Comment by athrowaway3z
4 days ago
I really hate the ethnical argument because It's so much weaker than people who use it imagine it to be.
As a very flattened retelling of history, it was only with the boomers that we reached the tipping point on how people started to think about copyright (Copyright != Attributed Authorship). With them, a majority started to believe in a world where the human history they consumed was a gift from the past, and that what they themselves create must be bought by future generations.
I'm not saying I have answers on how to build a better system, but the current one is neither ethical nor ideal - It's just creating (taxable) markets so business and gov is on board. The certainty with which people claim this setup provides great value to society is bullshit. The only certainty is that there are big businesses with vested interests and small creators who think their only ticket to sustainable income is their copyright (and having the --option-- requirement to sell it entirely, sublicense and all, to YouTube or Amazon).
This is word salad. People are making things that you want so they can make a living and you can have something you want. This is a win-win. The only problem is you have to pay for things which people only offer in exchange for money. You can cheat them, but it's not cool to pretend you're doing it for some big amorphous moral fight.
You call my comment word salad, but the model you present of supply-and-demand is so shallow it can't be used to explain why copyright was first created, and what problem it solved.
Something that legislation about copyright usually does get right.
This Santa Claus version of reality is exactly the kind of mainstream ignorance I was complaining about.
"As a very flattened retelling of history, it was only with the boomers that we reached the tipping point on how people started to think about copyright (Copyright != Attributed Authorship). With them, a majority started to believe in a world where the human history they consumed was a gift from the past, and that what they themselves create must be bought by future generations."
I honestly just don't know what your are trying to say and what it has to do with boomers. Are you just talking about physical media copying of books, CDs, DVDs, etc.?
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Except, in many cases, they will not sell you the superior product, for any amount of money.
It's not that hard to imagine a better system. Abolish all copyrights
It's easy to imagine that as a world where no one funds any thing resembling research or content because it will get instantly ripped off.
We got the PC only because the clone market got in on the action and the courts found that the only thing copyrightable was the PC BIOS. The PC got better because dozens of companies were able to copy and improve.
Imagine how many new remixes and takes on music and films we could have if you didn't have to worry about a corp breathing down your neck if your chords are a bit too similar to something from 50 years ago.
Have a look at Chinese factories borrowing manufacturing processes from each other in order to work more efficiently. They don't give a shit that someone else is using their process, since wanting to protect that and not having everybody else be able to use it is literally backwards thinking (towards the past!).
Actual important research, like medical stuff and whatnot, should be government funded either way. Even the US does this, did it more in the past, and it was good work.
Since that's not what the world was like before copyright, and since copyright is more often used to rip people off than protect them, this seems unlikely.
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