Tough Copyright Laws Chill Innovation, Tech Companies Warn Lawmakers | Hacker News Reader

Tough Copyright Laws Chill Innovation, Tech Companies Warn Lawmakers

torrentfreak.com

38 pointsLightning11 comments

The dynamic in the industry is obvious: its content creators versus content distributors. Tech companies are the latter. Of course they think that copyright hurts "innovation." What they really want is weak copyright laws that let them keep the maximum amount of money in the chain. But when you think about it, people don't go to Youtube, Netflix, iTunes Store because some engineer at a tech company implemented a really great video player or ad distribution platform. The part of that transaction that is the biggest value-add to the consumer is not the part the tech companies do. The big value-add is content. That's the important part. So why should the tech companies make all the money in that chain?

If the media companies weren't such dicks suing grandmas, people probably would have more sympathy for them. Here is a vastly bigger industry (all US music + movie sales are less than Apple's revenue alone) pushing for weaker property rights so they can keep more of the profits in a transaction where someone else does the real valuable work the customers are paying for.

TL;DR: lobbyist group for special-interest industry A wants to change laws favored by lobbyist group for special-interest industry B. Both industry A and B are motivated by nothing other than self-interest; specifically, tech. companies that allow users to post content online are annoyed with requirements to police that content, and the more copyrighted content contributed online by users, the better their own business models become.

Every year that a work is covered by a copyright is a year that subsequent users cannot build on that work. While incremental protection may provide additional reward to the author, society pays for this reward by being deprived of follow-on use, while the author and his or her heirs accumulate profits.

I think that is a good point no matter the motives for making it. At some point protecting intellectual property "just because" becomes a problem, and not protecting it at all is obviously a problem, too; so where is the sweet spot? Immortal companies like Disney would probably say "50.000 years", but what would be best for humans?

What is fair to creators and their families? On the one hand I'm thinking, if you create something so great that people hundreds of years later still cherish it, why shouldn't your grand grand grand kids have a slice of that pie? On the other I think it's rubbish that one can't legally sample a few chords from songs that are 50 years old, just because some corporation happens to be fussy about it. Maybe the full work should be protected longer, but restrictions on derivative works could gradually soften much sooner?

And should it be the same for all types of copyrighted content? Think documentary footage etc. - while I would argue "fantastic" art isn't something society necessarily is entitled to enjoy as soon, when it comes to other things, the sooner it's up on archive.org the better!

> if you create something so great that people hundreds of years later still cherish it, why shouldn't your grand grand grand kids have a slice of that pie?

Because you could no longer be incentivised to create more, since you'd be dead. Kids should be satisfied with wealth accumulated while you could still create.

I agree personally, but there is still a difference between that and outright enforcing it as society. Also I'd argue a lot of things were created for the sake of creation anyway (or to be "consumed" on the spot, see classical music, much of it created as a one-off for a specific mass etc... people expected composers to constantly write new stuff, no touring with greatest hits) ... but then it's still up to the authors to license it accordingly, right?

I think we've seen enough of both worlds (no copyright and 100 year copyright) to know that both extremes are problematic. What about 5-10 year copyright? I'd like to give that a try.

Since when have we ever had no copyright? I don't believe that a system whose primary purpose is to give certain people the "right" to attack others with litigation will ever succeed in fueling innovation. The only thing copyright does is pit people against each other.

It seems to me that the entire system needs to be removed and replaced with another system with the primary goal of giving authors more control over how they get credit for their works.

Well, I would say round about 303 years ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne

There was a time before copyright and authors did have trouble with their works being used by others for profit without recompense. It is likely the same would happen now if copyright didn't exist at all.

Very short copyright could work, though.

One idea I saw out there that I like a lot is to have a modest fixed copyright term on created works by default, but allow the copyright holder to pay to extend the term when it's about to expire. A payment that grows exponentially with each term such that it becomes quickly infeasible to continue copyright protection on unprofitable works while making it impossible to sustain forever on even those most profitable.

My twist: reinvest those renewal fees in the arts. Then new artists have financial support and education and publishers sitting on copyrights still make a sizable contribution to the creation of new works.

That is actually pretty good proposal. We as a society should learn to use exponential and logarithmic function more often.

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