News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The Danger of E-Books by johncolanduoni on Friday October 16, 2015 @11:39AM (#10400015)
Because it's illegal is (IMHO) not a reason at all, on its own. I'll also agree that copyright is not an intrinsically moral concept, like material theft. However, I think copyright (in some form, not necessarily in the way it is practiced today) is a key piece of positive law. Absent of copyright, there is no reason to pay anyone for any easily duplicatable product, except out of the goodness of one's heart. Now, if those producing the content didn't need money (e.g. some sort of post-scarcity society) then I would see any kind of copyright as pointlessly restrictive, except maybe for some claim of (non rights reserving) authorship.

The sad fact is that we don't live in such a world, so some form of compensation for authors is necessary, if you want them to keep doing what they are doing. Copyright isn't the only model, but I don't see any practical way to pivot back to a patronage model, especially for content which isn't considered high art. So, I don't think it is fair that one should be paid for making cars, but not be paid for making software, since both consume money to produce. The fact that software doesn't consume (much) money to produce more units after one is produced means that the model of compensation may be different, but I don't think it means there should be no compensation at all. It is easy to go too far in the other direction (e.g. the behavior of record companies and movie studios, who exploit the real authors), but I don't think that invalidates the concept entirely.

Re:The Danger of E-Books by coldtea on Friday October 16, 2015 @11:55AM (#10400129)
>Because it's illegal is (IMHO) not a reason at all, on its own. I'll also agree that copyright is not an intrinsically moral concept, like material theft. However, I think copyright (in some form, not necessarily in the way it is practiced today) is a key piece of positive law. Absent of copyright, there is no reason to pay anyone for any easily duplicatable product, except out of the goodness of one's heart.

So no more big bugdet commercial BS endlessly re-run and re-sold on DVDs and such. Art would be created by people really passionate for it. From my point of view, that would be progress. Of course some people would lament not having Transformers 3 -- but then again, some people would lament anything and everything, including bad things. The key question is: is it better in aggregate?

Now, for other stuff, like software, that might indeed be an issue. I'm assuming here that "pro" software is a good thing (more features, higher quality), where "pro art" is a bad thing (more commercialized crap).

Re:The Danger of E-Books by johncolanduoni on Friday October 16, 2015 @12:04PM (#10400205)
Don't get me wrong, I have no love for the members of a 4 letter content producer organizations, or the over-expansion of copyright they push. My point is that copyright in some shape or form is important for less scummy players in the content business.

For example, the direction Patreon and Kickstarter are taking the indie media scene is very encouraging, but these little fish would be even more screwed if copyright completely evaporated.

Re:The Danger of E-Books by krapp on Friday October 16, 2015 @01:20PM (#10400724)
>So no more big bugdet commercial BS endlessly re-run and re-sold on DVDs and such. Art would be created by people really passionate for it.

It's possible to be passionate about your craft and spend money on it and want to make money at it. I would be willing to bet that most of the people who worked on Transformers 3 were actually quite passionate. Then again, so are Uwe Boll and Stephanie Meyer. Mainstream familiarity breeds contempt in hispters and elitists but it's not necessarily the case that there is an inverse relationship between the scale of distribution and artistic quality. You can find good, high budget commercial fare as well as plenty of garbage on the indie side of any creative industry.

Making an exemption for software development doesn't really make sense either. Surely, if artists need to starve for the sake of their work then programmers do as well?

Re:The Danger of E-Books by Tomte on Friday October 16, 2015 @12:19PM (#10400324)
But I liked the Avengers movies, even though you would certainly call them "commercialized crap".

In a world where they hadn't been created, I would be strictly worse off. Even if I could enjoy low-budget "artsy" movies.

Probably in Hungarian without subtitles, for maximum authenticity.

Re:The Danger of E-Books by fsloth on Friday October 16, 2015 @12:04PM (#10400204)
"Art would be created by people really passionate for it."

That's how art happens even now.