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Don't fall for this. This is big tech propaganda, trying to convince you that copyright is bad so they can avoid copyright lawsuits and use everyone's data with

Don't fall for this. This is big tech propaganda, trying to convince you that copyright is bad so they can avoid copyright lawsuits and use everyone's data without paying licensing fees. Without copyright, they can use your data for free.

tossandthrow 8d ago
Paying license? What small scale author receives license payments for anything they have authored from bug tech? To me it appears that individuals and large companies benefit from copyright asymmetrically, which is the core of the argument.
- palmotea 8d ago
  > To me it appears that individuals and large companies benefit from copyright asymmetrically, which is the core of the argument. The correct response to that is to fix the asymmetry, not blow the rights up entirely. Quoth the OP: > It doesn't protect the livelihood of individuals and small businesses in practice. Instead, it's a weapon wielded by large corporations to protect their monopolies. Post Citizens United, you could say the same thing about free speech. Does the OP want to abolish that, too? The fact that the wealthy (corporations and individuals), with massive teams of lawyers and propagandists, can often better take advantage of the rights I also enjoy is not a compelling reason for abolishing my rights.
  - darkwater 8d ago
    Partially agree but on the free speech side, if you are common people you are also "protected" by being a small fish. It's very very rare that somebody sues you because you posted some hot take on X and you have to defend your free speech right (it happens sometimes yes, but it's - for now - statistically irrelevant). See what happens if a Big Corp posts some shit on their social media account. The copyright law is instead in spirit - at least in its current form - heavily skewed towards Big Corps, because they are the only ones that have all the right machinery to exploit over and over IP from 70 years ago. A mildly successful writer (equivalent of a "mum&pop shop") will not generate enough royalties in the future for their grandson to never work.
- mcv 8d ago
  This is true, but is it unique to copyright? Don't large companies benefit asymmetrically from most things?
kolinko 8d ago
Ad hominem? Also it's big tech (MS, Amazon) that is against this more than anyone.
- hn993302 8d ago
  Sometimes ad hominem is a totally valid argument
derkades 8d ago
I agree with you, but unfortunately it seems big tech can already scrape people's data without permission and without paying license fees.
- Retro_Dev 8d ago
  "can" is different from "do" - they do scrape our data without permission, but it doesn't mean they can (are morally correct in doing so)
  - cocoto 8d ago
    “do” imply “can”, but “can” do not imply “do”.
  - my-huge-pony 8d ago
    So this means that the law is only enforced partially and only benefits big corporations which van ignore it. So yet another reason to abolish copyright.
deleted 8d ago
[deleted]
Dylan16807 8d ago
My data is a privacy concern, not a copyright concern. I have no way to stop them from using my data on a copyright basis. This makes no sense to me. That said let's cut copyright back to 28 years.
mm263 8d ago
You know who also wants to avoid a copyright lawsuit? Me! I remixed some music and would like to show it to the other people. Too bad that if they like it, I will never ever be able to monetize it or will even have to delete it. While we are at it, I’d also like Kurvitz, Rostov, and Hindpere to make another Disco Elysium game. While we are at it, I think Sci Hub is the greatest invention of the modern science and many scientists would agree - you can just look up how many papers thank Alexandra Elbakyan and her efforts. While we are at it, I’d love if companies could use each other’s discoveries to speed up tech advancements rather than hoarding patents. Have you heard about patent trolling? Is that a good system that encourages good and moral behaviour? I could go on. You paint such a black and white picture - copyright is good because tech giants bad - I can only assume that you are driven by blind ideology and not what’s actually good for us as peers. Ask yourself what’s better for common good
- flexagoon 8d ago
  > While we are at it, I think Sci Hub is the greatest invention of the modern science Maybe a while ago it was. It no longer accepts new papers since 2020 and there are much better alternatives available are this point (STC Nexus)
- saaaaaam 8d ago
  So actually, your remixed music you could play live, as a DJ. But to SELL it you’d need the permission of the songwriters and record labels, and probably agree some sort of split on the royalties. But is that actually so unreasonable, given it is their work you’re using? Have you sent them your remixes and asked if you can release them?
  - mm263 7d ago
    > Have you sent them your remixes and asked if you can release them? You have no idea what you are talking about. If something’s technically possible, it doesn’t mean that it is possible in reality or that people haven’t tried what you propose.
    - 7d ago
joegibbs 8d ago
Are pro-copyright articles also big tech propaganda? Oracle would hate it if copyright was abolished
- voxelghost 8d ago
  Oracle is Old-Tech ;-) The AI companies are the ones that want copyright gone.
  - OroPla 8d ago
    I want it gone for decades already, but no one listens to me. It has always been my hope that AI can finally make it happen by incentivizing people with bottomless pits full of money to solve the problem.
opan 8d ago
I'm not a fan of AI if that's what you're talking about, I still want copyright dead or drastically shortened. I'd say most people with an interest in free (as in freedom) software or computers in general should want similar.
fedeb95 8d ago
this is bullshit, your data is protected by privacy laws and not copyright laws.
- jml78 8d ago
  It is bullshit also because it hasn’t protected anyone. Copyright only protects massive corporations. It gives the false sense to individuals that they are protected but they steal from individuals all the time and have the resources to define themselves from us. They can stall in court for years to bankrupt you. At least without copyright it puts us on equal footing
  - fedeb95 7d ago
    that's correct, I am against copyright in any form of sorts. I know this is unpopular, but I really can't think of a logical argument that justifies it (I have read plenty; luckily I have no decision making power). Copyright in my view is simply an obsolete concept that tries to coerce private property of scarce resources in the realm of ideas. But ideas aren't scarce, neither are digital copies. It's like private property of air.
rikroots 8d ago
Agreed. While copyright timescales are currently over-extended, copyright was introduced for a very practical reason: "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned"[1]. Personally, I Copyleft my poetry, and make it available to others to use, even for commercial purposes, from 15 years after the poem's publication. I see no reason to keep them locked in a cage long after I'm done with them. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright
- OroPla 8d ago
  If that was the reason, it should be completely abolished as the exact opposite was achieved. See for example this article [1] > unlike neighboring England and France, Germany experienced an unparalleled explosion of knowledge in the 19th century. > it was none other than copyright law, which was established early in Great Britain, in 1710, that crippled the world of knowledge in the United Kingdom. >Germany, on the other hand, didn't bother with the concept of copyright for a long time. Prussia, then by far Germany's biggest state, introduced a copyright law in 1837, but Germany's continued division into small states meant that it was hardly possible to enforce the law throughout the empire. For a more contemporary view look at what became of China by ignoring copyright. [1]: https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-law-the-real-reason-for-germany-s-industrial-expansion-a-710976.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-...
  - Planktonne 7d ago
    > in 1710, that crippled the world of knowledge in the United Kingdom How do you account for the industrial revolution under this framing, or the global dominance of the British Empire? Its really hard to argue that 1710 onwards marked the downfall of Britain, given everything that happened in history after that.
    - OroPla 7d ago
      How did the industrial revolution relate to copyright? Seems related to patents instead. In the context of copyright we are talking about books in that century. Shakespeare predates copyright. Though, we are not only talking fiction, but also non-fiction. It's no coincidence that British inventors of that time were on to wealthy side, for the poor people couldn't afford to buy a whole lot of books. And neither did they write them.
DeepSeaTortoise 8d ago
I love how almost everyone in here seems to confuse the DMCA with copyright itself and that there seems to be such a wide spread opinion that copyright does more harm than good. As if an online community of mostly software developers had never heard of such obscure writings like the GPL, AGPL, LGPL, and so on. I get it, the person running GrapheneOS happens to be ... special, but there could hardly be any community that has benefited more off copyright than the free software one.
- zarzavat 8d ago
  Many people don't like the GPL for exactly that reason. Free software (i.e. copyleft) benefits from copyright at the expense of the wider open source community. Were it not for copyright then BSDs could take code from Linux and perhaps there'd be less of a monoculture, for example.
  - DeepSeaTortoise 7d ago
    If it were not for copyright and copyleft software licenses there would be no open source software of any significance. All these projects only took off because people were forced to contribute back. Want an example? Look at the state of opensource boot firmware on x86. The "open source" version heavily relies on proprietary firmware blobs and the only actual open source alternative had been heavily ridiculed for pursuing that goal and trading basically any significant compatibility for it. Copyleft licenses make software basically self-regulating utilities. You can draw power from the grid and in return help finance it for everyone else, or you could build your own power plants. You can draw excellent pre-made software and tooling from copylefted repositories and contribute back, helping to make the software even better for everyone else, or you could build all of it yourself. Or, you could put in the work to replace all major copyleft software with non-copyleft versions, eventually gaining the ability to pull up the ladder behind you.
    - iamnothere 7d ago
      Without copyright, all software becomes “open source” as long as you can acquire the code somehow. Finding creative ways to “liberate” and publish code becomes imperative.
charlieyu1 8d ago
probably still better than You won’t download a car propaganda
drstewart 8d ago
The real propaganda is pretending people weren't complaining about copyright for decades and crying "Pirating isn't stealing!!" when it came to them getting GTA for free. Suddenly, you really seem to care about copyright laws though.
sophrosyne42 8d ago
Ah yes, the big tech propaganda that undermines their entire business model. Without copyright, you would be free to modify or alter any data collection capabilities of tech you purchase.
glimshe 8d ago
You are confusing privacy with copyright.
pibaker 7d ago
Yep. What Stallman and his friends call "free software" would not exist if not for the copyright system. The company legal team who tell you to not touch any GPL code would love to see the licensing enforcement mechanism be abolished.

tossandthrow 8d ago

Paying license? What small scale author receives license payments for anything they have authored from bug tech? To me it appears that individuals and large companies benefit from copyright asymmetrically, which is the core of the argument.

palmotea 8d ago
> To me it appears that individuals and large companies benefit from copyright asymmetrically, which is the core of the argument. The correct response to that is to fix the asymmetry, not blow the rights up entirely. Quoth the OP: > It doesn't protect the livelihood of individuals and small businesses in practice. Instead, it's a weapon wielded by large corporations to protect their monopolies. Post Citizens United, you could say the same thing about free speech. Does the OP want to abolish that, too? The fact that the wealthy (corporations and individuals), with massive teams of lawyers and propagandists, can often better take advantage of the rights I also enjoy is not a compelling reason for abolishing my rights.
- darkwater 8d ago
  Partially agree but on the free speech side, if you are common people you are also "protected" by being a small fish. It's very very rare that somebody sues you because you posted some hot take on X and you have to defend your free speech right (it happens sometimes yes, but it's - for now - statistically irrelevant). See what happens if a Big Corp posts some shit on their social media account. The copyright law is instead in spirit - at least in its current form - heavily skewed towards Big Corps, because they are the only ones that have all the right machinery to exploit over and over IP from 70 years ago. A mildly successful writer (equivalent of a "mum&pop shop") will not generate enough royalties in the future for their grandson to never work.
mcv 8d ago
This is true, but is it unique to copyright? Don't large companies benefit asymmetrically from most things?

kolinko 8d ago

Ad hominem? Also it's big tech (MS, Amazon) that is against this more than anyone.

hn993302 8d ago
Sometimes ad hominem is a totally valid argument

derkades 8d ago

I agree with you, but unfortunately it seems big tech can already scrape people's data without permission and without paying license fees.

Retro_Dev 8d ago
"can" is different from "do" - they do scrape our data without permission, but it doesn't mean they can (are morally correct in doing so)
- cocoto 8d ago
  “do” imply “can”, but “can” do not imply “do”.
- my-huge-pony 8d ago
  So this means that the law is only enforced partially and only benefits big corporations which van ignore it. So yet another reason to abolish copyright.

deleted 8d ago

[deleted]

Dylan16807 8d ago

My data is a privacy concern, not a copyright concern. I have no way to stop them from using my data on a copyright basis. This makes no sense to me. That said let's cut copyright back to 28 years.

mm263 8d ago

You know who also wants to avoid a copyright lawsuit? Me! I remixed some music and would like to show it to the other people. Too bad that if they like it, I will never ever be able to monetize it or will even have to delete it. While we are at it, I’d also like Kurvitz, Rostov, and Hindpere to make another Disco Elysium game. While we are at it, I think Sci Hub is the greatest invention of the modern science and many scientists would agree - you can just look up how many papers thank Alexandra Elbakyan and her efforts. While we are at it, I’d love if companies could use each other’s discoveries to speed up tech advancements rather than hoarding patents. Have you heard about patent trolling? Is that a good system that encourages good and moral behaviour? I could go on. You paint such a black and white picture - copyright is good because tech giants bad - I can only assume that you are driven by blind ideology and not what’s actually good for us as peers. Ask yourself what’s better for common good

flexagoon 8d ago
> While we are at it, I think Sci Hub is the greatest invention of the modern science Maybe a while ago it was. It no longer accepts new papers since 2020 and there are much better alternatives available are this point (STC Nexus)
saaaaaam 8d ago
So actually, your remixed music you could play live, as a DJ. But to SELL it you’d need the permission of the songwriters and record labels, and probably agree some sort of split on the royalties. But is that actually so unreasonable, given it is their work you’re using? Have you sent them your remixes and asked if you can release them?
- mm263 7d ago
  > Have you sent them your remixes and asked if you can release them? You have no idea what you are talking about. If something’s technically possible, it doesn’t mean that it is possible in reality or that people haven’t tried what you propose.
  - 7d ago

joegibbs 8d ago

Are pro-copyright articles also big tech propaganda? Oracle would hate it if copyright was abolished

voxelghost 8d ago
Oracle is Old-Tech ;-) The AI companies are the ones that want copyright gone.
- OroPla 8d ago
  I want it gone for decades already, but no one listens to me. It has always been my hope that AI can finally make it happen by incentivizing people with bottomless pits full of money to solve the problem.

opan 8d ago

I'm not a fan of AI if that's what you're talking about, I still want copyright dead or drastically shortened. I'd say most people with an interest in free (as in freedom) software or computers in general should want similar.

fedeb95 8d ago

this is bullshit, your data is protected by privacy laws and not copyright laws.

jml78 8d ago
It is bullshit also because it hasn’t protected anyone. Copyright only protects massive corporations. It gives the false sense to individuals that they are protected but they steal from individuals all the time and have the resources to define themselves from us. They can stall in court for years to bankrupt you. At least without copyright it puts us on equal footing
- fedeb95 7d ago
  that's correct, I am against copyright in any form of sorts. I know this is unpopular, but I really can't think of a logical argument that justifies it (I have read plenty; luckily I have no decision making power). Copyright in my view is simply an obsolete concept that tries to coerce private property of scarce resources in the realm of ideas. But ideas aren't scarce, neither are digital copies. It's like private property of air.

rikroots 8d ago

Agreed. While copyright timescales are currently over-extended, copyright was introduced for a very practical reason: "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned"[1]. Personally, I Copyleft my poetry, and make it available to others to use, even for commercial purposes, from 15 years after the poem's publication. I see no reason to keep them locked in a cage long after I'm done with them. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright

OroPla 8d ago
If that was the reason, it should be completely abolished as the exact opposite was achieved. See for example this article [1] > unlike neighboring England and France, Germany experienced an unparalleled explosion of knowledge in the 19th century. > it was none other than copyright law, which was established early in Great Britain, in 1710, that crippled the world of knowledge in the United Kingdom. >Germany, on the other hand, didn't bother with the concept of copyright for a long time. Prussia, then by far Germany's biggest state, introduced a copyright law in 1837, but Germany's continued division into small states meant that it was hardly possible to enforce the law throughout the empire. For a more contemporary view look at what became of China by ignoring copyright. [1]: https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-law-the-real-reason-for-germany-s-industrial-expansion-a-710976.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-...
- Planktonne 7d ago
  > in 1710, that crippled the world of knowledge in the United Kingdom How do you account for the industrial revolution under this framing, or the global dominance of the British Empire? Its really hard to argue that 1710 onwards marked the downfall of Britain, given everything that happened in history after that.
  - OroPla 7d ago
    How did the industrial revolution relate to copyright? Seems related to patents instead. In the context of copyright we are talking about books in that century. Shakespeare predates copyright. Though, we are not only talking fiction, but also non-fiction. It's no coincidence that British inventors of that time were on to wealthy side, for the poor people couldn't afford to buy a whole lot of books. And neither did they write them.

DeepSeaTortoise 8d ago

I love how almost everyone in here seems to confuse the DMCA with copyright itself and that there seems to be such a wide spread opinion that copyright does more harm than good. As if an online community of mostly software developers had never heard of such obscure writings like the GPL, AGPL, LGPL, and so on. I get it, the person running GrapheneOS happens to be ... special, but there could hardly be any community that has benefited more off copyright than the free software one.

zarzavat 8d ago
Many people don't like the GPL for exactly that reason. Free software (i.e. copyleft) benefits from copyright at the expense of the wider open source community. Were it not for copyright then BSDs could take code from Linux and perhaps there'd be less of a monoculture, for example.
- DeepSeaTortoise 7d ago
  If it were not for copyright and copyleft software licenses there would be no open source software of any significance. All these projects only took off because people were forced to contribute back. Want an example? Look at the state of opensource boot firmware on x86. The "open source" version heavily relies on proprietary firmware blobs and the only actual open source alternative had been heavily ridiculed for pursuing that goal and trading basically any significant compatibility for it. Copyleft licenses make software basically self-regulating utilities. You can draw power from the grid and in return help finance it for everyone else, or you could build your own power plants. You can draw excellent pre-made software and tooling from copylefted repositories and contribute back, helping to make the software even better for everyone else, or you could build all of it yourself. Or, you could put in the work to replace all major copyleft software with non-copyleft versions, eventually gaining the ability to pull up the ladder behind you.
  - iamnothere 7d ago
    Without copyright, all software becomes “open source” as long as you can acquire the code somehow. Finding creative ways to “liberate” and publish code becomes imperative.

charlieyu1 8d ago

probably still better than You won’t download a car propaganda

drstewart 8d ago

The real propaganda is pretending people weren't complaining about copyright for decades and crying "Pirating isn't stealing!!" when it came to them getting GTA for free. Suddenly, you really seem to care about copyright laws though.

sophrosyne42 8d ago

Ah yes, the big tech propaganda that undermines their entire business model. Without copyright, you would be free to modify or alter any data collection capabilities of tech you purchase.

glimshe 8d ago

You are confusing privacy with copyright.

pibaker 7d ago

Yep. What Stallman and his friends call "free software" would not exist if not for the copyright system. The company legal team who tell you to not touch any GPL code would love to see the licensing enforcement mechanism be abolished.