There's a good modern day example we could look at. Reggae music. Jamaica lacks (or did) copyright laws. Because of this, music was reused over and over again. From the 1950's onwards, kids, poor people, anyone with technical knowhow could build a soundsystem, cobbled together from spare parts, get some records and play music. Eventually, many of those people went on to form recording studios and such. Because there was no laws against it, music was widely taken and reused amongst different studios, to the point where these same songs are still being remade today. Because of this, many, many people were lifted from poverty and were able to make careers from this, to the point where reggae has become a global phenomenon, primarily outside north america, where people are still taking these songs and making new versions of them.

Over the years, because of this system, not just the original creators, but hundreds if not thousands of people have benefited, profited and bettered their lives because of music originally recorded in the 1950's and 60's by people, in many cases, long dead.

Under the north american system, the copyright owner would have made millions of dollars, and entire genres of music would.never have been created in their current form.

The value to humanity in that situation far outweighs the profit of the original creators.

> Under the north american system, the copyright owner would have made millions of dollars, and entire genres of music would.never have been created in their current form.

Not the most convincing conjecture when the "loser" in your comparison is one of the biggest music genre-creating powerhouses in the world and its music is rife with sampling, and the "winner" in your comparison is mainly known for a single genre of music.

many of those sampling heavy American music styles (hip-hop, much electronic music) were very directly and strongly influenced by Jamaican dub which grew out of reggae.

I think the argument is reasonable that we don't get any of it, at least not in the forms we have now, without Jamaican music. DJ Kool Herc was Jamaican.

on the other hand, it is definitely true that the American music industry with its strict copyright has not exactly been stagnant. but it is different.

I have an hard time understanding your point, are you saying that the ones that build music out of someone else music, couldn't have done something similar without building out someone else works? They couldn't either if they had to pay a small license fee to the original author?

What made they come out of poverty? Their creation? Or their distribution? Because how you make it seems, the ones that came out of proverty aren't the creative ones... just like the good old copyright owner in America.... It's the ones that found something good and were able to sell it better. The only difference is that the creative one didn't have a choice but to forgo their ownership... just like in America though, which happens under economic pressure instead of by law, but at least, they can at least refuse that.

> The value to humanity in that situation far outweighs the profit of the original creators.

It does though if the original creator couldn't make money out of his original creation... Your premise depends on the fact that without the original creator, the subsequent creation wouldn't be worth it... You want to scrap what's worth it... for something that can't even exist without it.

If you create somethibg, you decide what happens to it. In the case of IP, this should mean you decide whether or not you want to release it/tell others about it. But an idea is not a physical object. Once you tell somebody else your idea, they can tell somebody else with no loss to yourself.

It's like lighting a candle. If you create one, you do not have to share it with anybody. But once you do light somebody else's candle from your own, they are now free to light anybody else's without taking anything away from your candle. That's how ideas work.

The only reason IP law exists, is because people have decided that profit might be lost if people share your idea with others. We are artificially stifling the spreading of ideas from person to person, because of profit. This is a tragedy.

> The only reason IP law exists, is because people have decided that profit might be lost if people share your idea with others. We are artificially stifling the spreading of ideas from person to person, because of profit. This is a tragedy.

IP law exists so people share ideas, because they can do so while still being compensated. Otherwise they might keep them secret, not devote a lot of time and resources into developing them etc.

"You spent a billion dollars to develop a medication for this type of cancer. Now everybody can manufacture it and you're down a billion dollars. Thanks for your generosity!"

How often do you believe that will be said before people stop investing money into development?

No man is an island.

There are explicit influences in things that are created, but there are many implicit influences too. That thing that was created, could it have been made without this society or culture? Could it have been made in a different culture? Didn't we all contribute a little bit to it?

So, while I do agree with your general point that people must have incentive to create and profit/control is one way to do that, my concern is that when things are locked up tight they die and our culture does not benefit from their creation. It would be easy to say that if they are forgotten then maybe they weren't of any use, but history of full of art and science that was not appreciated until much later.

Or conversely, a creation that is a clear product of the zeitgeist could be very influential but if no one can use it, then waiting decades for rights to clear will render it useless.

Imagine if cooking were invented today. Only one individual in the world would be allowed to make sausages without paying royalties.

As Rayiner often points out, this argument applies even more powerfully to real property, which was usually expropriated coercively from its original owners.

I'm not familiar with that person (poster?). But taken to the extreme it could also be an endorsement for Communism or something like it too, but I don't think it's usually healthy to take things to the extreme.

I prefer a middle ground and the original intent (at least as much as is commonly told) around copyright, trade secrets, and patents seemed to be a relatively healthy take on that even if it now needs an update. Depending which path you choose there's a trade-off between how much the creator gets and how much society gets, with varying degrees of control, protection, and communal ownership. The creator gets to choose, but they have a limited set of choices agreed upon by society, rather than individual agreements for every item we buy.

> I'm not familiar with that person (poster?). But taken to the extreme it could also be an endorsement for Communism or something like it too

I think this example might serve: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22250260

I see. Well that seems to mostly talk about physical property. That makes sense - there is one thing, it takes effort to make more, and only one person can have it at a time.

Many people have a problem with equating "theft" to intellectual property since the concept doesn't map directly. If I make a dining table, I shouldn't have to hand it over to my country after a "limited" time (life of the creator plus 70 years now, isn't it?). But perhaps other people should be able to create similar looking tables after a while, to help advance any new techniques or artistic styles used. Ideas can be used while still belonging to the creator.

If I try to block that cultural evolution with a license of some kind, I think I'm doing a disservice to the culture that helped me create the table.

Anyway, does that still relate to the article? Probably not, I was replying more to the concept that everything is made in isolation so full control should be kept. As a society we already decided that doesn't always apply to IP which books are definitely part of. If we aren't careful in separating the concepts of products and ideas, then we get tractors we aren't allowed to fix.

I think the root issue is the creator didn't entirely understand what they were giving away. Harper Collins and all publishers don't create content. They are a delivery platform. Unfortunately to use their delivery platform I have to give them exclusive rights to the content (it's even worse than face book and reddit where they merely claim right to use the content).

In return they'll give you <10% of the profits of publishing the book. That seems like a terrible deal today.

On top of that we're also talking about books where the author is dead.

Why is anyone entitled to my creation isn't a valid question to ask of book publishers. They didn't create a thing.

If it were such a terrible deal authors wouldn't take it, especially successful authors. They overwhelmingly do because it's absolutely more successful the vast, vast majority of the time in getting paid than any of the alternatives are.

I think you make valid point and pose an interesting question. Your comment shouldn’t be downvoted.

There isn’t an easy answer to this. On one side there are many cases where people give away powerful things for free, which has huge positive implications and on the other hand there I sympathize with the notion of wanting to reap benefits of their work.

The underlying problem may be that you only profit if you demand or enforce it?

> If you create something you decide what happens with it. That seems reasonable to me.

Yeah, with the original physical thing you created with your own two hands. Not with a copy of some text or image in a file.

A lot of couples out there would very much disagree that everyone should have access to the image files they created for each other.

You're conflating two orthogonal issues: Privacy and copyrights.

If they posted their photo collection online for all to see, they can't expect people not to make a copy of some of the photos.