9 ms·

Independend of AI I am fully supporting the idea to abolish copyright in general, full stop. Allowing cheap duplication and tweaking is what leads to fast innov

• tzs 16d ago
  Wait...your theory is that if we make it so I can copy and tweak any work of authorship I can find at no cost other than the actual effort it takes to make a copy and tweak it this is going to make me more likely to put in the effort to create new works?
• soundworlds 16d ago
  I'm a musician who has been releasing my work under CC0 / Public Domain for the last few years for these very reasons. While I do agree in principal, it is important this is a consensual choice made by the artists themselves. That is the only way to have healthy cultural change. At the moment, we have e.g. Suno's CEO, who has publicly stated "people never really liked making music in the first place" - this is the kind of detached and exploitative person that we are seeing trying to force copyright changes on the rest of us.
• andsoitis 16d ago
  > fast innovation and culture changes Does this mean you think innovation and change in our culture is too slow? What’s you’re yardstick?
  • inglor_cz 16d ago
    Hmm. Looking at the cinemas, almost all the top movies are prequels or sequels, milking the same topic for the tenth time. I'd say that at least the movie industry is somehow stuck in a rut.
    • andsoitis 16d ago
      Wouldn’t removing copyright just lead to more “milking the same topic”? I don’t see how it would lead to a higher volume of original ideas.
      • falcor84 16d ago
        I can assure you that people had original ideas before the invention of copyright 300 years ago.
        • andsoitis 16d ago
          > people had original ideas before the invention of copyright 300 years ago Not in dispute but that's also not the point being argued. The argument is: a) whether copyright kills original ideas. I don't think it does but would love to understand what the mechanism is if you think otherwise. b) whether removing copyright would lead to more "milking of same old topics" in movies. I think the answer is self-evidently yes.
          • inglor_cz 16d ago
            Whether removing copyright would lead to more "milking of same old topics" in movies. I think the answer is self-evidently yes. This is not self-evident to me, at least as far as "milking" goes. Inspiration is not the same as milking. I specifically use the word "milking" for the sort of low-level repetitive quasi-effort that the cinemas are full of. OTOH if someone takes, IDK, Don Quijote and rewrites it into a space opera, it might actually be genuine fun, even though the old idea was there as a foundation.
• noja 16d ago
  > Explicit (costly) patents can remain in place to secure industrial-grade research processes I keep reading about big companies i) developing very similar drugs that are different enough to avoid patents, ii) using their size to prevent litigation. So would keeping patents help?
  • mchusma 16d ago
    The government could always pay for results too, like $10B for something that does this. I don’t love it either and am not positive it is better than patents.
  • dtech 16d ago
    The "me too" drug still need to go through an R&D, clinical trail and approval process, so combined with patents the exclusivity period is at least several years. Abolishing patents would completely remove the exclusivity period
  • derektank 16d ago
    That is a thing (though arguably there is still value in the reformulations). A good current example would be orally administered wegovy, which received an additional patent on top of semaglutide for combining the drug with an absorption enhancer. This is a genuine advancement, and did require clinical trials (not all patentable improvements do) but it is ultimately just a variation on an existing drug. That being said, the patent on semaglutide still expires at the same time and biosimilars (or generics in other cases) can be produced at that time using the injectable formulation (or a new alternative). This seems reasonable to me
• kelvinjps10 16d ago
  if copyrigth is abolished. amazon would publish every single boon without giving a cent to writers. it would be reqlly hard for writers to make a living. Im not a fan of copyrigth and how is being used at the moment but I don't really see an alternative where writers still get paid.
  • swed420 16d ago
    > if copyrigth is abolished. amazon would publish every single boon without giving a cent to writers. it would be reqlly hard for writers to make a living. How about a unified social platform that allows people to donate to the authors/artists/creators/projects of their choosing? It could allow feedback similar to goodreads, and also be more longterm focused than the traditional kickstarter, etc. The social aspect would give people a pat on the back for sending money somewhere.
    • HWR_14 16d ago
      We could do that with all kinds of IP! Use a feature in software or in a Meta app, just donate to the minimum amount wage (for legal reasons) workers who developed it. And Meta and Google themselves could be forbidden to show ads, just rely on donations as well.
      • swed420 16d ago
        I sense sarcasm, but anybody serious about fixing corporate social media should read this: https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media/ https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media/ I guess my idea would easily fit into what that article proposes for a solution.
  • criddell 16d ago
    Maybe the strategy is to try to build up some steam behind the abolish copyright movement to move the Overton window a bit. If IP owners see actual support behind abolishing copyright, maybe rolling back to min(30, life of author) years of protection would seem like a more reasonable compromise.
• simonuv 16d ago
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• zer00eyz 16d ago
  Go back to the old 28 year system. Dump the renewal. This would align it with the patent system. > what leads to fast innovation Content becomes cultural artifacts - the whole birthday song copyright issue should have told Americans how broken the system was.
  • cestith 16d ago
    I'd say shorter but with renewals. Say, 15 years with two or three renewals of equal length, but require that the original protected work is still for sale to get the renewal. This would clear up things like retro games being stuck in limbo or small press books being impossible to buy. It would still allow rights holders to make their exclusive money if they are actually making money on the original. It wouldn't allow a Disney, where they extend the copyright on a century-old work without selling it just so they can make money on sequels or moving back and forth among animation, stage, TV series, and live action movies.
    • Ekaros 16d ago
      I am against renewals. It is just additional layer of complication. Having to look up and track possibly poorly informed state of work is unnecessary extra step. Straight up x years from identified release year of edition you have on hand is most reasonable.
      • cestith 13d ago
        Checking an online database before investing in a major creative work does not seem like the bulk of the effort to me.
• Aurornis 16d ago
  > and oh the poor artists: next to none percentage wise gets much royalties anymore, streaming income is close to zero usually even if popular Your argument is that artists aren’t paid enough, so we should go ahead and take it all the way to zero by law?
  • anonyfox 16d ago
    artists sell live experiences and original merchandise to actually make money these days. only a rare subset of megastars are living off royalties to begin with, and I am totally fine if some tailor swift has less millions to begin with. people support/pay real artists if they want more of it, else there is no way I see a right to get paid a wage for just being an artist in itself. if youre not original enough so you get copycats in a day well thats also a signal of artistic value. you cannot separate art from the artist, even if some people are okay with knockoffs after all. there is a difference between art and just content production, the latter is already worthless today with AI speedrunning the decline for mass producing mediocre slop people think is good enough.
    • bigfishrunning 16d ago
      So you'll reduce that to just live experiences: abolish copyright, and watch 1 million bootleg Taylor Swift T-shirts suddenly blink into existence
      • JoshTriplett 16d ago
        That's a trademark issue, not a copyright issue.
        • Symbiote 16d ago
          It's either or both, depending on the shirt design
    • jnovek 16d ago
      It’s not Taylor Swift who is hurt by this, it’s the solo creatives who cannot afford other mechanisms (e.g. trademark enforcement) to protect their work.
• preisschild 16d ago
  This would also mean copyleft would not work anymore. Companies would not be forced to release the source code of their modifications of (A)GPL software. I think that would be a great loss
• mchusma 16d ago
  I’m just not convinced that most artists would change their behavior under no copyright, so somewhat agree. But the main issue is length of time. The fact that copyright is longer than patents makes no sense. Patents prove that a shorter period is sufficient to stimulate large investment. And you have to pay for patents! If you assume reasonable discount rates, the economic value plummets over time for an asset producing the same income (a bad assumption for copyright work in general). At an 8% discount rate, extending copyright from 32 years to infinity adds less than 10% to its total present-day value. There are many good reform proposals, but mine would be something like 15ish years of free copyright, followed by 1 paid renewal for 15 years that is modest in price (eg $1000) and one extra 10 year renewal that is something like $1M. Meaning you have most economically neutral work free up at year 15, small business types having it affordable through 30 years, and the big Hollywood productions can go from 30-40 years for a modest (to them) fee to incentivize investments in expensive works. Movies come to mind. Give existing work a 20 year buffer on top of that to transition and there is a very small economic effect on everyone.
  • blks 16d ago
    Removing copyright will benefit parasites and big players more than small artists and businesses. Big businesses won’t have to eg obtain any licensing to publish someone else’s novel or technical book.
    • anilgulecha 16d ago
      What incentive would they have when their customer also has the same option and will do it directly?
      • blks 15d ago
        Do what? Customer searching for a physical book will do print-on-demand or what do you mean? Most customers will go with a cheap and convenient option
        • anilgulecha 15d ago
• simonw 16d ago
  How do you make a feature film - budget ranging from low millions to hundreds of millions of dollars - if anyone can copy it and view it without paying for it?
• nekusar 16d ago
  Im OK with limited forms of copyright. But the problem is that copyright business interests will ALWAYS pervert the original agreed-upon rules to their benefit. Now something we saw that does work with audio, is statutory licensing. That rule alone allows spotify to be made. And thats also why a spotify-for-video cant be. Thats why a local Jellyfin with 30TB of videos is better than all US based streaming services combined. Nobody is *legally* able to put a complete video library and pay access fees to relevent rightsholders.
• pid-1 16d ago
  I'm skeptical patents play a significant role at encouraging research. No correlation between stronger patent laws and more innovation has ever been found. I'm also in favor of very light copyright laws, e.g. I don't think anyone should claim they are Coca Cola.
  • mitthrowaway2 16d ago
    I don't know about you, but in hardware startup land if you don't have a patent and your technology can be reverse engineered, you are most likely dead in the water and will never get investment. But I guess we can count on the big companies to do the innovation?
  • drdexebtjl 16d ago
    That would be trademark law.
• dageshi 16d ago
  Author: I spent six months writing this story, I hope I can make some money selling it, it would be my dream to be able to keep doing this full time. You: I will steal this, consume it, reprint it as I see fit and you will earn nothing. Yeah... I don't think your opinions are worth much.
  • armchairhacker 16d ago
    What % of new authors today make full-time salary on writing? And what % of those do by selling, vs giving away their work for free (to get non-negligible attention) then getting their real money through donations, merch, etc.?
    • dageshi 16d ago
      What does it matter? I don't think anyone has the right to take work I create, for free. In the same way I have no right to walk into your house and use it for free. In the same way you cannot expect me to turn up and work at your business for free. I don't care what half delusional rubbish you come up with to justify your theft. It's theft, you want to steal something you put zero effort into creating and use it as you see fit. No fuck you. If I want to give it away for free, that's my prerogative not your expectation, if I can monetise via merch or other means, that's my prerogative not your right.
      • armchairhacker 16d ago
        It matters because copyright is widely abused and hurts neutral sites which must constantly check for copyrighted content, and it would’ve hampered AI if it was enforced. Your analogy doesn’t fit because a house is physical, but “intellectual property” is digital. If we lived in the metaverse and I could just copy your house and live in it without affecting you, why should you care? Theft is bad because the victim no longer has the original.
        • dageshi 16d ago
          Theft in this case is bad because you're removing the ability of someone to make a living from the thing they created. On the basis it's digital. I don't care if it's digital, I care if it took time and effort to create. If it did, it does not matter if it's digital or physical, it's theft.
• CivBase 16d ago
  I believe copyright timeframes have gotten WAY out of hand and need to be reigned in to something more sensible, but I still think it's a valuable concept and don't want to see it abolished. Patents on the other hand have become a total joke and I'd be happy to see them gone.
  • fjfkkskdngnf 16d ago
    As it is now, it’s a joke. Essentially new laws are continuously introduced to make disney’s junk forever inaccessible. No author, no animator, no one except disney share holders wants these shit laws.
• 1297-1296 16d ago
  I am fully supporting the idea of abolishing property rights for web services. Any web service must publish its entire stack, data, collected information and so on. This would lead to explosive innovation and the pie would be growing rapidly. #growth-mindset #disruption
• Tyr42 16d ago
  Copyleft is built on copyright, do you think removing copyright protections is going to get people to release their source code?? I don't think so. Not unless you want to try and legislate some general copyleft law, but that's probably a nonstarter.
  • joquarky 16d ago
    If you go back to the original purpose of copyleft, LLMs have made it obsolete. Partly because reverse engineering source code is now trivial.
• forshaper 16d ago
  Incidentally, the Statute of Anne was pushed by a printing guild after they lost their monopoly on printing. It was so unpopular[1] for them to get the monopoly back that they had to pivot and come up with some other way. So they figured they could do it in the name of writers. That worked! 1. John Locke, for example, opposed the monopoly.
• dgellow 16d ago
  FLOSS only exists because of copyright. Without it you don’t get a utopia where everything can be read and copied, you get the opposite, companies not sharing their work, artists not releasing their work. Sacrificing the whole culture built on top of copyright for a maybe faster technical progress is incredibly myopic
• Topfi 16d ago
  I'm struggling to see how the issues regarding low compensation from streaming services is going to be positively affected by abolishing copyright wholesale. That'd take the one way a creative can truly claim a stake towards their art. Before the advent of LLMs, as now, my position on copyright is that what was had prior to Disneys lobyying efforts (which also then lead to similar laws being adopted outside the US showcasing the type of soft power and legislative inspirations the States previously could cause/the US does something so then Western Europe did the same) of roughly 25 years plus one extension was a fair compromise. One could also mirror patents and their length, seems like a solid avenue as well. Lest we forget, while enforcement is far to limited, any success in defending FOSS projects and their licenses are only possible because we have copyright.
• ajjahs 16d ago
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• bena 16d ago
  Why should patents stay protected? You yourself say that allowing cheap duplication and tweaking is what leads to fast innovation. Why should I be restricted from cheap use of a patent I could use to further innovation?
• dropofwill 16d ago
  > next to none percentage wise gets much royalties anymore While artists get paid less then many would like, royalties make up roughly 2/3rds of revenue of all the streaming giants, which is a huge amount of money. This recurring monthly, mostly passive income is still helpful for smaller professional bands in between touring. When the indie band Xiu Xiu pulled out of Spotify many were quick to say it didn't matter that much except for exposure, but in interviews they pointed out that they lost a significant portion of they're yearly income from doing it just from the streaming royalties. Many will say touring is where the real money is, but costs are rising and what I've heard its not as lucrative for smaller bands as it was in the past. Some links: Spotify's own report on payouts, obviously a biased editorial, but good data nonetheless (for example 13K artists made 100k/year from spotify royalties alone) https://loudandclear.byspotify.com/payouts/ https://loudandclear.byspotify.com/payouts/ A transparent report on tour costs from a fairly popular indie band (notably they could make more if they were less principled or were a smaller band, but I think this report is still eye opening in terms of general costs) https://stereogum.com/2497822/los-campesinos-break-down-what-it-actually-costs-to-tour-north-america/news https://stereogum.com/2497822/los-campesinos-break-down-what...
• eviks 16d ago
  What progress do you expect in music that would justify throwing poor musicians under the bus (the fact that they get a small portion of IP revenue doesn't explain why that portion should become even smaller)?