5 ms·

I think it's reasonable to argue something like, "some IP protection is good, but too much is bad, and we probably have too much right now." It would be impossi

by 1980phipsi 9mo ago

I think it's reasonable to argue something like, "some IP protection is good, but too much is bad, and we probably have too much right now." It would be impossible to calibrate the laws so that the amount of IP protection is socially optimal, but we can look at the areas where the protection is too much and start there.

observationist 8mo ago
It's not impossible at all. We should do 5 year copyright - 99% of all commercial profit of all media is collected within 5 years of publishing. Copyright is granted to media creators in order to incentivize creativity and contribution to culture. It's not granted so as to empower large collectives of lawyers and wealthy people to purchase the rights and endlessly nickel and dime the public for access to media. Make it simple and clear. You get 5 years total copyright - no copying, no commercial activity or derivatives without express, explicit consent, require a contract. 5 years after publishing, you get another 5 years of limited copyright - think of it as expanded fair use. A maximum of 5% royalties from every commercial use, and unlimited non-commercial use. After 10 years, it goes into public domain. You can assign or sell the rights to anyone, but the initial publication date is immutable, the clock doesn't reset. You can immediately push to public domain, or start the expanded fair use period early. No exceptions, no grandfathering. There's no legitimate reasons we should be allowing giant companies like Sony and HBO and Paramount to grift in perpetuity off of the creations and content of artists and writers. This is toxic to culture and concentrates wealth and power with people that absolutely should not control the things they do, and a significant portion of the wealth they accumulate goes into enriching lawyers whose only purpose in life is to enforce the ridiculous and asinine legal moat these companies and platforms and people have paid legislators to enshrine in law. Make it clear and simple, and it accomplishes the protection of creators while enriching society. Nobody loses except the ones who corrupted the system in the first place. We live in a digital era, we should not be pretending copyright ideas based on quill and parchment are still appropriate to the age. And while we're at it, we should legally restrict distribution of revenues from platforms to a maximum of 30% - 70% at minimum goes to the author. The studio, agent, platform, or any other distribution agent all have to divvy up at most 30%. No more eternal estates living off of the talent and creations of ancestors. No more sequestration of culturally significant works to enrich grifters. This would apply to digital assets, games, code, anything that gets published. Patents should be similarly updated, with the same 5 and 10 year timers. Sure, it's not 100% optimal, but it gets a majority of the profit to a majority of the creators close enough and it has a clear and significant benefit to society within a short enough term that the tradeoff is clearly worth it. Empowering and enabling lawyers and rent seekers to grift off of other peoples talent and content is a choice, we don't have to live like that.
- zimpenfish 8mo ago
  > 99% of all commercial profit of all media is collected within 5 years of publishing. If that were true of music, companies wouldn't be buying back catalogues for (upwards of) hundreds of millions[0][1]. [0] https://apnews.com/article/music-catalog-sales-pop-rock-kiss-springsteen-57df80487ecd6cc6b2229560cd6c2469 https://apnews.com/article/music-catalog-sales-pop-rock-kiss... [1] https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/ranked-biggest-music-catalogue-sales-163000337.html?guccounter=1 https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/ranked-biggest-music-catal...
  - bombcar 8mo ago
    If it were modified to "99% of media has commercial profit collected within five years" it's probably pretty close to the mark, given how much is released and never reprinted/etc. However, even 1% of a very large market is a huge tail, which is valuable.
    - observationist 8mo ago
      Regardless, change the game. If you have a valuable, useful platform, and compete with other platforms for quality and delivery of service, then you're optimizing for the right things. If you have valuable media and the platform only serves to collect fees for the privilege of accessing the media, then you're optimizing the thing that is net negative for society, and ends up with adtech and degraded service and gotchanomics to try to nickel and dime you at every opportunity. Imagine a world in which spotify and youtube and netflix had to compete on product and service quality, instead of network effects and legal technicalities. In which you could vibe code an alternative platform and have it be legally feasible to start your own streaming service merely by downloading a library of public domain content, then boot-strapping your service and paying new studios for license to run content, and so on. The entire ecosystem would have to adapt, and it would be incredibly positive for creatives and authors and artists. There wouldn't be a constant dark cloud of legal consequences hanging over peoples heads, with armies of lawyers whose only purpose in life is to wreck little people who dare "infringe" on content, and all the downstream nonsense that comes from it. Make society better by optimizing the policies that result in fewer, less wealthy, and far less powerful lawyers.

observationist 8mo ago

It's not impossible at all. We should do 5 year copyright - 99% of all commercial profit of all media is collected within 5 years of publishing. Copyright is granted to media creators in order to incentivize creativity and contribution to culture. It's not granted so as to empower large collectives of lawyers and wealthy people to purchase the rights and endlessly nickel and dime the public for access to media. Make it simple and clear. You get 5 years total copyright - no copying, no commercial activity or derivatives without express, explicit consent, require a contract. 5 years after publishing, you get another 5 years of limited copyright - think of it as expanded fair use. A maximum of 5% royalties from every commercial use, and unlimited non-commercial use. After 10 years, it goes into public domain. You can assign or sell the rights to anyone, but the initial publication date is immutable, the clock doesn't reset. You can immediately push to public domain, or start the expanded fair use period early. No exceptions, no grandfathering. There's no legitimate reasons we should be allowing giant companies like Sony and HBO and Paramount to grift in perpetuity off of the creations and content of artists and writers. This is toxic to culture and concentrates wealth and power with people that absolutely should not control the things they do, and a significant portion of the wealth they accumulate goes into enriching lawyers whose only purpose in life is to enforce the ridiculous and asinine legal moat these companies and platforms and people have paid legislators to enshrine in law. Make it clear and simple, and it accomplishes the protection of creators while enriching society. Nobody loses except the ones who corrupted the system in the first place. We live in a digital era, we should not be pretending copyright ideas based on quill and parchment are still appropriate to the age. And while we're at it, we should legally restrict distribution of revenues from platforms to a maximum of 30% - 70% at minimum goes to the author. The studio, agent, platform, or any other distribution agent all have to divvy up at most 30%. No more eternal estates living off of the talent and creations of ancestors. No more sequestration of culturally significant works to enrich grifters. This would apply to digital assets, games, code, anything that gets published. Patents should be similarly updated, with the same 5 and 10 year timers. Sure, it's not 100% optimal, but it gets a majority of the profit to a majority of the creators close enough and it has a clear and significant benefit to society within a short enough term that the tradeoff is clearly worth it. Empowering and enabling lawyers and rent seekers to grift off of other peoples talent and content is a choice, we don't have to live like that.

zimpenfish 8mo ago
> 99% of all commercial profit of all media is collected within 5 years of publishing. If that were true of music, companies wouldn't be buying back catalogues for (upwards of) hundreds of millions[0][1]. [0] https://apnews.com/article/music-catalog-sales-pop-rock-kiss-springsteen-57df80487ecd6cc6b2229560cd6c2469 https://apnews.com/article/music-catalog-sales-pop-rock-kiss... [1] https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/ranked-biggest-music-catalogue-sales-163000337.html?guccounter=1 https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/ranked-biggest-music-catal...
- bombcar 8mo ago
  If it were modified to "99% of media has commercial profit collected within five years" it's probably pretty close to the mark, given how much is released and never reprinted/etc. However, even 1% of a very large market is a huge tail, which is valuable.
  - observationist 8mo ago
    Regardless, change the game. If you have a valuable, useful platform, and compete with other platforms for quality and delivery of service, then you're optimizing for the right things. If you have valuable media and the platform only serves to collect fees for the privilege of accessing the media, then you're optimizing the thing that is net negative for society, and ends up with adtech and degraded service and gotchanomics to try to nickel and dime you at every opportunity. Imagine a world in which spotify and youtube and netflix had to compete on product and service quality, instead of network effects and legal technicalities. In which you could vibe code an alternative platform and have it be legally feasible to start your own streaming service merely by downloading a library of public domain content, then boot-strapping your service and paying new studios for license to run content, and so on. The entire ecosystem would have to adapt, and it would be incredibly positive for creatives and authors and artists. There wouldn't be a constant dark cloud of legal consequences hanging over peoples heads, with armies of lawyers whose only purpose in life is to wreck little people who dare "infringe" on content, and all the downstream nonsense that comes from it. Make society better by optimizing the policies that result in fewer, less wealthy, and far less powerful lawyers.