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Comment by dvdkon | Hacker News Reader

As others have pointed out, piracy is already easy for anything remotely popular, yet people still buy books. We could assume that it's not because they fear breaking the law, but because they want to support the author and have an "authentic" copy.

There are also other models than creating a work without any income, then recouping that cost by a state-granted monopoly. You can release preview chapters and then solicit donations from interested readers. You can build on your reputation and then promise to finish the book later for some up-front payment. These might not work for everyone, but they are in wide use today. One could argue that removing options for those authors that depend on copyright today is still a reasonable price to pay for removing all the abuses of copyright.

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> As others have pointed out, piracy is already easy for anything remotely popular,

That's an argument for no laws at all.

There are murders so why make it illegal.....

The point is that having laws is sufficient to create the space for a workable business model by limiting piracy.

I take your point there are other models - such as subscription - however not everyone is Charles Dickens and can turn out chapter by chapter on demand, and it those don't work for every genre.

> is still a reasonable price to pay for removing all the abuses of copyright.

Is is? Does it really matter I can't copy Disney films or books? Are we so lacking in creativity that it's not possible to create novel stories or characters?

I think too often IP and copyright are confused. If somebody had the rights to the wheel in perpetuity that's bad for innovation, but somebody having the rights to a cartoon mouse in perpetuity isn't actually holding society back is it?

> There are murders so why make it illegal.....

The downsides of murder clearly outweigh the upsides. The fact that we're debating here shows that's not the case for copyright.

> ...somebody having the rights to a cartoon mouse in perpetuity isn't actually holding society back is it?

People want to adapt that mouse into their own works, as they have done with stories since stories started being told. They do so even if they know they're breaking the law. That alone should be reason to reconsider copyright.

We all stand on the shoulders of giants, and reusing facets of modern stories isn't somehow less creative than reusing old stories or reusing lived experiences. You can take the general story beats of a popular work, strip out all copyrightable elements, and end up with something wholly derivative. You can also build on a known work and end up with something that's fresh, creative, maybe something that engages readers/watchers/listeners of the base work in a way that nothing fully original could. Take Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality; it clearly reuses another work's characters and setting, but it would be worse off without it.

Your Harry Potter case is a good illustration.

The world Harry Potter universe clearly borrows heavily on past literature - whether that be tales of goblins and wizards or tales of boarding school.

So much so ( and the fact that she is very rich ) she has been sued multiple times for plagiarism - all of them failed.

Is it really beyond the wit of man to come up with something similarly new?

In terms of fan fiction - is it ok to do one, and promote it on the internet, that has incest themes or paedophilia? These potentially reflect back on the original - and surely the creator should have control here.

There is always the option of coming to an agreement with the original author - that's how films get made - but frankly there is an almost infinite creative space - I don't see why people's lack of creativity needs to be promoted above the rights of an existing creator.`

Note in the example you quote - JK Rowling has allowed the non-commercial publishing of that and other fan fiction - just blocked independent commercial exploitation. So in the case you made the existence of copyright didn't stop Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

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