Copyright is a monopoly that the government creates on purpose. We need to treat that monopoly power with more respect. We shouldn't be handing out generational monopolies willy-nilly. Copyright is allowed in the Constitution for "limited times" and Congress has ignored that.
Copyright does more harm than good and should be abolished (grapheneos.social)
218 pointsby Cider99863 hours ago166 comments
modeless 2 hours ago
The major problem with copyright is it's too long. The vast majority of revenue from copyrighted content is made in the first couple of years, and yet we extend copyright 70 years past the author's death! If copyright lasted two years instead, all the problems with it would be much less severe.
pbhjpbhj 2 hours ago
Two years is too short because it won't protect from commercial exploition against a creators wishes.
modeless 2 hours ago
The creator is not the only person to consider here. We don't grant copyrights just to give creators a funny kind of royalty-pension they can pass to their heirs. We grant copyrights to encourage production of new works for the benefit of the public. Copyright ultimately must be judged on how well it serves the public benefit, not on how much power or wealth it gives to authors directly (at the expense of others).
bigstrat2003 2 hours ago
> We don't grant copyrights to give authors a kind of royalty-based pension for their old age and their heirs.
"We" is doing a lot of work here. I realize that it's basically impossible for an entire population to have coherent motivations, but I support copyright because I think artists have the right to control what happens with their work and to sell it if they can. I believe that this right extends, like all rights, until the end of the author's life. I don't really care one bit about encouraging the production of new works.
modeless 2 hours ago
How about "We the people", as stated in the Constitution? The Constitution itself defines the purpose of copyright, and it is not the purpose you state.
chii 2 hours ago
> until the end of the author's life.
which is too long, and also too short - what about authors who wrote finished their book on their deathbed? Then their rights are shorter than someone young - an unfair discrimination.
That's why age should be irrelevant. Copyright is useful, and should be granted. However, current copyright grants last far too long - age plus some years beyond. Not to mention corporations lobbying to increase the length right as some copyrights for some works are about to enter public domain.
Therefore, copyright should be granted for a single period and end - like patents. 20 years seems to be a good middle ground, but i could hear arguments for slightly longer or shorter.
t-writescode 2 hours ago
> We grant copyrights to encourage production of new works for the benefit of the public
Which includes giving creators royalty rights that can be passed on to their heirs, so the elder author can finish their manuscript on their deathbed as a gift to their family.
modeless 2 hours ago
Congress has currently chosen a duration of life + 70, but my point is that it's absurdly far beyond anything necessary to encourage the production of new works. When you consider the costs of copyright monopolies to the public, it's clearly out of whack. As I said, the majority of revenue from copyrighted works happens in the first couple of years of release.
t-writescode 17 minutes ago
I completely agree that life+70 is absolutely obscene, as my response to your parent post clarifies. I moved on from that since I thought my stance was clear (14 + 14 or 28 total), and moved on to “we should still honor the copyright even if they die, because heirs matter.”
NEVER have I argued for life+70 and I never will.
exe34 2 hours ago
Has this ever happened, or is it a scenario you made up in your mind?
I know a few great works were published posthumously, but most of these were because somebody thought it was really important to share, not because it was a golden goose they wanted to start... milking.
t-writescode 14 minutes ago
I don’t have a specific example; but I don’t like the idea of an author, photographer, painter, songwriter, etc’s familt losing their copyright because their plane crashed the day after they recorded a record.
And again, to be clear, since apparently people think I’m defending life+70. I am abso-fucking-lutely not.
I want 14+14 or raw 28 back.
Edit: oh apparently I do, thanks Kagi Assistant.
Otis Redding Died in a plane crash literally 3 days after recording a famous track and his family earned a LOT after his passing.
t43562 2 hours ago
I'd rather give it to individuals than corporations at least. It's useful as a lever to protect the weak from the powerful. Perhaps it should simply not be transferable? Another alternative would be for its power to weaken over time in some way.
kolinko 2 hours ago
Then you will prevent corporations from paying authors to create work altogether.
exe34 2 hours ago
They can still sell the stuff for 10-20 years and make a huge profit. They just can't use it for multi-generational runaway growth.
r-w 2 hours ago
You don't think they would still pay them for the right to publish, if not ownership of the copyright itself?
kolinko 2 hours ago
Did you ever publish anything? First year or two it is mostlu pushing marketing/pr, and the long tail of trickle of money is where the true earnings lie. Also, for many works of art it takes more than 2 years to produce a next piece, and even if it was less, it’s not sure if it will actually sell.
Anything below 5-10 years and you have literal starving authors. Anything less than 5 and you may as well abolish it altogether.
pydry an hour ago
we have literal "starving authors" - they pretty much all need second jobs to survive.
for the authors themselves I don't see much difference between having no copyright at all and being thrown a few pennies on their work from amazon. either way the ability to make a living from those pennies clearly isnt motivating them.
the future jk rowlings of the world will still buy lottery tickets to fame and fortune whether or not she ends up being worth $20 million (weak/no copyright) or $1 billion (strong copyright).
dageshi 2 hours ago
We live in a world where there is an absolute abundance of art, music, novels. You can find it everywhere, huge amounts of it either free or very cheaply.
In what way is the system as it exists currently failing to encourage the creation of new works?
modeless 2 hours ago
It encourages creation of new works just fine, but at the expense of creating billions of tiny monopolies that last for generations, which get aggregated into huge monopolies, ultimately making ordinary people into criminals for wanting to preserve or modify the works that make up their culture.
My point is that it doesn't need to do that. Copyright could still encourage creation of new works with a much shorter duration, without the downside of locking our culture up in monopolies for life + 70.
dageshi 2 hours ago
None of that contravenes the purpose of copyright in encouraging the creation and sharing of new works.
You could equally solve the issue by providing provisions for archival. Or a provision that requires a work to be freely available for sale.
The creator having a monopoly on the work seems to me to encourage the creation and sharing of work as intended.
dvdkon 19 minutes ago
Most of that art is being created irrespective of copyright, though. Much of it uses exceptions to copyright and some is straight up in violation (most "fan art"/fanfiction). It's either not monetised or monetised through things like Patreon.
I wouldn't say we have more "traditional" art that an author spends time creating with the vision of selling copies for years to come, than we did when copyright terms were shorter.
dageshi 5 minutes ago
I doubt that's true.
Is there a lot of fan art, yes, there's also massive amounts of original works as well. There is no lack of either.
jonathanstrange 38 minutes ago
He was arguing against two years. A lifetime is fine.
Planktonne 25 minutes ago
Mandating that creators lose control and the ability to profit from their work almost immediately will absolutely not encourage the production of new works.
psychoslave 2 hours ago
Nothing is going to protect moneyless creator against multi-billion transnational greed-driven corporations equipped with lawyer armies if the law actually encourage these corporations to actually thrive and further harden the rules in their own interests.
Abolishing the copyright or not is not that important if nothing is done in front of that to guarantee that every single human are granted unconditional access to decent life conditions.
t-writescode 2 hours ago
Original copyright was 14 years + 14 years - then it was changed to 28.
I'd love to see it brought back down to that again.
TulliusCicero 2 hours ago
Just make it 20 years, like patents.
achempion 2 hours ago
You're free to release your own work with Creative Commons License (or any other license that shorten the copyright).
> Copyright is a monopoly that the government creates on purpose
Creative work takes a lot of effort and resources (ex: movie production, games, books (hello Knuth)) and can be easily copied/imitated in a digital age.
It you think copyright should be shorter to everyone, then inheriting something valuable shouldn't be a thing as well?
chii 2 hours ago
> It you think copyright should be shorter to everyone, then inheriting something valuable shouldn't be a thing as well?
inheritance has nothing to do with copyright. Financial assets are not monopolies. Copyright is only a valuable asset because of the granted monopoly on copying/distribution.
Therefore, to reduce the value copyright has (as it currently does seem to have too much), reducing the granted terms should be sufficient. Like patents, a good 20 years seems like a sufficiently long time to recover cost of production, while letting people who are currently alive to produce derivatives of it afterwards.
achempion 2 hours ago
Why you want to reduce value of creative work, but not a value of other assets? I think copyright should be as long as ownership of any other asset.
If I spend $20m on building a house or creating a computer game, why house can be inherited indefinitely and creative work is not? I would have a monopoly on this specific building and on this specific creative work, but anyone is free to build/create anything else.
If J. Rowling created Harry Potter universe, why her family can't own it indefinitely? We somehow accept this notion for other assets, but treat copyright differently.
p.s. creative work is more valuable as it has something that money can't buy (authenticity, taste, sincerity, etc)
Ekaros 2 hours ago
>If I spend $20m on building
Why don't the builders get infinite royalties on use of that house? Wouldn't that also be reasonable. At least as long as it stands. I don't think that would be unfair comparison.
achempion an hour ago
> Why don't the builders get infinite royalties on use of that house
They do, some build to rent indefinitely or sell to other who rent out the property.
Ekaros an hour ago
I mean the actual workers. I do not get royalty checks for the building I helped on during one summer. Homeowners don't send monthly money to workers that build their house or renovated it.
achempion an hour ago
It's the same in creative work creation, no? Filming crew / game devs don't own any copyright and property rights. They explicitly give it up under contract/hiring terms.
californical an hour ago
Her family can own their copies of Harry Potter forever.
But copyright restricts others from building on top of previous works. Can her family forever sue anyone into poverty for naming a wizard “Harry”? Does that even make sense in 100 years from now when most people have never heard of Harry Potter anymore?
For your building analogy, it would be more like the builders created your building there, and now you own it. It has a red roof and blue shutters. And also the government passed a law that said nobody else can own a building ever again with a red roof and blue shutters, otherwise you, the owner of the idea of those colors, can take possession of every new building like that.
modeless 7 minutes ago
> why house can be inherited indefinitely and creative work is not
Because copying houses is inherently expensive, while copying creative work is inherently free. To make creative works act like houses you have to add artificial cost to copying, which is a tax the public has to pay for the entire duration of copyright. If the public has to pay a tax they should get something out of it, and that something is the incentive for authors to create new works. But does copyright have to be for life + 70 in order to incentivize new works? Clearly not! It could be much shorter while still providing plenty of incentive.
pmdr 2 hours ago
Drug patents are much more short-lived and there's arguably more money invested in drug discovery than in, say, writing a fiction novel. IMO copyright should be limited to 20-30 years. Not that LLM labs care anyway.
mschuster91 an hour ago
> Drug patents are much more short-lived
It doesn't make sense to extend drug patent lengths though because often enough, after the release of a compound, it takes just a few years for a new and updated version of it to be researched.
However, the counterpoint can also be made that it should be extended, as the permit process for medical compounds takes years and costs billions, with the short patent lifetime forcing pharma companies to command absurd prices just to recoup the R&D cost.
(IMHO: the system on how we research pharmaceuticals and how we fund it must be drastically reformed. The question is, how do we prevent China and India from just taking our research and copying it for free, it's already bad enough)
philipallstar 42 minutes ago
> It doesn't make sense to extend drug patent lengths though because often enough, after the release of a compound, it takes just a few years for a new and updated version of it to be researched.
I think this is an inversion of cause and effect.
po1nt 32 minutes ago
Issue of pharma development is not that you need a protection from copycats. You need to pass a mountain of regulations and bureaucracy. Most of the medications are easily copyable but would take years to be able to get to the market.
See insulin prices difference in europe vs US
smitty1e 29 minutes ago
I know someone in pharma.
They drop insane money up front to do a trial, get approved, and then have low single-digit years to recoup all that investment before the new medication goes off patent a competitor markets a generic that blows up the market and likely isn't as well-tested.
And then, in the extreme case, you might get blown away on the street and have your murderer canonized.
But I guess that AI will fix all these perverse incentives Real Soon Now.
ChrisMarshallNY 14 minutes ago
> And then, in the extreme case, you might get blown away on the street and have your murderer canonized.
Ahem
That was health insurance. Different beast.
Not excusing pharma, but that bit of extreme casting doesn’t really belong in the conversation.
Like most things in life, “It Depends” is probably applicable, here. Copyright, patents, and trademark exist for a reason.
Abuse of these structures, is the real issue.
Like people that argue for unfettered capitalism, or total legalization of all vice, we need to think about basic human nature, when discussing these things. That doesn’t happen, usually. It’s either all or nothing. We don’t consider that moderation, and benevolent structure, are possible (which they might not always be, considering human nature).
The hard part is imposing just enough structure to ensure that we get maximum effect.
About a month ago, there was a post about the “Pareto Front,” that point at which maximum desired effect is achieved, with optimal resource usage, and side effects. The zenith.
That can also apply to social infrastructure, but it’s really, really difficult, and lawyers and social scientists don’t think that way.
I honestly feel as if very few people take basic human nature into account, when designing pretty much anything.
victorbjorklund 12 minutes ago
Copyright isn’t just fiction novels. Copyright drives investment in books, media, software etc.
shevy-java 11 minutes ago
Not for e. g. 70 years.
I think most people are in support of some financial incentives via protection, but 70 years is just insane.
tomp an hour ago
Harry Potter copyright is still being heavily utilized (milked?) 30 years after the first book's release.
vaylian an hour ago
That's an outlier. Most works don't see so much public interest after such a long time.
exitb 38 minutes ago
It would make sense to make it possible, but increasingly expensive to extend the copyright. It's fine for Disney to keep their successful creations, it just makes no sense to drag all other copyrighted works in existence along for the ride.
dns_snek 23 minutes ago
You want to tip the balance even more in favour of the richest corporations? Really?
We're there already, considering the cost of actually enforcing your rights, but it would be bizarre to codify that into law.
OroPla 29 minutes ago
But why should this be allowed? Fairy tales are still popular, but they don't have copyright either.
modeless 17 minutes ago
I'm not sure what your point is. Harry Potter is in the top ten highest grossing media franchises ever. Sure, top 10 franchises make a lot of money, but they're outliers. Is it in the public interest to grant every author in the country a copyright monopoly for life + 70 so that we can ensure JK Rowling's grandchildren continue to make billions from Harry Potter? Clearly not!
kzrdude 14 minutes ago
Now you are using the legislators' rationale that money is being made so we need to protect that, forgetting to weigh the cost for the community.
leonidasrup an hour ago
"
Since 1990, The Walt Disney Company had lobbied for copyright extension. The legislation delayed the entry into the public domain of the earliest Mickey Mouse cartoons, leading detractors to the nickname "The Mickey Mouse Protection Act".
In addition to Disney, California congresswoman Mary Bono (Sonny Bono's widow and Congressional successor), and the estate of composer George Gershwin supported the act. Mary Bono, speaking on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, said:
Actually, Sonny wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever. I am informed by staff that such a change would violate the Constitution. ... As you know, there is also [then-MPAA president] Jack Valenti's proposal for term to last forever less one day. Perhaps the Committee may look at that next Congress.
cromka an hour ago
> and yet we extend copyright 70
That's an americocentric view. Copyrights are shorter around the world. In fact, iirc, US has some of the longest ones.
philipallstar 42 minutes ago
> If copyright lasted two years instead, all the problems with it would be much less severe.
If you spend five years writing a book and then get to sell it for two years, and everyone will just think "I'll get it in two years", you might not like that.
Patryk27 31 minutes ago
I’m pretty sure they meant the “post death” copyright, considering the context.
_davide_ 27 minutes ago
Unless you were paid during those five years
philipallstar 7 minutes ago
Who's going to pay you to work for five years for a book that has a two-year commercial window, and even for that many people won't buy it until another company that just does printing sells it for half price two years from the first published date?
vintagedave 2 hours ago
I've published and sold my own software. I'm a writer (unpublished as yet, but I hope to use CC4 like Cory Doctorow - ethical copyright.) I've seen my software pirated; I've benefited financially from selling it. I know authors and their struggles with income.
And I agree. Copyright in its current form does more harm than good.
Copyright was introduced to counter genuine harms: there are stories of people publishing in the UK, and having what today we'd consider pirate copies of their books selling massive quantities in the US, for example, with the author seeing no revenue. I believe anyone who puts work into creating something, physical or non-physical, should be able to derive revenue from their work. But I also believe in the public good; that 'information want to be free' in that thoughts, ideas and stories are meant to be shared; and that in a fast-moving world long-term prevention of movement is harmful. I also believe that over time, protections meant for individuals become weapons for the powerful, and I believe we're there now.
Further, I worry that over the past decades to today, 'rights' are being socially redefined as property rights. We consider privacy, an inalienable human right, as something for us to be paid for by Meta. This is implicitly and silently treating an inalienable essence of being human as something to be bartered away, and I think a social retreat from the concept of property rights as being anything other than localised to, well, property, would help. Reduction or abolition of copyright would be a radical positive change in a general social attitude here.
Realistically, radically adjusted copyright (3 years for software, 10 years for a book or music?) gives both an opportunity for profit and allows reasonable expiration while still relevant. In the absence of that, yes, complete abolishment would be an upheaval but a net benefit to the world.
Koffiepoeder 2 hours ago
Changing copyright durations without touching patent law is useless. In your example we would also need to shorten software patents to e.g. 3 years. Otherwise the big fish will just create a patent maze.
vintagedave an hour ago
Yes. You are right.
tristanj 3 hours ago
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 3 hours 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 2 hours 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 2 hours 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 2 hours ago
This is true, but is it unique to copyright? Don't large companies benefit asymmetrically from most things?
kolinko 3 hours ago
Ad hominem?
Also it's big tech (MS, Amazon) that is against this more than anyone.
hn993302 2 hours ago
Sometimes ad hominem is a totally valid argument
derkades 2 hours 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 2 hours 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 an hour ago
“do” imply “can”, but “can” do not imply “do”.
my-huge-pony an hour 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.
Dylan16807 2 hours 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 2 hours 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 2 hours 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 2 hours 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?
CorbenDallas an hour ago
but at the same time, I bet, you don't want a new disco elysium game to be made by Hasbro.
AndrewDucker an hour ago
Actually, I do.
I want dozens of them. And then I can play the one with the best reviews.
Of course, without copyright meaning that people have to pay for the games, the chances of those games being made is pretty slim.
joegibbs 2 hours ago
Are pro-copyright articles also big tech propaganda? Oracle would hate it if copyright was abolished
voxelghost 2 hours ago
Oracle is Old-Tech ;-)
The AI companies are the ones that want copyright gone.
OroPla 16 minutes 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 2 hours 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 2 hours ago
this is bullshit, your data is protected by privacy laws and not copyright laws.
jml78 13 minutes 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
rikroots an hour 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.
OroPla 20 minutes 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-...
DeepSeaTortoise 29 minutes 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 10 minutes 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.
DrScientist an hour ago
In a world where copyright doesn't exist - let's say I spend two years writing a novel/or a book on the history of computers.
What's to stop other people making and selling digital copies the moment it's published?
How am I ever going to justify that two year investment?
omnimus 34 minutes ago
I think the thinking is that in current system as solo creator you are somewhat protected by copyright but your work still gets mainly bought by your audience even if it can be pirated.
On the other hand copyright has been absolutely abused by big corporations to give them immense powers. Many creators were forced to sign away their rights and don't even make money on their work. You jailbreak your phone or your TV because of it. Generally it blocks so much of the competition. And with LLMs seems to have decided that copyright doesn't matter anyway.
jml78 16 minutes ago
It already happens. Instead of a book look at TikTok for example. Come up with a cool product, if it sells at all, it will be immediately counterfeited.
The issue is that copyright is only protecting massive corporations.
Did copyright helped against AI? Nope.
If copyright was eliminated, say you are a great up-and-coming filmmaker, you could go make your own marvel movie. You might break into the industry because of that. You make some one off superhero movie is far less likely to hit with an audience.
Copyright doesn’t help small individuals, it only helps corporations protect themselves against us.
dvdkon 4 minutes ago
As others have pointed out, piracy is already easy for anything remotely popular, yet people still buy books. We could assume that it's not because they fear breaking the law, but because they want to support the author and have an "authentic" copy.
There are also other models than creating a work without any income, then recouping that cost by a state-granted monopoly. You can release preview chapters and then solicit donations from interested readers. You can build on your reputation and then promise to finish the book later for some up-front payment. These might not work for everyone, but they are in wide use today. One could argue that removing options for those authors that depend on copyright today is still a reasonable price to pay for removing all the abuses of copyright.
Daedren 2 hours ago
>It's abused to take down content that's not in violation of copyright
That's a problem with DMCA in that it's applicable in an immediate and unilateral manner and any decision to resist comes after the takedown. DMCA is the problem in this context, not "copyright" itself.
Ekaros 2 hours ago
The real problem is that misuse is not followed by ruinously high penalty. False claims should result in statutory damages of tens thousands per claim. That is the way to prevent misuse.
purpleidea 2 hours ago
My personal website: https://purpleidea.com/ has been DMCA'ed by some scammer and I still haven't gotten it back out. Google ignores the counter notices, and who knows where else the scammer (masquerading as a legitimate takedown company) has sent notices. Bing and DDG (same basically) have all delisted it.
PaulKeeble 2 hours ago
A lot of the problem with DMCA is how its been implemented by companies. There is a provision in the original law making it a crime to make false claims, but organisations like Youtube don't bother to make it even possible to counter claim in that way and trigger that side of the law. Everyone seems to have forgotten it was even part of it, I have never seen it enforced.
monneyboi 2 hours ago
While initially a perpetual right to copying for some publishers, copyright was made into what it is today to "promote creation". Funnily enough it's used in the exactly opposite way. Culture is basically frozen, same movie and same music released every week.
The fields where creativity flows the most seem to me the ones furthest away from copyright. FOSS and memes come to mind.
What matters is who made something, regardless of who copied it. I think that in a ocean of AI generated content, this will become more and more important. Platforms like patreon and kofi show that people care about creators and are willing to support without 'buying a copy'
PaulKeeble 2 hours ago
Games are another big area where distance to copyright seems to be where the innovation is occurring. So many of the big genres of games and ultimately the "game" that started the genre begun as a mod of another game. Counterstrike from half life, the myriad of factory games from modded minecraft, Arma and DayZ spawned the survival genre and further Arma mods formed the idea of PubG as well. In sim racing mods to Assetto Corsa have influenced the successor title of Competizone which chose GT3 cars since they were the most popular online. Then the modders on AC made long journey driving modifications and this has now influenced the upcoming Evo. There are probably many more examples from Skyrim or other FPS games of ideas born first by modders.
A lot of these mods break copyright of original material but with it they create an entire genre of games far outweighing the value of the initial piece of copyright.
laserbeam 2 hours ago
Hear me out. What if copyright could only be claimed by the creator/artist OR public domain. Make it non-transferable. Force big media corps license music from artists instead of owning it outright. Push negotiating power to the artist away from the organization. Avoid "Taylor Swift re-recorded all her music to own it" and similar stuff in the future.
OroPla 5 minutes ago
The industry can just push and promote people it picked itself and then bind them some other way. How would this work with open software, which is not public domain and often sees the original creator step away down the line?
solatic 2 hours ago
You'll throw Hollywood and most of the publishing industry out of business overnight if you "abolish" copyright. Not a good idea to throw so many people out of work.
Copyright needs to be reformed, absolutely. Not abolished.
happymellon 2 hours ago
Hollywood was created by ignoring copyrights.
ronsor 2 hours ago
Hollywood was created by ignoring (Edison) patents, not copyright.
On the other hand, Disney's success is largely owed to public domain adaptations, and for a century, it did its best to shrink the public domain and expand copyright.
happymellon 2 hours ago
Hollywood was created by ignoring copyrights.
https://penntoday.upenn.edu/2012-05-10/research/bumpy-histor...
They may have ignored patents too, but they build their work on copyright infringement.
solatic 2 hours ago
Your argument is non-sequitur and nihilist. America was created by colonizing Native land, so should we somehow evict hundreds of millions of people in the name of justice? (/rhetorical)
Original sin is a sunk cost. If you want to make the world better, you focus on what's right for tomorrow, not what was right for a century ago.
happymellon 2 hours ago
So, is Hollywood a good or bad thing?
Was it is a good thing and it was created by ignoring copyrights and therefore we shouldn't protect copyrights as an absolute because other good things can be created out of it, or is it a bad thing and is using that copyright to restrict others.
You can't have it both ways. My point was just that defense of Hollywood is a terrible example.
omnimus 31 minutes ago
Well whole USA education system was jump started by ignoring copyright on English books and reprinting pirated copies en masse for extremely cheap.
reddozen 2 hours ago
It's not only Hollywood, these anarcho-capitalists that want to abolish private ownership will destroy pharmaceutical innovation. (This is where people's brains will turn off)
Why would a firm invest in research improving Super-Rare-Disease therapies if I don't get exclusive rights to the monetary benefit?
And to the inevitable room temperature IQ DSA crowd, why would the AnCap government with state research firms ever direct public resources to improving Super-Rare-Disease? Something that affects 1-in-10000 people doesn't deserve public resources like common diseases.
bell-cot 21 minutes ago
> You'll throw Hollywood and most of ...
Compared to the economic and human disruptions of shipping most of America's manufacturing jobs overseas since WWII, that sounds very minor.
Yes, I understand that Hollywood & publishing carry much higher social status than mere manufacturing, for the "right" people to object at them being tossed.
No, I'm not disagreeing with your "reform not abolish" ideal.
jackpepsi 2 hours ago
From the perspective of "The general purpose computing device I own should be able to run any instructions written by anyone without legal issues" then copyright sucks. Massively abused by corporations to unproductively charge rent by squatting on obvious implementations.
From the perspective of "I'm an artist and I want to make a living off the things I create" copyright has some utility. (Although also gets in the way at times, as in bad faith music plagiarism cases)
I feel both perspectives. On a moral level not sure how to unite them in a way that doesn't enable some kind of abuse.
I'm sure we can improve the current systems though.
purpleidea 2 hours ago
Don't fall for this trap! GrapheneOS leadership is very against Copyleft, probably to cater to it's corporate sponsors, and copyright is really the only thing that protects Free Software at all. Proprietary software can be kept secret, and only shared as a binary, but the only thing that protects Free Software (open source) is copyright law.
It's not perfect, and the terms are far too long, but we do want to keep it. Reduce it to 20 years and we'd be golden.
fedeb95 2 hours ago
I don't agree. Free software would still be free even if copyright were to be abolished, if anything it would flourish further. That is because even proprietary software could be better integrated.
purpleidea 2 hours ago
You're conflating what "Free Software" means and what Copyleft means. In any case, they both need protection from people like you who want to take it and benefit for free, without having to give anything back. Copyleft was designed specifically to prevent against people with your mindset. Permissively licensed software needs copyright to protect authorship rules, although the requirements are lessened.
palata 2 hours ago
> but the only thing that protects Free Software (open source) is copyright law.
Can you elaborate on that? I have done a lot of open source (professionally and in my free time), and I don't see it.
I have exactly one example where I see that copyleft is useful, and that's Linux: it is nice to be able to get the downstream kernel. I genuinely don't have another example.
For smaller projects (even not that small actually), my feeling is that a Copyleft licence is just an opportunity for a competing project to come with a permissive licence. It happened to me in a library I built: people complained about my choice of MPLv2, eventually someone started a competing library with a permissive licence and everybody jumped on it.
An example of a not-so-small project I have is Ardupilot: as a user I love that GPLv3 should make it possible for me to access (and reflash!) it, but it seems to me that the GPLv3 was clearly an opportunity for PX4 to gain traction (Ardupilot even got evicted from Dronecode).
So yeah, I totally understand the appeal of copyleft in theory, but in practice I'm a bit more skeptical. And I say that as someone who actually licences my projects as copyleft.
purpleidea 2 hours ago
> people complained about my choice of MPLv2, eventually someone started a competing library with a permissive licence and everybody jumped on it
Just because you choose copyleft (even weak copyleft like MPLv2) doesn't mean your project will succeed or be more popular. A lot of people (and especially a lot of companies) do prefer permissive over copyleft, and that's because they can built something proprietary on top, without being forced to give back. That's why they're ultra billionaire rich, and in comparison you're poor.
Software often wins because it's better. Copyleft favours the collective good, permissive favours the individual greed. In any case, all of these things require copyright law.
palata an hour ago
> Software often wins because it's better
I like how you so easily dismiss my opinion by saying "it's probably because you suck" :-).
For my library, people explicitly complained about copyleft, saying "it comes with strings attached". They were pushing for permissive because it meant they could fork it for their proprietary startups.
For the other example that you conveniently ignored (Ardupilot vs PX4), it's also very clear that many companies choose PX4 because of the licence. I have heard a lot of "if you go for Ardupilot it's risky because GPLv3", and believe it or not, it has an impact on people's decision long before they can say whether PX4 or Ardupilot is better (spoiler: they are roughly equivalent).
anomaly_ an hour ago
What’s the issue? They didn’t like your licence terms, and rewrote the library under a permissive licence? You don’t have a right to users or an audience.
matude 2 hours ago
Funny how copyright used to be held to such extreme value before that many governments agreed to implement the "empty cassette laws" which then got conveniently also applied to empty cd-s, even though there's no guarantee that every single empty cd would be used to burn copyrighted material. And now that the copyright has become an annoyance to AI training, suddenly there's voices and support to abolish the whole thing.
I agree that it is broken and probably needs to be reformed, but abolished outright would lead to a ton of issues right?
ketzu 2 hours ago
> And now that the copyright has become an annoyance to AI training, suddenly there's voices and support to abolish the whole thing.
My observation is the opposite. Copyright was never as popular as it is now in the public discourse I have seen.
Now that the unpopular companies are against copyright, it is useful and more popular. (at least as long as the context is those companies)
nmstoker 23 minutes ago
It has issues but I would rather see reform of patents first. Given the greater pace of developments now, effectively they now represent a proportionately longer period now than in the past. And they are too broad, along with various abuses (especially around novelty)
po1nt 36 minutes ago
Many comments here are throwing arbitrary numbers. These are driven just by some internal feelings instead of a data driven policy. The best solution would be to abolish it completely. It's a practice that wouldn't exist without the violent backing of the state. It's a monopolistic practice abused by wealthy. (I do realize the implications for R&D heavy businesses)
mrkeen 16 minutes ago
What's the most generous, charitable definition of an alternative?
KaiserPro 2 hours ago
Did google circa 2012 write this?
All of this is a problem because someone exerted influence over the US government.
Google _knew_ that openai was scraping youtube to train whisper et al. They didn't stop it because they realised that they if they sued them, they would have to pay to train.
So they silently also did the same thing.
With that, copyright in training went to shit.
Copyright, should, allow you or me to make a living from "intellectual works" or anything else tangible/not tangible
Aloha 2 hours ago
Copyright shouldn't be abolished, it should be reformed however.
It should be 20 years, with right to renew, your first 10 year renewal is free, then the cost skyrockets, with proof required that you are still using the work in commerce, and after that first term, you get a flat rate 5 year extension, then it must be renewed annually with escalating fees.
It allows the big IP places to hold on to their family jewels, but also would return a significant amount of orphaned work to public domain.
Den_VR 2 hours ago
How many years of monopoly is enough? And why not ought works be explicitly registered for such protections?
TulliusCicero 2 hours ago
I don't see any reason it should be longer than patents (20 years).
Why should authors be granted vastly larger IP protections than inventors?
bell-cot 16 minutes ago
Because Disney paying ever-increasing fees to keep Snow White is not particularly harmful. Vs. if we allowed ever-extending patents on essential medicines and foundational technologies? How much could the heirs of the Wright Brothers add to the price of every plane ticket?
teiferer 2 hours ago
Funny how people writing such things are also at the forefront of accusing LLM companies of stealing big time. Because of copyright violations.
So, which one is it?
etiennebausson 2 hours ago
Both, it should be brought down, but it should be the same rule for everyone.
Big Tech doesn't get to ignore copyright law just because they have deeper pockets.
teiferer 2 hours ago
> it should be the same rule for everyone
I don't think that's going to suffice.
Neither for the people arguing the original point who want protection for what they are doing but don't want protection for the big players who just make big bucks and "shut everybody down whom they don't like".
Nor from a philosophical big picture POV. The little innovator needs protections. The big capitalist less so. It's why labor laws are more strict with bigger corps than small shops. And why higher incomes pay more taxes. (Well that's the idea. That they find ways to circumvent the idea is a different story.)
izacus an hour ago
You keep making up strwamen and positions that don't exist.
Maybe mock something people have actually said.
AngryData 2 hours ago
Copyright needs to be shorter, but also it should be non-transferable and unable to held by anybody except the individual it originates from. Corporations shouldn't have rights to start with, only restrictions, and they certainly shouldn't have rights over thoughts or ideas.
reorder9695 2 hours ago
How would that work for things like films or music when it genuinely is a group of people making something? I agree that copyright is way, way too long and should be a fixed length, but there's definitely a use in corporations being able to hold it.
izacus an hour ago
Same way it works for everything else. They sell their performance and then they make something else.
conorcleary 28 minutes ago
"The ceiling blocks my view of the sky, and the roof doesn't let me see my TV from outside; we don't need framework or anything to keep the weather out, it's sunny!"
AlienRobot 30 minutes ago
I don't think I have ever seen someone outside of tech saying this. It's always people working with the data-copying machines, never the people creating the data protected by the law, that want said laws gone.
Cider9986 2 hours ago
Every week GrapheneOS seems to come out with a good take. Monero, Authoritarianism, AI, now copyright.
Very well aligned with my beliefs not to mention it's one of if not the most private OS.
Mikhail_Edoshin 2 hours ago
Copyright should be commoditized. A possible first step could be giving copyright owners a single obligation: you have to sell what you own. That thing you have must be available on the market.
This rules out negotiations. They imply a possible negative result, hence the thing is not really available. A public offer, however, is fine.
This thing alone may change the situation quite a bit. Imagine a true market for textbooks or streaming media where every provider has the same selection of titles and has to actually compete.
saaaaaam 2 hours ago
But what does “available on the market” mean? Let’s say I own the copyright to something of cultural significance. I make it “available on the market” but at a very high price. Or are you saying that the price would be enforced?
DrScientist 44 minutes ago
What happens if I wrote a book - sent around to a few publishers and then personally had a change of heart - perhap it has content which I now disavow.
Shouldn't it be within my right to withhold publication?
Or because I refuse to publish, but the publishers have a copy - I should lose the right to control my own work and the copyright falls and the publisher can just publish freely?
Planktonne 18 minutes ago
> A possible first step could be giving copyright owners a single obligation: you have to sell what you own
This would be wildly unreasonable and totally unethical. Every picture taken by a photographer has to be available on the market immediately?
Think through the ethical implications of that.
blfr 2 hours ago
As a Linux user of over 20 years, I really don't like thinking of myself as some Aborigine barely holding on to a scrap of ancestral land. My tech preferences have become so ubiquitous that nearly the entire Internet runs them.
In Angels in America Roy Cohn is given this line where he is so politically embedded he can simply guess stuff and be right "You don't know what all I know. I don't know what all I know. Half this shit I make up and I'm still right". I feel this way about tech now.
I don't need to worry how it works. I take a guess of how it should work and I'm usually right. Not on Windows or some other subpar platform. But can my Android play white noise on the speaker and a podcast on the headphones? While yes, of course it can. I learned that fiddling with Pulse audio years ago and now it's just expected.
someguynamedq 2 hours ago
It already de facto has been. Have you seen LLMs?
maybewhenthesun 2 hours ago
Copyright is good. It's the justice system letting money buy it's way out of enforcement that is bad.
If you create something you should have some protection of other people just blatantly ripping you off.
Copyright terms are in dire need of a reset to a sane length, though. Disney (among others) has spent way to much money extending the term each time their cartoons threatened to expire.
Patents on the other hand should never have been used for software. Patents have their function in preventing inventors from keeping their designs secret, but the whole system is set up to give people to invest in building large brick halls filled with steam engines and it does not match software's pace of development at all.
ozim 2 hours ago
Let’s face it, justice system uses money as proxy for how important things are for society not for single citizens.
As a society we don’t have enough resources to tend to every dispute.
I don’t think there is a solution to that. Even if ideally we want to help everyone who needs disputes solved - waiting for judge 2 or 3 years is a thing in places but for people it is just useless.