What is more abusive—choosing to sell your creation on your own terms, or forcing someone else to sell their creation to you on terms of your choosing?

Thankfully, if someone creates something of value, they don’t have to sell it to you if they don’t want to.

Copyright is an invention; if it is being used to grossly undermine ownership rights, then we should reconsider the extent to which we privilege copyright holders, including our current approach of granting state-backed legal enforcement of their DRM schemes.

As long as Congress continues to cash the checks that Walt Disney writes, copyright is an indefinite protection.

Furthermore, having the mouse fall out of copyright doesn't actually impact Disney's bottom line all that much, for two reasons:

1. They aren't losing much. You still can't put him on a t-shirt or sell any merch of him; that will infringe upon trademarks that will practically never expire. You are only limited to either direct reuploads of the public-domain material (which is practically worthless save for historical value) or including him as a character in another unrelated new work; and even then you will have to be very careful to only include aspects of him that were expressed in a public domain cartoon. Anything still under copyright casts a long shadow over the public domain[0].

2. The mouse isn't actually their flagship franchise anymore. Disney has since graduated to the FAANG strategy of "Can't innovate? Just buy your competition!". In this case that means buying up Marvel, Lucasfilm, and most of 20th Century FOX to gain access to more relevant - and, most importantly, newer works. Those works will not hit the public domain in any appreciable way for at least another half-century.

[0] My favorite example of this: Public Domain Sherlock Holmes is not allowed to have emotions because that's part of Still Copyrighted Sherlock Holmes.

I've lived basically my whole adult life dealing with this. Works never entering the public domain because of this copyright extension nonsense. Even college professors seem to think copyright is eternal. I had to argue with one that no, I do not need a textbook for a 19th century work. I can just read it on project Gutenberg or anywhere I want.

The EU wanted a single copyright term for their single market, so they picked the member state with the longest term (Germany), made that the EU-wide standard, and then put in a reciprocal extension clause basically designed to force America to go life+70.

At the time Disney was pushing hard into the European market[0] and having uniform copyright rules between two major trading blocks would be a huge boon to them. Keeping the mouse slightly more under their thumb than it could have been otherwise was just a bonus.

[0] Even when it was losing them billions of dollars, such as with the EuroDisney debacle

Edit:

Winnie 1926, later purchased by Disney

Willie 1928

Ownership of web applications is not governed primarily by copyright law (which is only relevant as it pertains to the front-end portion of a web app that users download to their browser), but rather by trade secret law (with regards to the server-side code) and trademark law (with regards to the domain name).

Neither trade secrets nor trademarks ever expire if the proper precautions are taken—nor have they ever. Your point regarding copyright extensions is largely irrelevant to the question of web applications.

E.g., any data, file, or model, etc, should be exportable and in a format that is specified well enough for a competing company to offer a migration path away.

this right will ensure that there wouldn't be any rugpulls.

One only need look at web browser engines vis a vis web standards, all out in the open, and the Herculean effort required to get to the current state of differences between browser rendering, to get a sense of the challenge.

Such specifications also need to maintain test suites with real data and code and reference code to even start a conversation about effective inter-product data interchange.

That's fine but here the conditions were changed after one's already committed money.

That's a different ballgame altogether and it should be regulated by law - simply because it's intentional exploitation.

Edit: it just occurred to me that this Autodesk case is big enough to become a precedent. If lawmakers and regulators want reasons for updating the law then they should look here. Moreover, the many issues raised here in comments by HN's knowledgeable readership would alone provide sufficient justification for laws to be altered.

I hope those from Autodesk read these comments, it may give them room for thought.

There's a hassle of changing OS's, but ultimately it's a market in which the must compete.

Of course you could take an open-source approach like Blender, but that's a 20-30 year climb.

If you have a well established product that dominates its market and exploit your vendor lock-in to say 'hey in 30 days I'm just going to start charging you an additional rent in exchange for nothing, by turning off a feature you may have come to depend on' then you're basically telling your existing customers 'fuck you, that's why.'

They haven't created anything of value in this case. they've destroyed value in order to extract an economic rent. It's zombie economics.

I have a LOT of problems with having all of us enforce copyright for them (at society's expense - mind you) so that they can freaking rent you their product forever.

Basically - I think capitalism is structured to be efficient when you have to produce physical goods, and every copy incurs an unavoidable expense - which can be optimized through competition.

I think "modern capitalism" where the goal has obviously become: Extract as much value for as little cost as possible is an ethical quagmire when dealing with digital goods. The clear goal is for companies to keep the right to make zero-cost copies, and force consumers to rent a copy for an on-going permanent cost.

Where is the end game here? What is your plan when literally every item costs you a monthly charge, and you own nothing? Explain to me how that's not just a more complex form of slavery?

What? This is a non sequitur. Please explain the connection to slavery (as defined as a person is owned by another and has no or few rights).

The theme is that your labor, and the value it produces, is not captured by you. You work, but do not capture the benefits of that work in meaningful and significant ways. This is directly related to "you do not own - you rent". Because that (quite literal) rent seeking behavior is leaching additional capital from you.

If you prefer, or if "slavery" is a term you feel loaded, you can substitute "serfdom" instead. It's also not quite apt - since it implies a tie to a specific geographic location, but it's close.

Alternatively, you might consider this very similar to a person in a "company town" - they work all day at the company, only to be forced to buy literally every item from the only store in town - the company's store. Which, conveniently for the company, charges them roughly their month's wage for housing/food/clothing. They are working and gaining nothing.

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So in this case, what happens when every item you need (not want) to participate in society is costing you a monthly subscription cost equivalent to your monthly wages?

What happens when internet, car, home, phone (and the apps on that phone) are all rented items, that capture literally all of your wages?

I'd actually say that for many lower class folks in the US right now this is already the case - they work 80 hours a week at two full time jobs, and literally all of it simply gets them to tomorrow. Nothing can be saved, there is no chance to "own" any of it. They certainly make plenty of value - it's just captured by someone else.

It's not going to stop there, though - it's going to keep eating through the ranks of our society. You will be free! (please note that your freedom is the choice to rent an Apple or a Google phone). You have choices! (please note that your choices are limited to renting a car from BMW/Ford/Tesla/etc). You will make decisions! (please note that your decisions are limited to selecting whether to rent content from Hulu or Netflix). You can vote for any one you want! (please note that they must be either Democrat or Republican).

Please allow me to offer these questions, since they better represent where my brain is at the moment... What does it mean if a person cannot buy and outright own the tools needed for their work? Is this necessarily bad? Does it tend to be bad? Does it depend on other things?

Your thoughts? (Can you slow down a little? It seems like you jumped to dystopian scenarios quite quickly.)

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* Sorry, it is a vague statement, something that seems to be taken for granted. But this makes me wonder if neuroscientists have made efforts to compare how different brains do conceptual reasoning. Can concepts be visualized in an fMRI? How? Are they represented in ways that have commonalities across people? Cultures?

In some interesting ways - socialism is fairly close to the idea of "a person who cannot buy and outright own the tools needed for their work". Except the moral justification for that system is that the "owner" who is capturing the value is "all of us". Communism is also there, but it's a little more honest that the "state" (in whatever form it might take) is the owner capturing value - and you just hope that the state is doing good things for you, and will take care of you.

In practice though, I think our society is regressing to similar outcomes that were experienced in communist/socialist countries (not good), but the owner capturing value happens to be a corporate entity. Which is functionally not all that different from "the state", it's just even more honest that it has no real obligation to society at large. They carry obligations to their employees and shareholders, but not much else. In theory - they also have obligations to the government, but that requires that the government be functional and powerful enough to enforce that obligation. I think we're seeing that control slip (and not for the first time - robber barons was the term we coined last time it happened).

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But to your point - it's not required to be a negative (in theory - socialism is great), I just have yet to see any case where it doesn't immediately devolve into abuse (see pretty much every communist country in history). It can still work out great for individuals if they happen to be on the right end of the deal, but it rarely works out for society at large.

I'd guess how much it bothers you is probably strongly dependent on how much you value individualism.

"slavery" is even less apt since it implies a tie to a specific person or entity that owns you and controls your every action.

>phone (and the apps on that phone) are all rented items

Is this really something we need to worry about? You can get an Android phone for $100 with no contract. Is there a single app that you "need (not want)" that is paid, much less paid by subscription?

Look - I agree that neither word is an exact fit, but I think this is a misunderstanding of slavery at large, and a view exclusively through the lens of European slavery, and slavery in the colonies (ex: islands and the US).

Historically, slavery is a really complicated thing, and almost every society had some form of forced labor, performed by low tier members of the society - the details of which vary dramatically.

Slavery (outside the narrow scope of the US history of it) is absolutely not "tied to a specific person or entity that owns you and controls your every action".

Ex - Pre-colonial native american tribes had all sorts of forms of slavery, everything from "we're going to sacrifice you and then eat you" to "you have been captured to fill the role of the warrior you killed in battle". In the later case, they were often given duties and responsibilities markedly similar to the person they replaced, and in some cases end up formally adopted by the tribe in question.

Further - looks at places like India, where african slaves were brought over not for manual labor, but for military use (dating as far back as the 12th century). That enabled them far greater social mobility. Just take a look at cultures like the Siddi - West coast african slaves who rose to become rulers in India.

Basically - ditch the high school view of slavery - it's all the rage in the media right now because it's a wonderfully divisive topic in the US, and diverts attention from other serious political matters. But historically - it's very euro/us-centric in tone (and not even all that accurate within those cultures...).

I personally am ok with that.

What if they rent it out to the same tenant for 50 years? I am ok with that but start to question the wisdom of the tenant. What if rent keeps going up even beyond a reasonable mortgage payment? It doesn't make me question the landlord more. It makes me question the tenant more.

Now if you add a wrinkle like the landlord passes a law that no more houses can be built, then my prejudice switches. Or if it is more subtle like you can't build with the same kind of materials, or reuse a concept like footings.

I oppose that kind of rent-seeking. But it's not the rent-seeking to which I object. It's the moating.

Of course, it's hard to build a new house even without moating. I see too often people who just pay rent because it's inconvenient to look for alternative housing. And building their own seems way too hard. Their own creation would never have the bells and whistles of what they are renting.

Wells Fargo is a perfect example. You get cheated and abused and swindled, but you don't leave. Microsoft was an example for a very long time. Intel has been an example. Amazon is in a big way.

"There's no other option," people cry. But of course there is. Regarding Autodesk, FreeCAD is an option. "Not even close!" some claim. MicroStation? "No way." Solidworks? "Well..."

Build your own, rent from somebody else, go homeless, or stay where you are and pay your rent. And if somebody makes it illegal to do anything but the last, revolt. But don't claim there's no other way if you just mean you want to be entitled.

* Edited for typos *

Because living in tent doesn't get you a toilet and loses a lot.

So build your own house! Or pay someone to build you a house. Or join forces with 10 others and build a hostel with decent toilets, or a tent campground with a bathhouse. Move to a different building with higher rent.

Or just sit in your dump apartment, keep paying rent, and complain about the toilet. Yeah, that's the best choice.

What's that? It's a 3-bath that still has 2 working toilets and a great kitchen? It's not a total dump? It's kind of a dump but close to awesome schools? Look, is it worth the rent or not? Stay and pay, or leave. What's that? It costs money and trouble for a moving van? Sigh. It sure does.

Even if it is just subscription, what is the length of the subscription? If it's say 1 year, you could ask for a refund for the rest of the year since they've changed what they're giving you.

A person, sure! A company? I don’t think it holds up. A company has no sense of morality, no career duration, no children or relatives to take care of. It has a duty to take care of shareholders. When the way it choses to do that naturally comes to oppose our ethics, we legislate.

Perhaps another analogy would put Autodesk (or any other rent-seeking company) as a mildly abusive partner, with similarly clear options: put up, find another partner, go single etc.

Doesn't mean the mildly abusive partner isn't mildly abusive.

(Clearly Autodesk is withing their rights here, I'm not suggesting otherwise).

World Economy Fiefdom ;)

Let me offer a perhaps undesired writing suggestion. Avoid using "obviously". It tends to signal you think it is obvious, yes. We are here on a fairly decent Internet forum, and you should expect some number of people to disagree. When someone disagrees, the word "obviously" backfires: you come across as overconfident. You lost your first impression to persuade.

1. Your stated goal is not obvious. Actually, it is not a particularly useful way to understand company goals. We need a better understanding of corporate goals in order to explain the variation we see.

To gloss over just one way companies vary: not all companies want to seek profit in the same way. Companies vary in terms of their time horizons. Companies having tough times often try to squeeze out more profits in the short run. More stable companies sometimes are willing to take a hit to build market share.

There are many other ways they vary too: risk profiles, market segments, and more. Another example: some companies actively seek to improve their brand even though doing so is expensive and may not pay off right away.

And let's not forget that some founders do have goals other than pure profit maximization. Some focus first on other things, believing that sufficient profits will follow.

Second, while copies may be nearly zero cost, maintenance and support are not.

And look - I'm not even completely disagreeing with you (I'm certainly not downvoting folks in this thread). Particularly -

>And let's not forget that some founders do have goals other than pure profit maximization

This I agree with whole-heartedly. I strongly believe that founder personality has a large influence on companies, but my complaint is that eventually the founder dies or retires, or is ousted. But the company just keeps chugging along, and (particularly for public companies, although this still applies to private companies) the goal of the company changes from "vision of the founder" to "pay the shareholders". And if we're focused on paying shareholders... it's really, really hard to turn down "we make a widget that costs zero per unit, and we rent it for $x, and legally - no one else is allowed to make that widget".

It's just about as profitable as you can possibly be - and that profit enables you to do all sorts of things that are not "improve the company product" to keep that revenue stream. Things like "hire all the engineers who might compete with you" or "Buy all the politicians that might regulate you" or "acquire all the competition that might disrupt you" or "suppress all the uprisings that put your monopoly at risk" or "murder lawyers and journalists in other countries who might expose you". And it works - because they're capturing huge amounts of value in the form of the labor their consumers are forced to expend in renting their product, which they produce for nothing.

Worse - I also agree that companies have differing goals - but they are competing, and you can't really compete with an entrenched monopoly that is legally allowed to produce widgets that cost nothing, but is legally allowed to prevent other folks from producing those same widgets for nothing (copyright/trademark/IP). From the outside it might look like this competition is happening, but by far and large, the larger companies are just buying the smaller competitor.

Even tiktok - it's getting so much flak in the media right now because our tech giants can't buy it (and it deserves it - but so do Google/Apple/Meta, they're all peddling ads and addiction - selling you as fast as they can).

So while companies might start out with different goals - our current system works very hard to force them into becoming profit centers for their owners - who will be the folks who buy them and force the founder out.

> "murder lawyers and journalists in other countries who might expose you"

Wait, did I miss something?