copyright is bullshit
Imagine a society without copyright… only physically intensive jobs could make money because everything else would be pirated, ripped-off or free. Thus, only those who are financially independent could afford to publish. Because the world really needs more rich class propaganda…
How do we know that when we don't have a copy of the world without this regime? How much more and greater works could have been produced without such a repressive system?
A really successful work becomes part of the culture, and remixing, derivatives and other modes of integrating cultural artifacts are prohibited. Why should we allow corporations to own our culture?
With open source, I should note, its remixing is in fact governed by copyright.
I think we’ve veered a little off the original thesis where we started which is an argument that copyright is limiting the rate or breadth or level of cultural artifacts. I have to say that I find it hard to imagine a meaningfully higher volume or level than we already see today. I mean are you worried that we’re stifling creativity? I think it is abundant and the evidence is all around us.
There might be something to that logic but art and literature doesn't obey rules like math and copyright exists to protect creators
So I’d be curious to hear about a counter example.
The importance of striking a balance between incentivising creation and enriching culture was why the original copyright term was dramatically shorter. The modern term of owners life + 80 years or whatever it is, is clearly ridiculous. 20 years before entering public domain seems pretty reasonable.
There's unfortunately also some pressure against people using legitimate public domain works. E.g. youtubers getting copyright strikes for playing public domain music because it's too similar to a specific copyrighted recording.
The problem is that there is also a lot of stuff that never got done because of copyright. And the extend to which works that were funded by exploiting copyright would not have been funded in any other way is also questionable.
Copyright doesn't actually stop me from pirating a book or an mp3 right now. Heck, I'll just download a book right now. Bam. Done. Some things are so difficult to keep from being pirated, such a photographs, that saying the copyright system protects photographers strikes me as a bit silly. It does protect some commercial photographers if a magazine wants to sell their photo sometimes, but that's a very very small slice of all the photos in copyright that are being shared online right now.
Also there are other systems that might protect an author's financials. Off the top of my head I imagine you could do a netflix model where every citizen pays some taxes to consume intellectual property like a utility. Then the goverment finds a way to measure what is being consumed and gives each author a share based on the rate of consumption. In fact the "intellegence is a ultility" ramblings of Sam Altmen sort-of point in this direction. But that's just one idea thought up early in the morning when its too hot to sleep properly. I'm sure there are many others.
That is a very small slice thanks to copyrights. Without copyrights then corporations stealing from the small guy like this would be the majority of it.
We already have these - CD taxes, government grants funded by general taxes, GEMA in Germany, even TV licenses.
They all universally suck and are extremely unfair in who gets paid by them.
Yes, all the rich class propaganda being pushed by open source developers working on software in their free time.
Copyright far more protects the wealthy than the good. They don't need to sell your book, they just need to own the book that people are buying right now. Giving your book a chance to sell would dectract from those sales.
If there were no copyright anyone trying to sell the book $1 cheaper would be undercut by someone selling $1 cheaper them them, and so on. The financial incentive to do that goes away. People then choose to distribute based on different incentives, like the fact that they have seen something worthy that others should see. We have almost completely lost that today because the financial incentive doesn't care what it is as long as you buy it. That might lead to a world dominated by an optimisation for whatever it takes to get you engaged, or worse, addicted. That world might really suck.
There needs to be a way to support the creation of art. Copyright lets a few corporations decide the subset of available art is seen enough and available to pay for (in the hope that maybe some of the patment gets to the creator). It is not a system that works in the modern world.
There needs to be a way to support the creation of art.
A is not necessary for B if a single instance of B exists without A.
In colloquial terms it is frequently used to suggest a recommendation with an imperitive need.
Different things for the same word. Only the former can be used to determine if something is necessary, the latter is a subjective assertion and can have no proof either way.
It awards a few creators outsize rewards, but suppress creation of many more.
It does not petform the job that it is supposed to do.
Your entire thesis is false on its face. One does not need a big publisher to get published or make there work available. You've also offered no other alternative wherein the other works not sought by large publishers will somehow be afforded equivalent treatment so your proposition is just ridiculous if not outright ignorant.
Yeah, it's called "copyright."
Also current copyright laws only exists to fulfill the constitutional mandate to promote the progress of science and useful arts. There are a lot of alternative ways to fulfill that mandate that don't include a lot of the baggage we have presently in copyright law which is now slowing down progress.
This is just bullshit and no one said it's the only incentive.
> There are a lot of alternative ways to fulfill that mandate that don't include a lot of the baggage we have presently in copyright law which is now slowing down progress.
such as??
You're speaking to the generation of pirates. What? Suddenly everyone is hanging up their high seas hat to capture the virtue signals of current sentiment?
We don't need to imagine, this is how human society has worked for most of the run we have had.
For example. I invent a new method of power washing. I start a power washing business using new tech. I file the tech for patent and copyright-equivalent use. This is then made available to other power wash companies that wish to use the tech and be certified in it so long as a small portion of their revenue goes back to the inventor for a set amount per volume, or something similar of a metric that has a cutoff after a point.
This will breed new industries, create new jobs, introduce new innovations, and allow the markets to move on from being strangled by one giant corporation.
A: rich people pay less % in taxes than wage workers, we should close the loopholes
B: but taxes are immoral to begin with
A: ok, but can we do something now about the unequal enforcement? Unrealized gains, tax havens, trusts, fake charities, etc?
B: well a society based on property rights… ackhully you should read this book by Mises/Rothbard/Rand
https://youtu.be/lh2__MN-FTU?si=LXIaljh__s8fD75l&t=1568
About 3 minutes of video worth watching.