But until we have that new system, would it be alright to continue to respect the wishes of authors who have created creative works under the current economic system? Consent is important. We can’t opt them into our hypothetical passion-driven economic system where is everything is free against their will.
Individual authors might opt in, and it’s fair game to pirate their work. But let’s not decide on behalf of other people.
Technological advances are going to make it very hard to enforce copyright.
Alternately, technological advances are going to make it much easier to control everything a person has access to, constantly monitor everything they access, and identify/punish those who access unauthorized material.
What technological advances do you imagine preventing me and others from doing this?
Storage will continue to decrease in cost. It will only get easier to duplicate these libraries. What happens when they fit on a phone or a thumb drive?
DRM "Trusted Computing" and spying at the OS level mostly. Your friend will plug in the external hard drive. Their OS will immediately scan the contents, upload filenames/hashes to a server to compare them against anything they consider illegal or unacceptable. Any attempt to play media will require your computer to connect to the internet to verify that you have a valid license for it. Your friend's OS will be 100% cloud based (Windows360 SE) making every device basically a dumb terminal and anything they do on their computer could be watched and analyzed in real time for signs of illegal activity (and market research). Your files may not even be accessible at all for your friends since the OS could stamp each file with an ID and remote attestation could prevent any unauthorized computer/user account from viewing the files. You can't authorize all your friends computers without de-authorizing your own. Limited number of authorizations per year. Any attempts to access unauthorized content could be logged and reported to authorities.
DRM is in every browser, and even in the HTML5 spec.
Every computer/monitor that supports HDMI already has DRM included in it designed to prevent you from making unauthorized copies of high quality video content. Like all DRM it's illegal to bypass that.
Starting with Windows 10 (although a windows update later added it to 7 and 8) Microsoft collects your filenames. Apple already wanted to scan their customer's personal files for illegal content.
We're much much closer to that reality than I'd like. There's already very little hope of getting away from DRM.
I remain entirely unconvinced that I will somehow be stopped from putting together unencumbered Linux machines. I am unconvinced that anyone can prevent me from enjoying and sharing the terabytes of content I already have. I am unconvinced that HDCP strippers will stop working for existing content. I am unconvinced that people around the world will be entirely prevented from copying new content.
HDCP strippers will probably keep working, but committing crimes like circumventing DRM only gets riskier as our computers log and report back connected devices, what we're doing on them, and companies can buy up our purchase histories.
I do admire your optimism, but I've seen our freedom increasingly restricted over the course my own lifetime too. For example, the idea that Microsoft was overstepping their boundaries and taking inappropriate liberties with our computers has been around since Windows 95, but there was a time when I never thought we'd see a day where MS was openly snooping on user's personal files or plastering ads all over their OS yet here we are.
Don't underestimate surveillance capitalism and the desire companies and governments have to restrict what we're able to do with our own devices.
I honestly cannot think of a more trivial reason to tinker with the system of incentives that undergirds the global economy.
Anyway, the free worldwide digital library already exists at library dot lol.
But there is a big difference between an illegal pirate library and an authorized global library. The latter would be much better for everyone.
And you might be surprised to realize that providing a basic standard of living for every person does not require dismantling the larger capitalist system. Corporations buying raw materials could still pay in currency. I’m just describing a world where food and shelter and clothing and individual transportation and medical care are provided to everyone. This doesn’t even require dismantling the broader capitalist system.
This claim is contrary to common sense. If there are no IP protections, why would I write a novel? The moment I share it, every publisher on the planet can print it for free, without paying me a penny. If I invent a widget, Walmart can use their established supply chains to build my widget for cheaper and distribute it wider than I ever could. Why would I put in all the work required to invent my widget only for some soulless corporation to profit from my labor?
> The latter would be much better for everyone.
So we remake the global economic system... to remove the odium that accompanies pirating IP?
> And you might be surprised to realize that providing a basic standard of living for every person does not require dismantling the larger capitalist system.
Obviously--every single nation with a high standard of living has achieved it via free markets.
Why did you write this comment? Anyone can copy it for free without paying you a penny! Even if authors had zero chance of making money on books they would continue to write them because they have something to say and writing is what they love. Fewer people might become full time authors, but books would continue to be made. There would always be artists who would continue to paint and musicians who would continue to write songs even if they could never make a single cent on their work too.
Not everyone gets fulfillment only when they are paid money. Many artists are perfectly happy just knowing people enjoy their works and want to share them with others. Some artists even encourage the free sharing of their works.
Common sense is often wrong. This is how we form new ideas. We look at existing common sense and discover the flaws, and that's part of how the world changes.
> If there are no IP protections, why would I write a novel?
Because no one else has written it and you have a story to tell. Are you a novelist? I feel like most novelists write primarily because they want to write, often despite it being unlikely to net much profit. This is like looking at open source software and saying "if someone could copy my code I would never write any code". Well, this may be true for you, but it is quite apparently not true for everyone. As someone who puts every engineering artifact of mine on github with a copyleft license, the idea that people will only do things if they can exercise IP restrictions is just comical to me.
> If I invent a widget, Walmart can use their established supply chains to build my widget for cheaper and distribute it wider than I ever could.
Walmart may or may not want to produce the thing. You may notice that there is a lot of open source hardware out there and walmart isn't producing it all, so obviously there are more criteria out there than "free designs exist". If it happens that they are well positioned to produce the item then it's probably good for everyone for them to produce it.
Think for example of the people in poorer countries who, through their government's agreement with the WTO to trade normalization laws, they are required to follow US patent laws. So if there is a piece of medical equipment like an MRI machine that is patented and costs one million dollars, those people will simply have to die of their illness because no one in their country could afford the patented machine. But if IP restrictions did not exist, then someone well suited to produce those machines could produce them for cheaper, to the medical benefit of people all over the world.
> Why would I put in all the work required to invent my widget only for some soulless corporation to profit from my labor?
Because the widget does not exist and you want it to. That's why I and so many other people contribute to open source.
> So we remake the global economic system... to remove the odium that accompanies pirating IP?
No, we remove the intellectual property restrictions generally spread across the globe over the last 30 years to end this government blockade on innovation that comes with an individual being able to claim rights over one idea. I assume you are not familiar with the story of 3D printers and how rapidly they spread only after the patents expired. 3D printers were patented in 1989, though two companies came up with the idea and were not able to resolve things until the early 1990's, when they agreed on terms and began selling the first machines for $50,000 in 1995. By 2008 the price had dropped to $25,000. In this time they sold 16,000 machines. Then the patents expired. Creators in Europe worked to make the first open source 3D printer which they got working just as the patents expired. This clearly demonstrates the folly of your assertion that engineers would not work without intellectual property restrictions, as these creative engineers did just that. There is something that animates us that is deeper than profit that does not require government manipulation of markets to facilitate. Over the next three years engineers all over the world worked on new designs, and by 2011 you could get a decent 3D printer for $2k. By 2018, there were hundreds of manufacturers all over the world, you could get a machine for $250, and a single company, Prusa, was shipping 6,000 printers a month. Their machine was all open source and their machines are still all open source to this day.
So printers went from $50k to $25k in the first 13 years under patent, and then $25,000 to $250 in the following ten years after patent. They went from shipping 16000 printers in 13 years to global volumes of 10k per month. So tell me, did more innovation occur before or after the patents expired? And given that two companies independently invented them and had to work out agreements before they could sell, I think it is fair to say that they could have taken off before 2008 if it had not been for the patents.
Remember, the sole purpose of a patent is to block would-be innovators from improving upon a patented design. This is like molasses for innovation. Patents do allow for securing large investments, but without patents we would see more frequent smaller investments to help innovators maintain first mover advantage and keep the market moving. The whole point is that free markets work fine without the massive market intervention that is government-secured monopoly on information.
Imagine if poorer nations could copy the designs for MRI machines? Then suitable machines would still be produced. You have to really study how open source 3D printers have developed to understand that the rules of innovation do not follow the old business school fairy tale that all innovation comes from big investors looking to create new IP. That just isn't the only way things work. And when you learn how all this other innovation occurs, you start to see how much of that is being squashed by IP restrictions.
> every single nation with a high standard of living has achieved it via free markets.
We could achieve a higher standard of living with freer markets not moderated by government decree that allows an individual to claim monopoly on information for 20 years or longer. It's funny that you mention free markets because the Mises Institute has multiple lectures about the way Intellectual Property harms capitalism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWShFz4d2RY
What you are describing is a wonderful result that happens to fail due to our economic system which requires everyone to constantly seek profitable activities to survive. If seeking profitable activity was optional, authors could write books as their passion drives them, and then share them with everyone for free on a global library. Most creators create because they want to do so, and the profit is incidental as they require some profit to survive.
But if we have an economic system that can’t handle maximum convenience of a free worldwide digital library, it’s worth considering systems that would allow for that.