it is a harmful way to achieve them.
A) its not working particularly well for the artists
B) its not working at all for workers outside that domain
C) it has all kinds of really awful side effects which are far more harmful than whatever good we can reasonably expect it (property) to do.
When IP was invented to justify the church's right to prevent the wrong kind of bible from being printed we didn't have the ability to implement the alternatives that are available to us today. The best we could do is play-by-the-rules-or-we'll-take-your-printer. We have new capabilities now, let's solve these problems head on instead of leaning on ideas from the 1600's to do so.
Better product does not matter, advertising and network effects do.
Think about this: with IP you have strictly more options than without. You can literally release under public domain if you want to. People generally don't.
Having strictly more options is always better _by definition_. You're literally saying people will be better off if you take away their choice. Stop and think, man.
2) Don't ignore a point you don't like. Tell me how a small creator can compete with a big corporation. Take into account marketshare and network effects.
3) You were unspecific because you can't control it and you know it. With IP the artist can decide if the money offered is good enough for permission to use his work. Without IP you shift the decision how much to pay entirely to the people with money, artists have 0 say. They can only say "please" and "thank you".
A) How now? I don't see creators giving away their work for free under public domain, citing it's better for them.
B) Ok, let's come up with a system which rewards creators, builders, workers in other professions.
C) Like what?
So what are those alternatives except "give away your work for free and hope to get paid next time"? Because this one is already possible today and creators don't use it because it would suck for them.
If it seems like I've beee avoiding 2, it's because the point I'm trying to make is
> IP isn't doing the job we want it to, we can do better.
To answer 2 I have to shift to:
> I can do better, and here's how.
My proposal is a bit lengthy for hn, so here's a gist: https://gist.github.com/MatrixManAtYrService/52b228cc3ffb624...
3) No, I was unspecific because the ideal payment depends on a variety of factors like whether their content bothered to share attribution with its source, whether it was supported or contradicted by more trustworthy evidence, whether it harmed or hurt the people who relied on it... things that you can't prescribe up front.
> artists have 0 say. They can only say "please" and "thank you".
That's been the case for every kind of artist ever since there was technology that could copy their work. The best we can do is find ways to ensure that it's more "thank you" than "please".
A) Do you know any artists who are making a living based on their art? (I don't). Do you know any who have tried and failed because it either wasn't enough money, or because they were too afraid that fluid definitions of "derivative work" might upend their business model? (I know several). The existing system is working only for incumbents.
B) Yeah, working on that
C) Like people going hungry because John Deere remote-killed a bunch of tractors on the basis of their copyrighted firmware having been tampered with. Like having billionaires instead of the masses in control of our elections because all information reaches the people through advertiser-controlled chokepoints. Like being spied on or sabotaged via back doors in our tech which were added to accept remote firmware updates related to content protection but are now being uses for other more nefarious things. Or having blind people be unable to navigate the internet because their screen reader software isn't compatible with the copy protection in place. Like having cures for diseases go unused because the patent on the treatment can still be squeezed for profit. Like having a brittle internet that is broken all the time because the rights holders needed single points of control, and now we have single points of failure. The list harms of the Advertising-IP partnership goes on and on and on. Cory Doctorow makes this point well in his (2011) talk: The Coming War on General Computation: https://media.ccc.de/v/28c3-4848-en-the_coming_war_on_genera...
Huh? That doesn't make any sense. "Vote your wallet" does not mean throw money on the ground haphazardly and pray that it finds its way to the appropriate home. It means hand the money directly to the person you want to have it. There is no way to avoid deciding who gets the money. That's the only choice you get to make.
https://rollingout.com/2025/05/07/target-ceo-salary-drop-ami...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dougmelville/2025/08/21/the-qui...
> The Quiet Part Out Loud: Target Ditching DEI Cost The CEO His Job And Investors $12 Billion
So, it would not be hard to impair Rockstar with a coordinated, sustained economic retaliation campaign against them. If it kills the company, we help workers find other jobs and shareholders learn a lesson about capital allocation. Poorly run companies die all the time, some just need to be helped along.