If you accept this is a good thing, then the degree problem becomes one of proportionality. I agree that life + 70 years is exorbitant, but that particular formula is relatively easy to change legally. Practically, you have to fight powerful interests (Disney) to change it, but it can (and IMHO should) be done.

One interesting notion is to fully privatize the problem of artificial scarcity. This might look something like leasing a Disney device (for example) to watch Disney content. This seems like something of a nightmare, until you realize that you don't really need to watch movies.

Among other matters:

- Your devices are no longer fully under your control, and don't answer to you.

- Even where DRM isn't itself directly. malware (Sony: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...), it inevitably creates backdoors for APTs.

- The legal proscriptions on analysing and assessing ADRM mechanisms create both minefields for researchers and multiply the existing security threat risk.

But most critically, and pretty much fully torpedoing your voluntarism argument, device vendors may be contractually or legally prohibited from producing non-DRM-afflicted devices in their own relationships with DRM gatekeepers, meaning that there are no (or very crippled or expensive) DRM-free alternatives.

Witness ongoing efforts to plug the "anologue hole" (https://www.eff.org/issues/analog-hole) in various devices and software.

FWIW, my complete crap Chrome browser on my complete crap Samsung Android device refuses to allow me to screenshot this HN thread claiming it is a "DRM protected page".

I'd love to replace the device with something vaguely comparable. Between licensing restrictions, monopoly coercion, and market dynamics, there is literally nothing available.

Or more briefly: Your assertion is absolutely unsupported by empirical experience.

Just tested with Firefox on Android (Moto E4 phone). Firefox did not block taking a screenshot of this thread. Perhaps you may wish to test Firefox yourself to see if it better obey's you than Chrome does.

But sadly it does, and while it does the options available are try something else or do without. In this case you can try Firefox for Android on your phone to see if it behaves better than Chrome.

It's to point out the problem that shouldn't exist, its root cause, and only one very minor, mundane, and utterly ridiculous consequence. Of a problem that should not exist.

At all.

For any reason.

But thank you regardless, your heart at least is in the right place.

What is this problem that shouldn’t exist, this root cause? And in which scenario does it go away: with the status quo laws or with their removal? And why would the scenario remove that root cause problem?

In addition to all of the other objections, the biggest failure here is of the technical measures to actually prevent copying. Even when it's prohibited by law and the pirates are a bunch of hobbyists, DRM gets broken time and again. You can imagine what would happen if copyright didn't exist and then breaking the DRM allowed for-profit businesses to legally distribute any of the content they extracted.

Copyright without DRM >>> DRM without copyright.

Though it should definitely be one or the other and not both. If copyright exists then DRM is not only useless, its existence is pure harm because all it adds to copyright is restricting things the copyright doesn't give the copyright holder a right to restrict, like free speech and fair use.

I like your point about DRM vs copyright. I guess I've always seen DRM as the "ounce of prevention" that replaces the "pound of cure" that copyright enforcement entails - although distribution platforms like YouTube increasingly reduce that pound to closer to an ounce (at the cost of more abuse). I think your point would be valid if enforcement of copyright was simpler and cheaper; perhaps you've read stories about photographers whose work has been used by large companies, without compensation, usually because the asset was included in projects done by 3rd party contractors. Its very expensive for an individual to enforce their rights. But yes, if the justice system itself were fixed to be fast, cheap, and fair, then I would agree that copyright alone would be the preferable solution.

Well I assume if we repeal all copyright then the laws against breaking DRM will be repealed too.

Imagine if J.K.Rowling wrote the first 3 Harry Potter books but didn't see a dime because the second they got popular everyone with a printing press started selling them royalty-free. Would she have finished the series? I got to read all 7 books because J.K.Rowling was incentivized to write them by her copyright.

I think most of us agree that copyright has value but its become excessive.

There really isn't any difference in terms of incentive for the author between 30 years and the current life of the author + 70 years (or whatever the current term is).

The copyright on the first Harry Potter book should have expired by now. Copyright expiration should not be merely a distant possibility that we rarely think about, as it is today.

This isn't how copyright was meant to work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#S...

CGP Grey on copyright: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4

There's studies of sales of works (books etc) and iirc, at least with books, the vast majority of sales are within the first several years, with income trailing after that. This has come up in discussions of zombie rights to works, where a publisher sits on something out of print without releasing new copies because the return isn't enough. It's like the textbook reason for limits on copyright terms. Last I looked at it, 30 years was more than sufficient to cover the bulk of sales in almost all cases. If you think back 30 years now, that would be works released pre 1980s and earlier. That makes intuitive sense to me.

My thinking is author's life for unpublished works (to protect works-in-progress), 10 years after publication unconditionally, followed by a sequence of renewals that require some level of public availability to be granted.

Obviously, there's a lot of details to be worked out: What constitutes publication? How long is the initial unconditional period? How many renewals are allowed and how long is each? What are the actual requirements to get a renewal?

Edit for examples.

Cyan, creator of Myst and Riven, had two very successful Kickstarter to fund new works. First, they raised $1,321,306 to make Obduction, then $1,433,161 for Firmament.

Elite: Dangerous raised £1,578,316 for a modern remake.

Yes, it works for books, too: https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?category_id=18...

So once again: you seriously think that J.K. Rowling, a completely unknown author with a manuscript repeatedly rejected by publishing houses, is going to be able to raise sufficient funding on Kickstarter for her first work?

They were only able to make up the rest because they knew copyright meant they'd get paid more when they shipped via sales where as without copyright it would just be copied.

Here's an article on Elite:Dangerous saying the actual budget was 8m

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-09-11-elite-dangerou...

Yes, but AAA games and e.g. feature films are among the highest-cost works to make. They're very much an exception, not the rule.

(unless the game was being made for free as a hobby and the kickstarted was just for fun and not actually funding).

Both Obduction and Firmament are for sale. They aren't free games.

As to revenue Patrons, Trademark, etc also work. Shakespeare for example had zero copyright protection and still wrote quite a bit.

PS: If anything the massive sums she received from the HP series discouraged her to write more.

But she owned the copyright to it, and could trade that copyright for a contract on the book. That is, she had a viable monetization mechanism if her work was good.

So once again: absent this, provide a plausible way Rowling could have made money on her first book.

The way she made money was extremely implausible.

This is like arguing we need the NBA because it provides a job for LeBron James.

It's sort of like why would anyone pay to attend MIT, when you can watch videos of the lectures for free on youtube? Oddly enough, MIT is doing better than ever.

He created an ebook version of The Martian, freely downloadable at the time. People did give him donations though. He only added it to Kindle for $0.99, because Amazon wouldn't let him distribute it for free. It look off from there.

When people would rather give the author $0.99 to make it easy to access on Kindle, than download it for free, and it becomes a bestseller, then that is a plausible way for an author to make money.

I'm not saying this couldn't work, in theory, but I think in practice that the # of parasites has the potential to make such a model unworkable. But maybe not! I'd be perfectly happy if you're right and it worked.

More generally, non-excludable goods do not work well within a free market system. If you want them produced, you either set up a state mechanism for funding them (which many countries do for e.g. film, by creating national film funds), or you somehow make them excludable (e.g. through copyright). The other options aren't really effective.

There'd be a small first-mover advantage for being the first to print a book and smaller operations not worth copying would still operate but J.K. Rowling wouldn't be a billionaire.

No one's disputing that. But she's also creating a lot more value at the same time. It's a wash.

Yes, that's called democracy. Copyright must be a system that is acceptable to most of us. In fact, copyright itself is more "byzantine" than just having the State issue a stipend to anyone who produces a work of art - yet must we be OK with such a solution?

Similarly, Joseph Galambos considered that people who coined words were due a royalty when they were used. Is is unfair that we decide to use that work for free instead?

Copyright is also the tool of open source code licensing. How exactly would a viral license operate when, lacking copyright, the authors have nothing to license?

This is such an obvious notion and it's not discussed nearly as often as it should.

It's not like my employer will be sending my last paycheck to my children 70 years after my death...

Property rights in general are anti-competitive and support rent-seeking. That's actually very much the point of them; to insulate a particular interest from those who would compete with the person to whom the right is granted and enable the grantee to reliably extract value from the subject of the right, including by monopoly rents.

Two things have messed with that deal - corporations are now treated as people, who live forever, and copyright extension allows corporations to extend copyright past the lifespan of the public they've made that bargain with.

I'd argue that a bargain that you can never collect on is not a valid bargain - the whole basis of copyright has been undermined - now it's just a monopoly.

Some novelists spent years collecting rejection slips (e.g. Stephen King; Larry Niven did it full time with a trust fund), which is probably irrational. But with no pot of gold at the end, only the properly delusional or wealthy could justify that investment.

OTOH copyright enforcement isn't that effective, so publishers meaninglessly vary textbook editions yearly, with expiring access to essential online content.

To rely on people producing things producing things without economic incentive is essentially the argument for anarchosocialism. It might work to some small degree for passion projects, but what the overall volume of creative production would collapse as creatives would have to find other ways to support themselves.

In the 19th century in Germany, Germany had no copyright or patent laws. There was an explosion of creativity and technological progress, and Germany became the European leader economically and technologically.

But the evidence for lack of copyright being useful in that period is very weak: https://www.wired.com/2010/08/copyright-germany-britain/

Most of the great German authors of the period had to hold other jobs to support themselves, which made completing works slow and halting. Goethe supported himself as a courtier/bureaucrat/officer of the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar until his mid-40s, Hegel was a teacher and academic administrator, Kleist barely made a living off of of publishing a magazine and stints in Prussian government service, etc.

But what they have done is leverage the status the books conferred into lucrative careers.

And yet, they were nonetheless able to be great authors. Now, contrast German authors of the 20th century, when copyright law was adopted. There's just no comparison.

There is no doubt that copycats would benefit enormously from an absence of patent protection, but innovators would doubtless invest less capital in innovation if they could protect it.

Germany, U.S., and Chinese copycats were about to free-ride on the license fees paid by English manufacturers to patent holders. If the English never established a patent law, then there would be nothing for them copy and the overall welfare of society would be reduced.

Which could work if we were to implement something like universal basic income, or progress to an agalmic economic society. I'm not optimistic on either of those.

Most of the world does not live in western countries (As a simplification think Europe, Australia, US, Canada etc).

In general, most of the world's valuable intellectual property has originated from Western countries.

What intellectual property law does is provide a monopoly on selling/producing something to a company or individual. The thing that is interesting about intellectual property is that it is not tangible. If someone is assaulted, or their physical car is stolen- the damage is very real and tangible.

However with intellectual property we have a worldwide system where copying intellectual ideas is equated to the same thing as physically stealing.

For example, imagine I setup a factory that outputs clones of the "Land Rover Range Rover" in East Timor. I may be allowed to sell the vehicle domestically, but exports of the vehicle to "advanced economies" will undoubtably blocked due to IP infringement.

This is a highly questionable practice for a few reasons.

1. Worldwide consumers would benefit for lower prices on Range Rovers 2. The production of Range Rovers in my knock off factory does not prohibit Land Rover from producing their vehicles 3. The special interest groups who benefit from the Range Rover monopoly are much wealthier than the rest of the world, and the monopoly only serves to reinforce that.

Intellectual property is fundamentally a way for the wealthy (people who can afford lawyers) to prevent potential competitors from implementing ideas.

There is no monopoly on differentiating mathematical functions, or calculating the current in an electric circuit. Yet somehow there are laws prohibiting copying designs for integrated circuits. It is all nonsense and the only winners are IP holders and lawyers.

World without IP: No Range Rovers.

Your imagined world of cheap range rovers if we suspended IP only works once but destroys all future incentive to create.

Fanfiction runs into legal trouble with copyrights.