But maybe the opinions of rent seekers don't always result in the best for economy and society.
> Julian Sanchez, who has been doing excellent work on copyright issues of late, has a nice post about how such arguments are totally irrelevant to copyright policy. He notes that it’s no surprise that artistic and creative people want greater copyright privileges, and fewer exceptions such as fair use, but that’s meaningless:
> > These will often be wonderful, likeable, creative people, and the correct policy response to these objections as such is: Cry me a fucking river; now piss off.
> And the reasoning why is that copyright policy is not about what someone deserves or about rewarding people based on some moral grounding. Its purpose is and has always been clear: to provide incentive to promote progress.
Regarding monetization:
- either you developed said software as an employee, than you were properly paid for it and it is not content
- your user bought liscenses from you for whatever conditions you agreed upon
- you sell it as a SaaS, and you get monthly subscription fees
- you give it away for free
Obviously, all those payments end when the conrtact with your customers end. If your next of kin runs the software 90 years from now, and customers still use it, of course cuatomers will pay, or not, as laid out above.
Well maybe calling it funny is not the right take.
A more apt comparison would be that a cracked version of your software is being used by OpenAI for profit without paying you for a license at all. Would you not object to that?
If Entity A has copyright on a application nothing is stopping Entity B from writing a competing application, they just have to invest their time and effort into the application like Entity A did. If Entity B thinks they can eat Entities A lunch with a different pricing model / cheaper price they are free to do so.
If Entity A has patent protection on a application then no one else can make the "same application"* (without licensing the patent) and Entity A has a monopoly on that market for the life of the patent (upto 20 years iirc).
* This would all be down to how the patent is written, and personally I am against software patents, but patents can often be bypassed even if that means that the bypassed version could be incompatible with the patented version. I also think that the length of copyright protection is too long, but I don't think it should be abolished either.
Your response isn't addressing what my response was addressing.
> In general, copyrights and patents generate royalty income reported on Schedule E, Supplemental Income and Loss, unless it is characterized as business income reported on Schedule C, Profit or Loss From Business (Sole Proprietorship). However, who owns the intellectual property, i.e., the creator or the party who requested its development, also determines the type of income reported. The proper classification of royalties also affects the recipient’s tax liability in other ways, including self-employment tax, investment interest deduction limitations, and the new 3.8% net investment income tax on unearned income.
Seems like that is already the case.
This doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong, especially given the economic realities of the world we find ourselves in, but it does seem more than a bit rent-y.
Meanwhile, if you need a payment plan to pay off a book, you're in a very dark place and you probably should simply pirate it. But selling a book to person B in 20 years doesn't sound like "rent", despite the fact that I have heard that "media older than 10 years is fair game to pirate". 10 years in industry can be a step for an artist, not a career's worth of time like the original copyright law time period.
You appear to be arguing against buying a house/book when I wrote about building/writing?
As in, if I write a book, and then thanks to copyright law own the right to make copies (hence the name) I and my estate get to make money from every new[0] copy sold for 70 years after death. That's what I'm saying smells like rent.
[0] But not re-sold copies because first-sale doctrine, and I hope equivalents but that's a US law and I don't know what if anything is the equivalent in my jurisdiction, but I hope there is.
If you want to make your software pay-to-use on a monthly basis, that is your perogative. But your 1 million users will quickly become 0 users.
No one would buy tables from those carpenters...
Perhaps you should understand basic market before making asinine statements such as, "But maybe the opinions of rent seekers don't always result in the best for economy and society."
If you create something and I take that and I end up earning money off your work, without compensating you.. Then that is in fact morally wrong. It really isn't harder than that.
An interesting way to start a comment.
> No one would buy tables from those carpenters...
There are companies owning large portions of markets where they can do exactly what you describe. Through market manipulation, political manipulation and probably other tactics I don`t know. This is a moral issue.
> If you create something and I take that and I end up earning money off your work..
While I agree with that statement, this is not the moral issue we are discussing. We are discussing the morals of rent seeking behavior, which you shrug of as "your 1 million users will quickly become 0 users" as if that will always be the case.
It actually refers to what you’re implicitly defending here: capturing the value of people’s production. Training AI on other people’s labor without paying them for it and then extracting value from it is rent-seeking.
Consider what happens to AI companies’ value if they had to enter into mutual agreements with their data sources. AI company value will be almost solely determined by the AI company’s own value contribution, which is close to zero, while the data sources’ value would be unaffected or go up.
If your business model relies on you leveraging the work of others without mutually agreeable remuneration, chances are good you’re the rent-seeker.
This logic always comes to conclusion with things like disposing of disabled and elderly.
In other words, not a great argument.
> A businessman could not build it for a profit, since he cannot claim a price from each user. This certainly is the kind of activity that governments would naturally undertake. Even if the operators were able—say, by radar reconnaissance—to claim a toll from every nearby user, that fact would not necessarily make it socially optimal for this service to be provided like a private good at a market-determined individual price. Why not? Because it costs society zero extra cost to let one extra ship use the service; hence any ships discouraged from those waters by the requirement to pay a positive price will represent a social economic loss—even if the price charged to all is no more than enough to pay the long-run expenses of the lighthouse.
> https://truthonthemarket.com/2021/06/22/the-virtues-and-pitf...
If one is to pay any amount of money more than the marginal cost, and decides not to that is an example of dead-weight loss.
I think the major issue here is that those that wish to abolish copyright and patents aren't then actively promoting another idea, as you say. Let's look at spaces where it is currently illegal to copyright or patent something, say, Maths formulas. Do we have no one working on new maths? No. We have plenty of Mathematicians. They either work for companies creating trade secrets, or they work for Universities releasing their work in journals for all to use.
So let's re-imagine a system where copyrights and patents are abolished. As Samuelson argues, as this is non-excludable and has zero marginal costs, it is a perfect fit for the government to take charge. Given that the current system produces dead-weight loss bringing down the production of the entire country, if we remove this dead-weight loss than the country will have much higher productivity. That higher productivity will drive higher taxes, and those higher taxes will allow the government to expand tenure track positions in public universities. Those tenure track positions can then go on and create new works and patents. The demand that those works create will then bring students to study and allow the works to proliferate.
Would you prefer a system where copyrights and patents were abolished but there were 100x more tenure track positions? Where 10% of the population held such a role?
> Rent seeking is an economic concept that occurs when an entity seeks to gain wealth without any reciprocal contribution of productivity. An example of rent seeking is when a company lobbies the government for grants, subsidies, or tariff protection.
Pay the musician $400-$500 for each song and then you don't need to pay a recurring fee for it in perpetuity.
Also I'm pretty sure if your carpenter has been studing to produce the works they produce and each work takes several months to a yeah then my estimated price above is off be at least 1 but probably more factors or 10
If it wasn't expensive time wise a musician can happily give you a no-redistribution license verbally, you may want it in writing to prove they gave it to you but that is about how loose these things are.
If you ask me "hey can I use this in my video for free" and you respond "yeah sure no problem" that's all it takes, if its in a text even better.
Granted most musicians don't currently have redistribution rights to their own music but that is between them and their lack of hiring a good contract lawyer, and this would fall under contract law not copyright.
Understand you are paying a lawyer to make intent clear in the first place since how do you define "use", we I might define it differently and the court may as well unless it is made explicit what "use" means.
There is a reason that even the licensing agreement you didn't read for most software is so verbose and licensing for any creative work is about as obtuse.
Intent is important though, if I intendef for you to use it to listen to at home but you instead played it tp a crowd of 20000 people and earned a fat paycheck there is a big difference there morally and under current law legally.
Most musicians want their music listened to, they just want a little money back for that... Same with other art forms.
In my mind, subscriptions imply support and/or updates, and I don't want to work on my software forever. But I don't necessarily want to give it out for free either. one lump sum sounds fine for me.
If anything, I'd expect the funding will go to those who can sustain themselves on things like Patreon and Kickstarter, where money is provided before the work is created, making the copyright protection irrelevant. And while the big corporations will get to own those Patreons and Kickstarters, hopefully there will be enough competition to keep their greed in check.
(Also, maybe more people will learn to tip for content even when they receive it for free)
It would be a death sentence to any smaller creator and services like Patreon would probably not even exist.
Do you really envision a small creator publishing a new kids cartoon and then Disney swooping in and... Creating a 2nd season for it and making money off of it?
The absence of copyright does not necessarily mean the absence of trademark.
If I want to make O shaped oat cereal, I can. That doesn’t (and shouldn’t) give me the right to put it in a yellow box and call it Cheerios.
Isn't that exactly what they did in early years with Snow White, Pinocchio, fairy tales, etc?
In our no copyright world, you say that they will publish their own "Disney's Goatman" alternate 2nd season and market it heavily, and then sell merchandise to make back the money (because they won't profit enough off of tips or Patreon or Kickstarter or just charging for it because people can just "pirate" it). My first question would be, why would they even bother with publishing a show? Why not just release the Goatman merchandise and profit directly without spending the cost of making their own show. They could even just advertise John Doe's Goatman, it would be cheaper. But even if they do publish a "Disney's Goatman", why would anyone who liked "John Doe's Goatman" watch it, given that what they liked is John Doe's writing and creativity? And if "Disney's Goatman" was actually really good and popular, who was actually harmed by that? Do you think people will like "John Doe's Goatman" any less? There would be less money going to the 3rd season Kickstarter for "John Doe's Goatman"? Furthermore, in our current world, what really is stopping Disney from releasing their own original kids cartoon about Mangoat, a lovable half-man half-goat who has charming woodland adventures full of wit and wonder? Sorry, but it just doesn't really make sense to me when I think about the details.
Disney doesn't make a second season, they make an entirely new show that uses the brand and appeal of the character. They frame it as being "the foundation" or "the original."
My first question would be, why would they even bother with publishing a show? Why not just release the Goatman merchandise and profit directly without spending the cost of making their own show.
Because the amount of resources available to Disney is orders of magnitude larger than random John Doe, and thus the potential revenue and audience is larger.
Why not just release the Goatman merchandise and profit directly without spending the cost of making their own show.
Again, because Disney marketing a show is orders of magnitude more effective than random guy's Kickstarter.
But even if they do publish a "Disney's Goatman", why would anyone who liked "John Doe's Goatman" watch it, given that what they liked is John Doe's writing and creativity?
When it comes to big brands, the average person doesn't care about the author. People go watch Disney or Pixar movies because the brand is well-known and the product is widely marketed. No one cares who the creators are.
And if "Disney's Goatman" was actually really good and popular, who was actually harmed by that? Do you think people will like "John Doe's Goatman" any less? There would be less money going to the 3rd season Kickstarter for "John Doe's Goatman"?
You, John Doe, are, as there is now considerable confusion in the marketplace and you will be less able to capitalize on your creation and expand it into a media franchise.
Furthermore, in our current world, what really is stopping Disney from releasing their own original kids cartoon about Mangoat, a lovable half-man half-goat who has charming woodland adventures full of wit and wonder?
There are still issues with blatantly copying works in a way that is confusing to the consumer. It seems pretty likely that a multinational corporation with marketing budget measured in billions will out compete a small time creator.
Let's use a real-world example to illustrate the point better. Imagine that we have no copyright laws. J.K. Rowling writes the first Harry Potter book and it sells well. She only received 2500 pounds as an advance for the work. The publisher (or Disney, or whatever other company) realizes they have a winning franchise on their hands, commissions more books, movies, theme park rides, on and on. It eventually earns billions of dollars.
That all happened in real life, except we do have some copyright laws and Rowling earns a percentage of whatever profits come from the use of her creation. She is now a billionaire. In a world without those laws, she gets what, a few hundred thousand dollars in sales from the first book, maybe? The rest goes to some corporation.
Framing it as the original is false advertisement and illegal. Just because you get to use another's creative work doesn't mean you get to lie about who made what when.
Is the brand and appeal of the characters the only value of the original work? If you made a bad show but with some appealing characters, is it even a problem if they are used to produce a much better work? I mean, surely for you who made the bad work, but in this case this doesn't seem like that much of an injustice.
> Because the amount of resources available to Disney is orders of magnitude larger than random John Doe, and thus the potential revenue and audience is larger.
I don't really feel like that answers my question, obviously they can afford it. If their new show really is better then it makes sense to boost the brand, but if the premise is that the independent creator came up with something new and good that the rich capitalist cannot replicate with their lack of creativity and thus can only exploit, then it seems like a waste of money to even bother.
> When it comes to big brands, the average person doesn't care about the author. People go watch Disney or Pixar movies because the brand is well-known and the product is widely marketed. No one cares who the creators are.
Okay, but then why even bother with copying? If people don't care about the branding of the original product, what is gained by copying that brand? If I never heard of Goatman then I wouldn't care for Disney's version of Goatman (except if what I care about is Disney's brand and then Goatman is immaterial). Or if literally all that is copied is that idea of having a half-goat half-man have wonderful woodland adventures full of charm and wit, then I'm not sure if anything of value has really been copied.
> You, John Doe, are, as there is now considerable confusion in the marketplace and you will be less able to capitalize on your creation and expand it into a media franchise.
Or you, John Doe, are publicly recognized as the original creator of Goatman (as to claim otherwise would be either false advertising or outright fraud), drawing attention to the original vision, and if the original vision is actually better than the copies, to profit from it.
As John Doe though, I don't know about all that "media franchise" part. Certainly my skills are limited to Writing, Animation and Character Design, I've never actually designed a toy line and so have nothing to offer there.
> There are still issues with blatantly copying works in a way that is confusing to the consumer.
This I fully agree with, transparency, clarity, correct and clear attribution are all incredibly important and should be protected by law. It is also no accident that many people know who Toby Fox or Notch are, but no one can name say the lead designer of any Ubisoft game that outsold Undertale by 100x.
> Let's use a real-world example to illustrate the point better. Imagine that we have no copyright laws. J.K. Rowling writes the first Harry Potter book and it sells well. She only received 2500 pounds as an advance for the work. The publisher (or Disney, or whatever other company) realizes they have a winning franchise on their hands, commissions more books, movies, theme park rides, on and on. It eventually earns billions of dollars.
> That all happened in real life, except we do have some copyright laws and Rowling earns a percentage of whatever profits come from the use of her creation. She is now a billionaire. In a world without those laws, she gets what, a few hundred thousands dollars in sales from the first book, maybe? The rest goes to some corporation.
Thank you for a concrete and detailed example, I feel it really helps me understand your reasoning. (Sorry if that comes across sarcastic via the medium of HN comments, I mean it sincerely)
Let's say that the first book was published and was a great success. JKR's publisher sees the opportunity and contracts out the work to author the 2nd Harry Potter book, hoping to capitalize on the first's success. At the same time JKR either crowdfunds or contacts another publisher to work on the sequel. The audience who loved the original book then gets to make a choice between reading JKRs sequel which has a large sticker on it "From the same author as Harry Potter!" or a different sequel with a smaller sticker at the legally mandated font required for liability that says "Consumer Protection Alert: This book was not written by the author of the original prequel". Which do they choose? And if they chose and preferred the non-JKR sequel, then what exactly is the problem? And why isn't the contracted author publishing their own books, given they can out-write JKR?
As for making billions of dollars off of movies and theme parks - sure. JKR would not have made billions. But then, neither would anyone else. Theme park builders would all have to compete for building the actually best Harry Potter theme park instead of licensing a monopoly and so the only theme park builder making real money would be the one that creates the best theme park. Possibly, one of them would even pay JKR to advise in the creation of the park, so they could advertise it as "From the original author of Harry Potter!", and if JKRs branding as the author of Harry Potter was worthwhile, that would still be a lot of money. Certainly this is better for the public. And as certainly, this wouldn't have prevented the creation of Harry Potter in the first place, because JKR is an author and not a theme park builder, and even if motivated by money rather than creativity, could not possibly imagine a Harry Potter theme park as motivation for her work.
And to take it one step further, once JKR has made billions from her work, is there really an appreciable difference between the gigantic Disney corporation and the gigantic JKR estate? Is there any appreciable difference between JKR paying someone to produce a Harry Potter work (whether a book or a Theme Park) that has no creative input from her (and thus hardly her own work) vs. Disney currently underpaying someone for their work and giving them no (or negligible) credit.
Beyond that, Eliezer Yudkowsky could start making money off of the hard work and creativity he put into Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, and countless other similar smaller authors (that you never heard of, because their brilliant Harry Potter fanfiction is non-monetisable) could also start benefiting from their creativity and hard work.
Thinking about it further and trying to synthesize a more coherent view from both of our arguments, it seems that we don't disagree that people will tend to spend on brands, but it is your opinion that the "Harry Potter" brand is a much stronger brand the the "J.K. Rowling" brand, or that at least via the power of marketing, large corporations will bring forward the "Harry Potter" brand in prominence over the "J.K. Rowling" brand (which incidentally, is something they already do), and since the "Harry Potter" brand is (sort of) free for all without copyright, then they would win over JKR. I don't think it would work quite like that for a few reasons.
1. If we assume that "piracy" is legal, then surely people will feel a lot more guilty "pirating" from a real person brand like JKR than from an abstract "Harry Potter" brand or a "Disney" brand.
2. If people can choose how to spend their money between the different works they enjoy, then it is a much more appealing proposition to pay for something that would not otherwise exist (e.g. small author on KS) as otherwise they would not actually get to enjoy the work. Giving money to Disney that is already swimming in money is a waste.
3. To emphasize the previous point, people can already pirate almost any work they want. Obviously, if it was legal and easy, there would be more piracy, but all the same some people would still pay. What do you think would motivate those people to pay for something they could obtain freely?
4. If people choose to spend money on Disney works that they could cheaply obtain elsewhere, then surely that is because Disney produces consistently high quality and enjoyable works and those creative efforts are worthwhile and deserve compensation.
5. If Disney were to copy the idea of Goatman I proposed above I don't think anyone would object to that given how little my idea matters compared to the actual creative work of making the Goatman show.
To summarize my reply, I'll just say this: no, Disney making billions from something they didn't create is not equivalent to its creator making those billions. Fanfiction is not equivalent to actual, geniunely good creative works, and "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" is a bad joke, not a serious argument for copyright reform. Everything else in your scenario would make the marketplace more confused, more derivative, and less beneficial to original creators. Enforcing all of these other various laws you propose sounds more egregious and difficult than just enforcing current copyright laws.
I really don't see how any of this is supposed to be an improvement over the current situation, and frankly I don't quite understand how "more fanfiction" and "I don't have to pay for stuff" is supposed to be a compelling argument.
I mean, they just market it as "the TRUE story of the Satyr, the Goatman" or whatever. Goatman hybrid is a very old (and fortunately, public domain) idea. Marketing even with today's restrictions has 1000 ways around such issues.
>Is the brand and appeal of the characters the only value of the original work?
not only, but it is a big pull. It may even be the main pull when talking about a young child audience. That's how existing dubious Disney clones operate right now.
> is it even a problem if they are used to produce a much better work?
That's the sad part. it doesn't have to be better, it just needs to market well and sell merch. I don't think it's controversial to say we're in a world where the highest quality art isn't the most profitable.
But regardless of quality, yes. Morally it is a problem when someone who made an idea successful isn't reaping its reward. Because a corporation stole the idea and threw more marketing at it. it would only intensify the starving artist trope.
>and good that the rich capitalist cannot replicate with their lack of creativity and thus can only exploit, then it seems like a waste of money to even bother.
yes, that is the point. EVERYTHING would be a waste of money because everything can be mass produced or mass marketed. But not everyone can mass market nor produce goods, that's where corporations always win.
We see that right now with modern art. albums don't make music artist rich, tours and merch do. Cartoons don't make animators rich, merchandise does (and the animators barely get that). Video games seem to be the only medium that can self-fund itself, but that industry is just as much a gamble as every other art. a few make it big, most suffer, be it indie or AAA studios. I don't see a copyright free world doing anything but making this issue worse.
>If people don't care about the branding of the original product, what is gained by copying that brand?
money? The brand matters, the creator doesn't. Very few creators are a brand in and of themselves, even creators of otherwise iconic brands (Many know Walt Disney, but probably not the creative mind behind Looney Toons, nor Scooby Doo, nor Tom and Jerry. But all 3 of these IP's have lived for decades past the creators' deaths to extract more profits).
so if you're not a marketing whiz who wants to plaster your name on every single thing you touch, you will be out-marketed for your brand through brute force. Even if you are a brand, it won't be easy in this new world.
>The audience who loved the original book then gets to make a choice between reading JKRs sequel which has a large sticker on it "From the same author as Harry Potter!" or a different sequel with a smaller sticker at the legally mandated font required for liability that says "Consumer Protection Alert: This book was not written by the author of the original prequel". Which do they choose?
In reality, the storyline splits, and you just create two camps of enthusiasts, neither of which are the main money makers for the books. And then a 3rd and 4th camp of casual readers who are confused when discussing the story with each other (just because a sticker is mandated doesn't mean the won't try to muddy the marketing in other ways).
Odds are the mandated non-Rowling work will STILL sell better if it's marketed more, can reach more stores, and otherwise has more copies printed. That's the big issue with the idea here; diehards tend to be the kinds of people in such discussions but are a minority in the market. And many seem to fall under the just world fallacy that everyone will think like diehards and buy the "best" book if given a choice. I'm not as assured. Many marketing tricks today would fail if people thought that way. So that's where the govt. has to step in to protect the creator, in the interest of ensuring future creators aren't discouraged and stagnate the market. Or worse, ends up with a monopoly which would be much harder to break up.
>And to take it one step further, once JKR has made billions from her work, is there really an appreciable difference between the gigantic Disney corporation and the gigantic JKR estate?
a magnitude of difference yes. Rowling is worth 1b, Disney 165b. Sure, Rowling can now become the very corporation she was shunned away from when pitching her first book, but she "fortunately" seems more content being angry on Twitter instead of exploiting artists that way.
I get what you mean, but I think the discussion on how much money a creator can/should make on a work is a taxation issue, not a copyright issue.
>I don't think it would work quite like that for a few reasons.
well, to address your points:
1,2) no, not really. to go back to video games, I'm pretty sure indie devs have worse piracy rates than AAA games riddled with DRM. Again, I'm not confident that the goodwill of the masses wins out here. People overall simply don't care abut the creator, just the content and their own self gratification
3) Funnily enough I will go back to the argument people love to bring out for piracy: "Piracy is a service problem - Gabe Newell". In some ways I agree, it's hard to be "free, easily downloadable, freely sharable" content. But due to copyright, piracy is much clunkier than it can be.
- Has to be semi-hidden so not everyone knows about it, nor how easy it can be
- Piracy sites have their own agendas so they take in the seediest of ads. Some near malware. No one wants to risk downloading a $10 movie if there's a risk of ruining their OS with viruses
- Torrents are very complicated for common users compared to simply pressing "download". seeder/leecher relationships make download speeds weird (and you may not even be aware of what THAT is), you can download a torrent file which isn't the media itself, and downloading files itself is "messy" on a bare bones OS. Among other reasons. So it's a lot of hoops that gives a smooth seemless service a chance to prevail
All this goes out the window if pirates don't have to hide. Imagine Plex linked with Bittorrent in the backend powering a download service, in one seemless package, available on the App Store, Google Play, and downloadable on all desktop OS's. You pretty much solve the service issue outright, and any shortcomings can be made up for by being completely free. No premium service can compete if they can't litigate.
This is all very possible to setup yourself, but not everyone has the ability and few have the patience to keep it maintained. They will throw $10/month at a streaming service instead. Ultimately, litigation keeps piracy clunky enough that services can outcompete on convinience.
4) but again, Disney isn't out qualitying competition (especially not nowadays), they are out-marketing. Especially out-marketing the cheap knockoffs who are comparatively playing penny slots by having a few copies in the wal-mart bargain bin. There was a point where your point was true, but that hasn't been the case for decades.
5) only the creator would. And if you don't then no one else will. But that's how the world works; no one cares about you, the creator. You need to care about yourself to survive in the industry. The government doesn't care neither, but you can exploit their bottom line to help protect yourself.
Or idk, maybe you already won the lottery and can afford to be leeched off. most others can't. People would care less if they didn't need to work to live, but most do.
The anti-copyright position is grounded in the fact it's an artificial tort with no basis in natural law. In fact, contrary to it. We are apes, and we ape.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/canadian-wins-240-million-suit...
If it were legal to simply copy ideas from anyone without caring about copyrights, I seriously doubt they'd have any issues with doing so.
Of course Disney would love endless exclusive rights on all their IP, but if copyright is too weak they can also just copy small creators without negative consequences. Disney wouldn't lose much if a small artist sells a few products on Etsy but could crowdsource all their new ideas for free.
To be clear I'm not disagreeing with you but I think it does show that the underlying issue is maybe deeper than copyright itself and goes more in the direction of class relationships in a capitalist society.
I support your right not to share your creations.
Given the collective disdain for anyone pursuing a liberal arts education, I don’t see the patron model resurrecting en masse. I don’t feel entitled to the work output of anyone for anything. I’d much rather give creators a chance to become self-sufficient than live with the alternative. There I see only bland corporate cash grabs and a further shift to subscription-based access to any content.
To be sure, we already have some of that. But, we also have artistic output from others that wouldn’t be able to subsist without the promise of protection afforded by copyright.
So if we chose to drive on the right side it would be irresponsible and quite immoral - in a consequentialist understanding - for someone to suddenly start driving on the other side of the road.
But the point is, in the absolute, there is nothing morally wrong with either choice, different countries drive on different sides and both models are valid.
In the same way, copyright is just a public policy choice that should be judged by its practical consequences, not an inalienable human right.
The distinction is important, for example, when discussing the duration of copyright, and especially absurd extensions that could not have possibly induced any creative behavior in the long distant past, so are very bad policy choices.
How much of your education and upbringing did you get for free? You were brought up and educated by society to be in the fortunate position of being a content creator. You are now suggesting that you owe nothing back to society in return.
As for education, the social contract where I live is the following: Education is free, as in state financed through taxes we all pay, up to grad school. MBAs and PhDs are different, the former cost you money, the latter get you paid.
None of that contract includes giving content I create for myself, I said I do it as hobby, away for free so others can monetize it. Nor does it mean to use the skills I earned during my education for minimium wage, quite the opposite, the more I make the more taxes I pay.
Were I a professional cobtwbt creator, as in earbing my living with it, that would make copyright violations even worse, because they directly impact my ability to pay bills.
Tght huge corps abuse copyright and trademark laws doesn't mean those are bad, just imagine how abusive those big corps would be if the small creators would no protection of their work whatsoever.
Our obligation to society is ongoing. It’s not as if the only benefit we enjoy is the education system that we did not utilize. A system of lesser consequence than the human knowledge the system exists to perpetuate.
Knowledge that you, too, benefited from during your home/self education. When you say self taught, I assume you used some kind of books/curriculum as I did?
However:
Yes, books that were purchased by my parents, who paid their taxes.
> Absolutely nothing is inherently owed to society. There is no obligation at all.
As a member of a social species of animal, why do you believe this to be true?
> I can live my life in a cave if I choose.
Living in a cave is choosing to stop participating in society. If you’re not living in a cave, and if you’re participating in discussions on HN using a computing device, you have obligations.
> Yes, books that were purchased by my parents, who paid their taxes.
The value of those books is not primarily monetary. Those books have utility because they are transmitting the collective knowledge of our species; ancestors whose thoughts and discoveries are the basis of our lives today.
Many people never stop to consider or admit their dependence on this ancestral knowledge, or their own responsibilities as a beneficiary of it. Almost everything we come in contact with (unless you disconnect and go to that cave), comes with implied collective responsibilities.
Paying taxes is the minimum legally required level of contribution, but far from the only required activity to maintain a functioning society.
You might say that you don’t like this society or would prefer a different one, but the only solution to these problems is to involve yourself in the process, which is the only path to changing the status quo.
I say my education is moot, and I am allowed to participate in society with zero obligation.
> As a member of a social species of animal, why do you believe this to be true?
Because it isn't false. Where is my obligation exactly? What "obligation" does any animal have? I am most certainly an animal, but I'm an intelligent one and I choose my obligations rather than letting others choose for me.
Edit to address your other points:
> if you’re participating in discussions on HN using a computing device, you have obligations.
No, I don't. I can do whatever I wish.
> The value of those books is not primarily monetary. Those books have utility because they are transmitting the collective knowledge of our species; ancestors whose thoughts and discoveries are the basis of our lives today.
Who cares? I'm obligated because they recorded their knowledge and I studied it? No, I am not obligated, I am educated.
> Many people never stop to consider or admit their dependence on this ancestral knowledge, or their own responsibilities as a beneficiary of it. Almost everything we come in contact with (unless you disconnect and go to that cave), comes with implied collective responsibilities.
Again, no it doesn't. This is lazy collectivist thinking.
> Paying taxes is the minimum legally required level of contribution
Taxation is actually theft and shouldn't be allowed. This isn't a contribution at all, it is theft by the government.
> but far from the only required activity to maintain a functioning society.
OK - sure. I never said it wasn't. I also don't care - it's not my problem, not my focus, not my "obligation".
> You might say that you don’t like this society
No, I just don't like humans.
> or would prefer a different one
No, I just don't like humans.
> but the only solution to these problems is to involve yourself in the process
Involving oneself in the process doesn't imply "obligation"
> which is the only path to changing the status quo.
No, not really. One can make a big splash being outside of "the process".
There is no such thing as an inherent ethical or moral obligation to society. There are actions and there are consequences. There are laws and there are enforcers. Without enforcers there are no laws. Without consequences actions are irrelevant.
Nothing is written, in law or in "moral code", which obligates a human to give away their creations because they "owe something to society", as the concept of "owing something to society" is not actually a real thing.
I originally said "It’s not as if the only benefit we enjoy is the education system that we did not utilize.", i.e. education is just one of many things we all collectively benefit from in an organized society. You used your alternative education path as a reason to claim you have no obligations to society, so I focused on that claim, but education (even the self-delivered kind) is just a single example.
> Because it isn't false
You can't justify an argument by claiming its truth or falsity. Assume I disagree with you, but would like to understand why I should agree with you.
> I am not obligated, I am educated.
Doesn't this create a huge issue if everyone decides to believe this? If the world collectively stops caring about the importance of educating the next generation on the basis that they themselves got theirs?
Where does the lack of obligation end? i.e. are you obligated not to steal, not to respect laws, etc?
> Where is my obligation exactly? What "obligation" does any animal have?
Obligation is a word humans made up to describe something that most cooperative animals do without the capacity to explain to themselves what it is they are doing.
Cooperative species that haven't developed language exhibit behaviors that are automatic and expected in what must be the set of traits natural selection arrived at. Humans are unique in that we've invented words to describe these social interactions. There are plenty of reasons to believe/understand that cooperation and certain principles of fairness, mutual respect, reciprocity, etc. are more adaptive for the survival of the group/species and coexistence with other groups.
It sounds like we disagree fundamentally one one key point: participation in society imparts implicit expectations on the participant. My core issue with your stance is that it is untenable if chosen by everyone, i.e. it doesn't scale.
No, I'm saying that State education is not a reason for obligation and FURTHERMORE I have no State education so assuming that one has State education and basing one's whole premise on something be owed to society because of it is ludicrous. And I apply that sentiment to any form of education. It matters not where the education comes from - the only thing owed is money for the educational materials and labor involved in teaching.
> You can't justify an argument by claiming its truth or falsity. Assume I disagree with you, but would like to understand why I should agree with you.
Sure.
> Doesn't this create a huge issue if everyone decides to believe this?
Not my problem.
> If the world collectively stops caring about the importance of educating the next generation on the basis that they themselves got theirs?
not my problem.
> Where does the lack of obligation end? i.e. are you obligated not to steal, not to respect laws, etc?
Correct, I am not obligated to, but if I choose to violate those things there will likely be consequences.
> Obligation is a word humans made up to describe something that most cooperative animals do without the capacity to explain to themselves what it is they are doing.
Ok.
> Cooperative species that haven't developed language exhibit behaviors that are automatic and expected in what must be the set of traits natural selection arrived at. Humans are unique in that we've invented words to describe these social interactions. There are plenty of reasons to believe/understand that cooperation and certain principles of fairness, mutual respect, reciprocity, etc. are more adaptive for the survival of the group/species and coexistence with other groups.
Ok.
> It sounds like we disagree fundamentally one one key point: participation in society imparts implicit expectations on the participant. My core issue with your stance is that it is untenable if chosen by everyone, i.e. it doesn't scale.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I got nothing for you. You want to feel morally justified, go for it lol. As a free human, I'm not under any obligations.
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"My content is mine"
How much of your education and upbringing did you get for free? You were brought up and educated by society to be in the fortunate position of being a content creator. You are now suggesting that you owe nothing back to society in return.
This person is stating that you OWE society something back for what you were given "for free"
First off, my stance: yes copyright is a monetization scheme. Good, I'm glad. That's what I'm after as a creator.
1. Education isn't free, if this person is referring to the State. I'm assuming it is an American as this discussion is about Copyright law. Taxation is theft by the government. The DOE is a waste of those stolen funds. The people attending also pay taxes. It isn't "free".
2. Even if education is free - let's say given - the person who got it for free received a gift. They are under no obligation to do anything with that gift.
3. I already stated that actions have consequences and laws have enforcers. A responsible person takes responsibility for their actions. A victim blames others. Either way, they both face the consequences of their actions (or not) with or without laws. I'm not sure how "no obligations" has translated to "no consequences" or "no responsibility" in your mind.
4. Cooperation, yes sure. Words yeah, participation yep. I never stated any of the things you're attempting to put in my mouth. This is why I don't like humans, as I stated earlier. They're manipulative without cause (or perhaps with cause in this case?). I said I'm under no obligation to anyone etc. within the context of the original comment. But yes, I'll play the game and take it deeper: I'm under no obligation period. But actions have consequences as I stated before you tried to play gotcha.
5. "If the world collectively stops caring about the importance of educating the next generation on the basis that they themselves got theirs?" Another thing I never implied or stated.
I just wanted to reply again now that I have more time. I could go on but its a waste. Stop trying to gotcha me.
I'm under no obligation to society to do anything. I choose to play nice because it is beneficial to me. What if everyone thought like me? Who knows, I don't fantasize about such things.
Having read the dialogue between w4ffl35 and you and noting your large differences of opinion I realize I should have chosen my words somewhat more carefully in my first post when I used 'owe' when commenting about the statement "My content is mine".
I did mean 'owe' in the literal sense but I also implied 'obligation' which I should have made clear given that those who were homeschooled would perhaps consider themselves less obligated to owe anything to society. I clarified this to some extent in my reply to sensanaty when I raised the matter of one's obligation to society as being very divisive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38815042. Suffice to say, I was rather amused when I read the dialogue between w4ffl35 and yourself as it was an almost instant verification of the accuracy of my comment.
I'm essentially in full agreement with your stance on the matter. I say that as someone who does not live in the US but who has not only been there many times and even worked there but also who has relatives who were born there some of whom were homeschooled. Thus, I well understand w4ffl35's position but I vehemently disagree with it. In response to my post w4ffl35 says "What an incredibly weird way of looking at one's life", so the chasm between our views could hardly be any wider.
Homeschooling is essentially outlawed where I am so I have had the opportunity to compare the educational model here with that of the US. For the most part I cannot imagine not being in school with dozens of my peers around me, I would have felt socially isolated and there's little doubt that I'd be less well integrated into society had I been in a homeschool environment. (I'm not saying that everyone would go this way but I pretty much reckon I'd have been worse off socially. Moreover, I went to a coed school and I consider that as being a distinct advantage.)
As an outsider, I find it very difficult to reconcile w4ffl35's rampant individualism (which noticeably characterizes or differentiates the US from that of almost every other country I've been in) with the way that I was socialized—which was in a society where utilitarian values—the greatest good for the greatest number—was the norm both in government and in education, and which was accepted by almost everyone (debate over such issues was almost unheard of).
From my observation, the social contract where I live is far more cohesive and intact than it is in the US although, unfortunately, in recent years its cohesion has come under considerable stress due to cultural influences from US.
Collectivist thinking doesn't mean you are correct. You don't need to reconcile my "rampant individualism". I don't care if I were the only person on the planet who thinks this way (I'm not though... not by a long shot) - my opinion, life philosophy, religion and political affiliation all align. You might not be familiar with this sort of philosophy, and you clearly do not like it, that's fine,. You are entitled to your individual feelings on the matter. Still doesn't make me wrong.
Absolutely, see my reply above.
Perhaps so, but there are millions who actually think that way—but that's not to say there aren't others who think like you.
Moreover, such thinking about the obligations a citizens has to society and vice versa has been at the center of social contract theory (and practice) for hundreds of years. Thomas Hobbes wrote about the social contract in the mid 17th Century in his Leviathan, Rousseau in 1762 in The Social Contract —which was influential in the French Revolution, and that's just for starters.
Explain how I owe anything to anyone."
There's a whole branch of philosophy and political science based around that notion. Here, I couldn't even get to first base to explain why as there is so much stuff to cover.
As an individual human being I reject all of it. See the rest of my comments to really understand where I'm coming from. No one owes society their creations.
Edit - Since we're citing philosophy, see: Ayn Rand.
I'd have bet on that if it weren't a certainty—no good if bookies' odds were only even money. :-)
Hayek, von Mises and Friedman were friends I assume?
> I'd have bet on that if it weren't a certainty—no good if bookies' odds were only even money. :-)
I held these beliefs long before reading anything by Rand.
Right. I've not only read several of Rand's books but I still have my decades-old copy of Atlas Shrugged. She didn't change my mind but she enlightened me about people like you think.
It's strange how people with such opposite and irreconcilable views can actually live in society and yet, somehow, it still manages to function.
The truth is everyone who has a business or "creates content" or does any economic activity owes it (to themselves, but also) to the society they are inserted in: be it material stuff like roads to carry your products and an affluent and secure population to buy it, or immaterial stuff like, oh I don't know, the collective achievement of Humanity so far on whose shoulders we all stand.
Correct. This content creator has also been a software engineer for 20 years. Paid a lot of taxes. Not sure why I'm supposed to owe anything to anyone.
For who?
Whether one owes or has an obligation to society or not is the big philosophical divide in society these days. No doubt education and upbringing aren't completely free but formal training is only a small aspect of a citizen's socialization, the rest comes from his/her interaction with society—which is free.
"...(and let's be real, in this specific topic we're really talking about megacorps with literally trillions of dollars in their coffers..."
I agree, but this is a separate issue and I should have made a distinction between what one 'owes' society and what megacorps are leeching from society for free.
Look at it this way: megacorps are not only leeching information from society for free (through AI and other means) but also they're 'stealing' once-open stuff from the public domain and making it proprietary on the flimsiest of grounds through questionable patents and trivial copyright—all of which is legal.
Most megacorps are public companies and thus are owned by shareholders who, in turn, are citizens in society. If hef19898 wants AI megacorps etc. to stop stealing his content then he will have to get cooperation from his fellow citizens—many of whom are shareholders in said companies.
Fact is, in the great scheme of things the pecuniary interest of these shareholding citizens holds much greater sway in society than do the moral rights of hef19898 and his ilk.
If this were not so then said megacorps wouldn't be able to 'rape' the defenseless as they are doing for decades. As I've mentioned, hef19898 and ilk simply don't have the numbers to change things.
It's obvious, there are no masses with placards blocking Pennsylvania Avenue or throngs protesting around the Capitol to bring the megacorps to heel. Until then hef19898 will just have to accept that his content will be stolen.
how so? You sell a work, people buy it and are taxed. You make income and the govt. takes some of that income as tax for that very societal eductation they cultivate. trying to evade that is in fact punished, severely.
What more do you owe society than a literal part of your wealth? From the govt's POV, giving away stuff for free is worse than selling it.
In that case the org handling the case will get millions while you end up with a few dollars.
How is that relevant? Many 'wrong' things happen every day, and most will go unpunished. That has no bearing on the 'wrongness' of the act.
If you believe the copyright is a moral right, then your inability to enforce it, or large companies blatant disregards for your rights, doesn't make it copyright infringement any more OK.
You have said above that :
> My content is mine
Okay. So how do you define your content?
If you write something, you are using an alphabet that others have over a long period of developed. You use combinations of alphabetic characters to form words that have also been developed over time by others. You use combinations of words in particular ways that are semantically meaningful because of the development of that semantics over time by others.
If you draw something, you again are using form and structure that is comprehensible because such things have been developed by others before you over long periods of time.
Any ideas you have are based on what has been shown to you by others and these ideas are a part of the collective intelligence of societies.
So, if you expect others to
> ask for, and get permission, to do so
Have you done so yourself?
There is an old old saying that there is nothing new under the sun.
All to often, people seem to claim for themselves a privilege that they will not allow others to utilise.
My wife is an artist (in various areas) and people are willing to pay her for some of her works because they like her renditions. Yet, all of her art is based on what she has seen in the world around her. I love her handiwork, but none of it is solely hers. It is based on what has gone before her.
An addendum: If people think your stuff is worth something and they want you to create it for them then they will pay you what they think it is worth and not what you think it is worth.
2. Prove I've used your content
3. Come collect your fee on my jurisdiction
they moved to tech and become trillionarires instead of billionaires, I guess. I know we romantacize old Disney, but even some times in the 70's and 80's they were barely pulling it together. Art has always operated on thin margins
(which is exactly why Disney's biggest markets isn't entertainment. But that's a whole other rabbit hole).
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but to answer your question more directly: depends on your scale. a few (I literally mean "can count the number on your hands") small creators became billionaires over their work, a handful became millionaires but didn't try to expand it into some corporation. others live a modest life in the solid upper middle class.
Very few people are trying to be corporations, especially artists. the skillsets needed to be a business vs. an artist are almost orthogonal.
As a hobby content creator, I absolutely disagree. My content is mine, if someone else wants to use it for whatever purposes, that party has to ask for, and get permission, to do so. Which I might or might not give.
But actually I hearby claim it as my own, and if you want to use it my license fee is one million internet bucks per use.
And to split hairs: you don't need to distribute your work to have it stolen. the various leaks and hacks over the years attests to that.
Pragmatically, no. But legally that's the exact point of copyright.
We consider certain information as being capable of being stolen (identity, deeds, various military secrets), so it needs protection and punishment for trying to steal such information. Else there's no disincentive for identity theft nor hacking a private database (and there should be, in my opinion. Once again, information does not have to he distributed to be extracted).
2. You either used it in a catalogue, brochure or for a website; in the physical media case I have the proof, I wouldn't if I wouldn't have found the infriction, by use on the internet, well, it's the internet
3. There are international law firms specialized just for that
(They didn't use the word "tort", but the definition matches what they described in other terms).
Same reason I expect a salary for my professional work. And I am 86.3% sure you don't work for free neither.
It is yours as in, it's your property (like your car). It's not yours as in, derived entirely from you (like your hand). That's the thing.
The generation of copyrightable material can't exist in a vacuum, I can't even tell if your works are music, video, written or what else, but I know for a fact that you can't produce them if you don't take in a whole lot of stuff from society in the first place, of course morality points to giving back to the community. Public domain is not charity, it's due diligence.
But we agree that the public can probably get an even better deal if it allows for monetization of those works, as that will promote their generation. That's what copyright is. That's why it's just a monetization scheme.
I absolutely do not want any AI model to use my stuff as training data, to be used on a website or for advertizing. You want to make money off my stuff, you pay.