Independend of AI I am fully supporting the idea to abolish copyright in general, full stop. Allowing cheap duplication and tweaking is what leads to fast innovation and culture changes. Explicit (costly) patents can remain in place to secure industrial-grade research processes, but the general everyday stuff, incluing music and literature and code and so on is something to strip default rights away to allow faster progress. and oh the poor artists: next to none percentage wise gets much royalties anymore, streaming income is close to zero usually even if popular, the only real world industry to defend are the parasites that do not create art to begin with but siphon production/distribution channels. you might disagree with me, just wanna make clear that some people like me are against this copyright theater before AI blew up in popularity.
I’m just not convinced that most artists would change their behavior under no copyright, so somewhat agree. But the main issue is length of time.<p>The fact that copyright is longer than patents makes no sense. Patents prove that a shorter period is sufficient to stimulate large investment. And you have to pay for patents!<p>If you assume reasonable discount rates, the economic value plummets over time for an asset producing the same income (a bad assumption for copyright work in general).<p>At an 8% discount rate, extending copyright from 32 years to infinity adds less than 10% to its total present-day value. There are many good reform proposals, but mine would be something like 15ish years of free copyright, followed by 1 paid renewal for 15 years that is modest in price (eg $1000) and one extra 10 year renewal that is something like $1M. Meaning you have most economically neutral work free up at year 15, small business types having it affordable through 30 years, and the big Hollywood productions can go from 30-40 years for a modest (to them) fee to incentivize investments in expensive works. Movies come to mind. Give existing work a 20 year buffer on top of that to transition and there is a very small economic effect on everyone.
Author: I spent six months writing this story, I hope I can make some money selling it, it would be my dream to be able to keep doing this full time.<p>You: I will steal this, consume it, reprint it as I see fit and you will earn nothing.<p>Yeah... I don't think your opinions are worth much.
People arguing against parent are Property Thieves.
see 5th amendment which requires "private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation".<p>It's your property. Do what you want with it. In a free society, the public isn't compelled to buy your books.
The part this analysis misses is that the author's "dream" of doing that full time is almost never realized -- 25% percent of authors identify as "full-time", but only 10% of those authors can actually make ends meet. Only 30% of books ever pay back the advance. The best shot is to be a "romance" author, which earns more than other genres, pretty much because sex sells. Copyright isn't doing a great job at its stated purpose, and yet we endure endless fights over it. The juice isn't worth the squeeze, and writers are mostly supporting themselves with other jobs anyway.
That is not copyrights stated purpose?<p>Copyright does not guarantee you an audience. Nothing guarantees you an audience, authors know this, everyone who creates anything ought to know this?<p>Copyright just says that if you DO manage to create a work that truly connects with an audience, you're in a position to make money off it because it cannot be stolen from you.<p>What is so wrong with that?
Novels aren't the only thing with copyright, and aren't really even the main thing that copyright protects. It also covers engineering reports, technical specs, journalism, blog posts, emails, internal memos, marketing copy, academic papers, user manuals, legal briefs, and a lot more.<p>Even in the particular case of novels, I would prefer to live in a world where some authors are making money than live in one with no novels at all.
I understand copyright covers lots of things. It doesn't do a good job with any of them, sadly.<p>> Even in the particular case of novels, I would prefer to live in a world where some authors are making money than live in one with no novels at all.<p>That's not the choice. Novels will be written regardless, and there are ways to make money that are not copyright-related: Substack and Patreon are doing more to fund small authors than the publishing industry as a whole, and people pay because they want to support the author, and to get early, exclusive access to the author's work. None of those authors are surviving and making money because someone can't copy their work and distribute it. Piracy is a <i>fact</i>, and that people give money to these authors in the presence of piracy shows that copyright is not necessary to support these artists.
> None of those authors are surviving and making money because someone can't copy their work and distribute it.<p>I tend to agree with your sentiment but this line made me think you’re underestimating the degree to which the law stops the powerful from doing evil. They see the law as a hassle to be calculated against and if there is no legal friction to stealing and using others’ creations they just will.<p>So it’s not that Amazon would take your novel, short story, etc and redistribute it. It’s that they’d make a whole series of movies or TV series using your creations and give you nothing and have to give you nothing.<p>Copyright being eliminated is among my more “idealistically anarchistic” wishes I think but so long as we’re in a society as legalistic and with such an imbalance of power generally, copyright protects more than it hurts I think.
What % of new authors today make full-time salary on writing?<p>And what % of those do by selling, vs giving away their work for free (to get non-negligible attention) then getting their real money through donations, merch, etc.?
The more successful "self published" authors writing web novels make significant money from patreon (>$20k/month); this relies on copyright protection (but interestingly, just a few months would be sufficient for that business model).
My understanding is that most of these web novels are free, and patreon grants early access at best, which is enforced by trust anyways (the creator doesn’t have the time or resources to track and sue someone posting the early access on a pirate site, when it will be public a week or month later, but the people who pay to get something a week or month early mostly aren’t the type who would pirate even if it was easy).
In what way does that business model rely on copyright protection? "Get the next chapter early" requires a <i>source</i> of chapters, so all you need is for paying clients to not be motivated to redistribute the chapters in an organised way, or would-be paying clients to not be motivated to use such organised "slightly more chapters of that webnovel you follow" services <i>instead</i>. Humans aren't amoral ideal rational economic actors.<p>The authors I'm aware of making >$20k don't do any significant gating. That practice is only really common with people republishing through Amazon (which probably demands it).
This is way too much
What does it matter?<p>I don't think anyone has the right to take work I create, for free.<p>In the same way I have no right to walk into your house and use it for free.<p>In the same way you cannot expect me to turn up and work at your business for free.<p>I don't care what half delusional rubbish you come up with to justify your theft.<p>It's theft, you want to steal something you put zero effort into creating and use it as you see fit. No fuck you. If I want to give it away for free, that's my prerogative not your expectation, if I can monetise via merch or other means, that's my prerogative not your right.
It matters because copyright is widely abused and hurts neutral sites which must constantly check for copyrighted content, and it would’ve hampered AI if it was enforced.<p>Your analogy doesn’t fit because a house is physical, but “intellectual property” is digital. If we lived in the metaverse and I could just copy your house and live in it without affecting you, why should you care? <i>Theft</i> is bad because the victim no longer has the original.
Theft in this case is bad because you're removing the ability of someone to make a living from the thing they created.<p>On the basis it's digital.<p>I don't care if it's digital, I care if it took time and effort to create. If it did, it does not matter if it's digital or physical, it's theft.
I am not a fan of complete removal of copyright, but I also consider its current duration absurd and extreme - saying this as someone who wrote 10 books so far, so I have actual skin in the game. Some person in 2130 should not be able to profit from something I am writing now, that is just feudalism in a new cloak.<p>Any creative person whose ego is not overinflated accepts the fact that no art emerges from a vacuum, that they themselves were inspired by others and their work, and that they should pay this forward to the coming generations.<p>For me, the worst aspect of long copyright is the de-facto ban on derived works. Work derivation is how civilization and culture came to be.
A variant where the copyright would be automatic but very limited (say, 10 years), with a necessity to pay some growing fee for extended protection, would solve most situations.<p>The vast majority of stories do not make any money ever. Some do, but only briefly so. The true money makers should have no problem paying the fees.<p>Only very rare cases of authors who get discovered decades later would not be covered by this, and this is less likely to happen with the Internet. There are no publishing gatekeepers anymore.
many people commenting have never tried to earn a living from independently created works of authorship. The NAPSTER-fans say "more for me, what is your problem". Other economies (China) do not have commerce law that protects original works of authorship, but the Western tradition has enabled this.<p>Blinded by corporate abuse, calls for removal of copyright law are often naive or ill-willed IMHO
That is not a given. I have earned a living from created works of authorship.<p>I think copyright suppresses creation and does very little to support creators in general. It has enabled businesses to choose a few winning creators that reap the benefits of copyright. That kingmaker position allows them to dictate what is created.<p>For the last few decades the median income from a creative work has been nil.<p>I would much rather have universal basic income and no copyright.
Just treat copyright as an engineering issue, rather than a religion. Is copyright doing more good than harm when it comes to encouraging creativity? I think everything tilted in favor of abolishing copyright around the turn of the century, and AI isn't improving things.<p>Your point about making a living off of creative endeavors underscores this point: if copyright were doing its job the way it's supposed to, your first sentence wouldn't be a note alluding to how damn <i>hard</i> it is to make a living on writing. Somehow you're twisting that to be a feature, which I get, because there's no alternative story, but at the same time, let's be honest: copyright doesn't work well, and incurs huge costs for society.
They hate artists.
> and oh the poor artists: next to none percentage wise gets much royalties anymore, streaming income is close to zero usually even if popular<p>Your argument is that artists aren’t paid enough, so we should go ahead and take it all the way to zero by law?
I'm not an artist and might be entirely wrong, but my understanding is that for 99% of artists, over 99% of their revenue is from concerts tickets, merch and other physical products, rather than digital/broadcast plays, so changing this to zero wouldn't really affect them, but would act to reduce the power of the labels and other intermediaries over them.
Copyright covers a lot more than the long tail of indie music bands who stream a few thousand plays on Spotify.<p>This thread has a lot of arguments based entirely on beliefs about small bands and streaming services. Music is only a small part of copyright law.
I have the same understanding regarding YouTubers and writers.<p>There’s so much competition nowadays, almost no indie can achieve nearly enough sales for a living wage. And ironically, the best way to get more attention is to make your product free, hence more and more artists doing free + paid merch.
Going full time on YouTube as a primary and only job is unlikely to work out.<p>The YouTube income for most small creators get folded back into the channel. Getting a $100 check from YouTube isn’t going to pay your rent, but it makes purchasing some better lighting or a new microphone for the channel an easy choice, which in turn helps them grow and enjoy their hobby channel more.<p>The argument that the dollar amount is low and therefore it’s okay if we push it all the way to $0 is unconvincing for anyone familiar with how small time creators grow.
It seems like you really only know about how the affects people who make music and TV.<p>What about illustrators who license their work? Knitters and crocheters who create patterns? There are countless people who sell creative output on a license-basis which would no longer exist in a world without copyright.<p>Already people who make visual art are demotivated by AI, follow literally any visual artist on Instagram and you’ll see this. Taking away copyright would make that look tiny in comparison.
Big studios will love this<p>They’ll come across some talented little band playing some nice new tune in a tiny club, record it on their phone and give it to one of the existing boy-bands to play.<p>No need to sign up aspiring artists any more - just take their songs.<p>Of course it’s the boy band that will sell the merch and the concert tickets.
What? That'd mean 99% of artists are touring musicians giving live performances.<p>Moviemakers, authors, graphic designers, stone masons, song writers, ...<p>Not every artists is a musician. Not every musician performs in venues. I'd be surprised if even 10% of artists in the EU or US are making their revenue as live musicians.<p>Brief anecdote, currently working on a personal project and have commissioned an artist to design a few icons. Was a great experience, fun to work with them, more than happy with the result. Trademark was assigned to me, copyright remains with them.<p>All I'll say is, if copyright were not a thing in both their and mine state, screwing over commissioned artists would be even easier than it already and unfortunately tends to be (having done freelance work myself).
Copyright covers that merch and physical products as well.
Without copyright, artist B could perform artist A's original work without penalty. If artist B is better at astroturfing social media than A (maybe because they pay a firm to do it) , then B makes money and A does not.
There are more kinds of art than just music.
I suspect that for 99% of artists, over 99% of their income is from a day job, often minimum wage<p>If you're at the point where you're making money from merch and concert tickets you're probably ahead of 99% of artists<p>I suppose we usually just call them "aspiring artists" then, but still
artists sell live experiences and original merchandise to actually make money these days. only a rare subset of megastars are living off royalties to begin with, and I am totally fine if some tailor swift has less millions to begin with.<p>people support/pay real artists if they want more of it, else there is no way I see a right to get paid a wage for just being an artist in itself. if youre not original enough so you get copycats in a day well thats also a signal of artistic value. you cannot separate art from the artist, even if some people are okay with knockoffs after all. there is a difference between art and just content production, the latter is already worthless today with AI speedrunning the decline for mass producing mediocre slop people think is good enough.
So you'll reduce that to just live experiences: abolish copyright, and watch 1 million bootleg Taylor Swift T-shirts suddenly blink into existence
It’s not Taylor Swift who is hurt by this, it’s the solo creatives who cannot afford other mechanisms (e.g. trademark enforcement) to protect their work.
Trademark != copyright: trademark is attributing indies whenever their work appears (which is very doable), copyright is preventing others from seeing or reshowing their work (even with attribution). Copyright is about protecting their sales, which are practically nonexistent, hence (because it has big downsides) why it should be abolished.
It's already an epsilon away from zero.
if copyrigth is abolished. amazon would publish every single boon without giving a cent to writers.
it would be reqlly hard for writers to make a living. Im not a fan of copyrigth and how is being used at the moment but I don't really see an alternative where writers still get paid.
As opposed to today, where big companies never steal from writers, and it’s not very hard for them to make a living?<p>(Not books, but Amazon has ripped off indie products before: <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/amazon-copied-products-rigged-search-results-promote-its-own-brands-documents-2021-10-13/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/amazon-copied-produ...</a>, and books are being ripped off by other companies’ LLMs.)
Maybe the strategy is to try to build up some steam behind the <i>abolish copyright</i> movement to move the Overton window a bit.<p>If IP owners see actual support behind abolishing copyright, maybe rolling back to min(30, life of author) years of protection would seem like a more reasonable compromise.
min(30, life of author) kinda makes a perverse incentive to kill the author, no?
I thought that was always the point. A world without any copyright at all obviously doesn't function.
If it were to happen I don't think Amazon would sell any books to begin with. And even under the current system, I only buy books to pay writers, and even then they only get very little of the amount I pay. I'd much rather pay them directly through whatever system evolves through the hypothetical change.<p>They're not paid because access to books is limited by copyright, but because whatever eyeballs they manage to reach are willing to buy their books. I may not be a representative sample, but I think that part wouldn't change much, and discoverability would still be the deciding factor.<p>I hate the attention economy as much as the next person, but I don't think there's any putting that back in the bottle, the amount of media won't shrink.
Is it not hard for writers to make a living? If so maybe I should do that.
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> if copyrigth is abolished. amazon would publish every single boon without giving a cent to writers. it would be reqlly hard for writers to make a living.<p>How about a unified social platform that allows people to donate to the authors/artists/creators/projects of their choosing? It could allow feedback similar to goodreads, and also be more longterm focused than the traditional kickstarter, etc. The social aspect would give people a pat on the back for sending money somewhere.
We could do that with all kinds of IP! Use a feature in software or in a Meta app, just donate to the minimum amount wage (for legal reasons) workers who developed it. And Meta and Google themselves could be forbidden to show ads, just rely on donations as well.
I sense sarcasm, but anybody serious about fixing corporate social media should read this:<p><a href="https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media/" rel="nofollow">https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media/</a><p>I guess my idea would easily fit into what that article proposes for a solution.
I'm struggling to see how the issues regarding low compensation from streaming services is going to be positively affected by abolishing copyright wholesale. That'd take the one way a creative can truly claim a stake towards their art.<p>Before the advent of LLMs, as now, my position on copyright is that what was had prior to Disneys lobyying efforts (which also then lead to similar laws being adopted outside the US showcasing the type of soft power and legislative inspirations the States previously could cause/the US does something so then Western Europe did the same) of roughly 25 years plus one extension was a fair compromise. One could also mirror patents and their length, seems like a solid avenue as well.<p>Lest we forget, while enforcement is far to limited, any success in defending FOSS projects and their licenses are only possible because we have copyright.
FLOSS only exists because of copyright. Without it you don’t get a utopia where everything can be read and copied, you get the opposite, companies not sharing their work, artists not releasing their work. Sacrificing the whole culture built on top of copyright for a maybe faster technical progress is incredibly myopic
How do you make a feature film - budget ranging from low millions to hundreds of millions of dollars - if anyone can copy it and view it without paying for it?
> Explicit (costly) patents can remain in place to secure industrial-grade research processes<p>I keep reading about big companies i) developing very similar drugs that are different enough to avoid patents, ii) using their size to prevent litigation.<p>So would keeping patents help?
That is a thing (though arguably there is still value in the reformulations). A good current example would be orally administered wegovy, which received an additional patent on top of semaglutide for combining the drug with an absorption enhancer. This is a genuine advancement, and did require clinical trials (not all patentable improvements do) but it is ultimately just a variation on an existing drug.<p>That being said, the patent on semaglutide still expires at the same time and biosimilars (or generics in other cases) can be produced at that time using the injectable formulation (or a new alternative). This seems reasonable to me
The "me too" drug still need to go through an R&D, clinical trail and approval process, so combined with patents the exclusivity period is at least several years. Abolishing patents would completely remove the exclusivity period
The government could always pay for results too, like $10B for something that does this. I don’t love it either and am not positive it is better than patents.
Incidentally, the Statute of Anne was pushed by a printing guild after they lost their monopoly on printing. It was so unpopular[1] for them to get the monopoly back that they had to pivot and come up with some other way. So they figured they could do it in the name of writers. That worked!<p>1. John Locke, for example, opposed the monopoly.
Copyleft is built on copyright, do you think removing copyright protections is going to get people to release their source code?? I don't think so. Not unless you want to try and legislate some general copyleft law, but that's probably a nonstarter.
I am fully supporting the idea of abolishing property rights for web services. Any web service must publish its entire stack, data, collected information and so on.<p>This would lead to explosive innovation and the pie would be growing rapidly. #growth-mindset #disruption
I'm skeptical patents play a significant role at encouraging research. No correlation between stronger patent laws and more innovation has ever been found.<p>I'm also in favor of very light copyright laws, e.g. I don't think anyone should claim they are Coca Cola.
I don't know about you, but in hardware startup land if you don't have a patent and your technology can be reverse engineered, you are most likely dead in the water and will never get investment.<p>But I guess we can count on the big companies to do the innovation?
That would be trademark law.
Why should patents stay protected?<p>You yourself say that allowing cheap duplication and tweaking is what leads to fast innovation. Why should I be restricted from cheap use of a patent I could use to further innovation?
> fast innovation and culture changes<p>Does this mean you think innovation and change in our culture is too slow? What’s you’re yardstick?
Go back to the old 28 year system. Dump the renewal.<p>This would align it with the patent system.<p>> what leads to fast innovation<p>Content becomes cultural artifacts - the whole birthday song copyright issue should have told Americans how broken the system was.
I'd say shorter but with renewals. Say, 15 years with two or three renewals of equal length, but require that the original protected work is still for sale to get the renewal. This would clear up things like retro games being stuck in limbo or small press books being impossible to buy. It would still allow rights holders to make their exclusive money if they are actually making money on the original. It wouldn't allow a Disney, where they extend the copyright on a century-old work without selling it just so they can make money on sequels or moving back and forth among animation, stage, TV series, and live action movies.
I believe copyright timeframes have gotten WAY out of hand and need to be reigned in to something more sensible, but I still think it's a valuable concept and don't want to see it abolished.<p>Patents on the other hand have become a total joke and I'd be happy to see them gone.
As it is now, it’s a joke. Essentially new laws are continuously introduced to make disney’s junk forever inaccessible. No author, no animator, no one except disney share holders wants these shit laws.
This would also mean copyleft would not work anymore. Companies would not be forced to release the source code of their modifications of (A)GPL software.<p>I think that would be a great loss
Im OK with limited forms of copyright. But the problem is that copyright business interests will ALWAYS pervert the original agreed-upon rules to their benefit.<p>Now something we saw that does work with audio, is statutory licensing. That rule alone allows spotify to be made. And thats also why a spotify-for-video cant be.<p>Thats why a local Jellyfin with 30TB of videos is better than all US based streaming services combined. Nobody is *legally* able to put a complete video library and pay access fees to relevent rightsholders.
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