this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024
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Copyright serves a very useful purpose. It's just been twisted into something it wasn't meant to be.
You misunderstand me. When I say, "copyright is bullshit" I don't mean that I don't like it, or that it doesn't work. I mean it's bullshit in the same way that the crystal healing or mushroom cancer therapy is bullshit.
You cannot steal an idea, it's impossible. So creating laws that punish people for doing things like copying a digital file doesn't make sense. Copyright supposedly was created to create an incentive for artists and inventors to make cool and enriching stuff.
But what it actually does is protects business savvy people and allows them to game the system, get first mover advantage over all others, and then punish any potential competitors in that space.
As if nobody was creating artwork or inventing useful devices before copyright law came into being.
Just because something is useful doesn't make it good, atomic bombs are useful, factory farming is useful.
I think the only thing people should be protected from as a creator is fraud. You can copy a person's works and modify or distribute them in any manner you see fit, as long as it's clear that you are not the original creator. You cannot claim to be them or to be affiliated with them unless you actually are.
That is what the principle of copyleft is all about. If copyright worked in principle, then you should see millions of individual creators enriched and protected by it.
But you don't see that, instead, a few giant mega corps and super wealthy tycoons own and control enormous swaths of "intellectual property" and small time creators struggle to make ends meet and are sued into oblivion by the same powerful groups.
Sure it's great for boosting wealth and GDP, but that boost does not apply to most of the population, it applies to the tiny elite that has now captures enormous segments of the market and fight tooth and nail to keep it that way.
Copyright is structurally flawed, it doesn't work because it cannot work. It's fundamentally based on a the nonsensical concept of "intellectual property" which as I said at the beginning, is bullshit.
I'm not sure I misunderstood you at all.
Copy left, incieldentally, is a form of copyright.
It only exists to counter the existing framework. In an ideal world, nobody would honor or respect the idea of "intellectual property" and hence, only fraud would be punished.
Exactly. Copyright used to last 14 years and required an application for a one-time extension. Let's go back to that.
100%.
The whole point was to "promote the useful arts" by allowing creators SOME time to make money off their work. People would be way less likely to write a book, a news artucle, make a movie, etc if someone else could just instantly sell copies and you couldn't support yourself with the work.
But the whole point was to give you enough protections to make it worth your while.
If you can't make enough money off of the work in 14 (or 28) years for it to have been worth it, then it's not worth it.
No one has ever said "if this isn't going to give me the exclusive right to make copies for 80 years after my death, then there's no point making it". And that was the only point to copyright. Doing the minimum to allow people to realistically make new stuff.
Exactly. This was created like 200 years ago when books took years to print and distribute. Since information travels much more quickly now, a work is probably going to succeed or fail in the first 5 years. So drop 14 to 10 and it's probably more than enough.
Companies can still use trademark indefinitely, so they still get their brand protections. Screw modern copyright.