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Comment by read_again | Hacker News Reader

Property is an inherent human thing. Likewise, people want to be remunerated for their work. Hence copyright. If scarcity was non existent, then we wouldn't have that problem...

Actually, it would still be here: Van Gogh artwork is unique, and this can be expanded virtually to anything, including the shirt you are wearing, since you're the only one to wear it. You might see where this leads to. Scarcity can always be created artificially.

Anyway, you wouldn't want people to take your shirts away from you, and copyright holders may feel the same towards their work.

The second issue is fairness: if someone has to pay a certain amount to access copyrighted work, why others would not have to, under the same circumstances? Fairness is the motivating principle supporting the existence of the Law.

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And then there's science. People are paid to work on things or do it because they want to do it. Once they do something valuable they publish it and everyone can build upon their work.

Openness gave us modern world. Copyright gave us Hollywood and Sony Music.

Property is inherent thing. Not only human. Monkeys also want to own things and they don't like thieves. But extending physical property qualities to creations of human mind is just something some rich people did to get richer.

> some rich people did to get richer

As I said, it all comes from scarcity. Things that are abundant are monetary worthless, and if everything is free, then people don't need to make money, ergo no copyright anymore (there's a slight simplification here actually, because copyrights also grant control, which is actively thought). That said, while the system is mostly used by the richest, poor people can profit from it as well, if they manage to produce valuable IP.

The problem that we really have here imho is that code is just logic written in an often clever way, like a math theorem. Do we want to have these things protected by copyrights or patents? Does it make sense? That's the real question behind the issue at hand I believe.

Copyright is creating artificial scarcity for copies and using price abnormally elevated by this scarcity to finance art makers (in theory) and scarcity creators (in practice).

Same way I could create scarcity on your oxygen supply and use artificially elevated oxygen price to finance myself and my efforts to create and uphold this scarcity and also finance cute puppies to mask what horrible thing I am actually doing.

Patenting and copyright clearly doesn't make any sense. It's just a tool for creating revenue stream by holding information and commercial freedom hostage. There are much less harmful ways to create revenue streams.

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