Re:All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US publ...
by kragen on Thursday December 09, 2021 @03:18PM
(#29502393)
Creators are free to choose to spend their time doing creative work, or not, as we please. I'm going to keep writing for the public, and so are lots of other people, and we don't care if you do or not. Amazon or anyone else can redistribute our work; that way it reaches more people. They won't have much luck selling it when you can just download it for free.
If you think the world owes you something in return for spending your time writing, you should take your ball and go home. We have a civilization to preserve here that copyright is threatening — children to educate, medical treatments to deliver, historical films to copy onto non-rotting stock, private communications it's intolerable to scan for forbidden information on which the government has granted you a monopoly — and any one of these is more important than what you think you deserve.
Our intellect is not your property.
The example you provided regarding the printing press resonates with me as an author. I have not included any form of DRM with the digital copies of my book and I won't go after individuals who pirate it. But, I will enforce my copyright on the work if a large company like Amazon tries to start selling it without my permission. When you say there should be no copyright, you're saying a giant corporation I want nothing to do with is entitled to profit off of three years of my labor, for free, without my consent.
There needs to be a more nuanced approach where laws are written and interpreted in a way that benefits regular everyday people. Abolishing copyright would do the opposite.