Comment by sls
12 hours ago
> there were people working as authors writing plays and the like before you had people working as scientists
Indeed, the entire history of humanity is that of creation and sharing and teaching - of ideas, stories, songs, poems. Copyright is a mere three centuries old. And somehow people have come to believe that without it, creation will cease. Even while simultaneously correctly understanding that virtually every person who writes, sings, raps, dances, etc will never be able earn anything but trival sums from doing so even under the current legal regime.
It's worth going to read Macaulay's speeches from the early nineteenth century to see how little what copyright supporters claim as the intent of copyright was seen as such at the time these ideas were being rendered into law.
https://ia601406.us.archive.org/34/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.2... beginning at p 156/pdf page 180
> Indeed, the entire history of humanity is that of creation and sharing and teaching - of ideas, stories, songs, poems. Copyright is a mere three centuries old.
Yeah, and a lot of that was either amateurish or in the thrall of some wealthy elite (either the creator was an elite themselves, or directly dependent on them).
> And somehow people have come to believe that without it, creation will cease.
Come on, you're being black and white about it? Without copyright, will it stop? No. Will it change, for the worse? Probably. More paid for and catering to the whims of the wealthy, far less "middle class" creation, and almost no "middle class" professional creation, etc.