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Good point (media.scored.co)
posted 1 year ago by diogenesofthearch on scored.co (+0 / -0 / +86Score on mirror )
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MI7BZ3EW on scored.co
1 year ago 4 points (+0 / -0 / +4Score on mirror )
The age of copyright is rapidly coming to a close. It was never a moral necessity.

Originally, the copyright was a way for authors to get paid for their work. See, anyone could take a book and typeset and publish it, and sell copies for the price of ink and paper. Even the labor was negligible once you got it typeset. 100 copies, 10,000 copies, didn't matter, was just a matter of time.

So if an author wanted to get compensated, they had to ask the government to stop other printing presses from publishing the work. The one publishing house would charge a little extra and forward the extra to the author, and everyone was happy.

This was a modern concept. Up until then, authors, artists, etc, NEVER got paid for copying their work. If you wanted to feed your family while producing works of art, you either had to be rich yourself or have a rich guy become your patron. THIS system made way more sense because it created a sort of "tenure" where the artist was truly free to express their art and have full control over that expression, versus copyright where the author had to think about how many copies he was going to sell and target the audience or whatever.

We should definitely abolish copyright law. If you want someone to create something, pay them upfront. If you want them to be free to "express themselves" then buy them food and lodging and clothing. That's all that's required to have a functioning society where the people own what is popular, and artists are free to express themselves to the maximum extent possible.

As for trademarks, patents, etc... there is a case to be made for trademarks within reason, but patents are also nonsense. The idea was that by incentivizing people to share their ideas, we would get a lot more sharing of ideas. Today, the system is completely inverted. If I work for a major corporation, the policy is always "DO NOT EVER LOOK AT PATENTS". Only lawyers look at those, and the only time they ever talk about them with inventors is when it is time to create a patent to milk an invention for all it's worth.

With patents, just have people share stuff as they want to. If they want to keep it a secret, that's fine, but society should respond by not sharing with such people, or shaming them. My idea is that we create an intellectual university where people who are "in" can freely access the information on the condition they freely share their own ideas, but those who are "out" get NOTHING. I don't know a way to force someone to share their ideas, so there is no effective means of enforcement except the honor system.
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