Copyright Monopoly Enforcement Today Is A Mass Psychosis
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
Torrentfreak is to copyright issues what Fox News is to Repiblican politics. It just serves to start a discussion where everyone pats each other on the back for agreeing with each other. Isn't there a list of domains that aren't allowed to be submitted and if so why hasn't Torrentfreak been added to it yet?
I don't know what it is about Hacker News that guarantees a front page appearance for every article written by Falkvinge, but he is obviously getting the required votes. Perhaps many Hacker News readers are members of "the converted". Perhaps the moderators of Hacker News are among the converted.
I would recommend against "censoring" Falkvinge. But his writings do deserve to be carefully analysed and refuted, line by line if necessary.
I would like to start with the term "Copyright Monopoly". There is no Copyright Monopoly. Each copyright is one monopoly, so there are many "copyright monopolies" (and economically, those monopolies are a bad thing). But there is no "Copyright Monopoly".
There is a recognisable "Copyright Industry", and perhaps also a "Copyright Enforcement Industry", and there are various political lobbyists and interest groups associated with those "industries". But not actually a single "monopoly" in the technical economic sense of the word.
The first moral justification is that copyright serves the public interest. Under this justification, the ideal form of copyright law may change as circumstances change. For example, the public might conclude that maximum benefit is achieved by having no legal restrictions on the copying of digital music, because the benefit of freely available music would exceed any consequent reduction in the production of new music.
The second justification is that the creators of digital content deserve to "own" their content, even after they have published it. Under this justification, there is no reason ever to change the form of copyright, and the issue of public benefit is irrelevant. Reducing copyright on music so that everyone could have more music for less money would just be "stealing", that is, changing the law would itself be an act of "theft", and therefore immoral.
I discuss this diagnosis at length in http://thinkinghard.com/blog/ThereAreTwoDistinctJustificatio... .
If we never had copyright enforcement, would we be thinking this way?
Jokes aren't copyright-able, but we still have comedians.
These copyright laws had their place in helping to alleviate a public goods problem of getting art to people. It allowed for the development of record labels and companies to distribute music. The distribution problem is over. The law is obsolete. The model is dying, and so are the types of jobs that depend on that model. We can't simply say that the model is justified because it's already there and in place.
And if Kickstarter had been sufficient there would not be torrentfreak at all - people would happily enjoy their donated/free art and stayed away from the copyrighted works, would not they?
You're right about blockbuster movies, though—nobody will make them anymore. Then again, nobody makes giant stone pyramids in the desert anymore, either, and for the same reason: economic conditions changed, and it wasn't a good way to spend money anymore.
Yes, I can see this happening as well. Why is it taken for granted that they are a necessity? I think people are just too set in their ways to comprehend the world any differently so they just start trying to justify why we need to keep things the way they are.
It prevents people from building on existing copyrighted art. Talent is redirected to creating work that becomes copyrighted. As a result, people have less to draw from without paying royalties, so it does effect those who don't care for copyrighted work.
Does not prevent existing copyrighted art to be build so does not look like an issue to me.
>Talent is redirected to creating work that becomes copyrighted.
Authors prefer to be paid for their work? Let me ask you - if you had not been paid for whatever you do, would you continue doing that or found other, more productive occupation? As somebody who is being paid for creating copyrighted work I can assure you - I would not work for free, I'd do something else.
It makes derivative work difficult or impossible.
Authors prefer to be paid for their work? Let me ask you - if you had not been paid for whatever you do, would you continue doing that or found other, more productive occupation? As somebody who is being paid for creating copyrighted work I can assure you - I would not work for free, I'd do something else.
I understand and agree. What I don't understand is why we need copyright protection. For the people who are protected by it? That borders on rent-seeking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
People made things public before copyright law existed. People continue to make things freely accessible and public in spite of current copyright laws. People aren't forced to do this, but they are compelled to.
Econ 101. Challenging stuff.