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0 pointscolonelspace11mo ago0 comments

Which state are you referring to?

If you think copyright shouldn't exist, you're free to ignore any rights afforded you for your work, "the state" is not going to enforce anything unless you bring a case to a court.

I understand the MIT licence as convention, and it makes sense. It's just you're opining on a public forum about copyright being somehow antithetical to "basic principles on which our governance is founded" whilst attaching copyright notices to your work.

Much of common law is specifically about property, upon which a good portion of modern day governance is founded. So your objection to copyright seems somewhat misinformed.

What is it about copyright that you think is a negative in today's society?

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pitaj11mo ago

> If you think copyright shouldn't exist, you're free to ignore any rights afforded you for your work, "the state" is not going to enforce anything unless you bring a case to a court.

That doesn't give other people who would like to use my work any useful guarantee, though. Without a license, they would be taking a lot of risk, even if they knew my views on copyright.

> Much of common law is specifically about property, upon which a good portion of modern day governance is founded. So your objection to copyright seems somewhat misinformed.

Physical property has exclusive use. Multiple people cannot use 100% of something at the same time. "Intellectual property" has no such trait. Multiple identical copies of the same work can be used by multiple people at the same time.

Ownership defines who has exclusive use of a thing. Copyright actually defies common law by requiring state power to enforce monopolies on certain information, even on property owned by parties with no association to the originator of a work.

> What is it about copyright that you think is a negative in today's society?

Copyright is sold as "promoting the arts" but in net slows innovation and decreases artistic freedom. Especially in its current form with extremely long lifetimes, it primarily enables rent-seeking by publishers at the expense of the public. There are other ways for artists to make money, and many artists already make most of their money by performing live shows, working on commission, selling early access subscriptions, etc.

colonelspaceOP11mo ago

I'm continuing because this is interesting, not try to prove some point that undermines your perspective.

> Copyright actually defies common law by requiring state power to enforce monopolies on certain information

All laws ultimately require state power. You're deferring to state power by using the MIT licence, which recognises and legitimises copyright law that you take issue with.

> Copyright is sold as "promoting the arts" but in net slows innovation and decreases artistic freedom.

This is a big claim that requires big evidence. Robust copyright law has existed for about half a century, during which time innovation and artistic freedom seem to have flourished. In fact copyright appears to have directly contributed to the creation of the corpus Meta AI is exploiting; it exists because of copyright, not in spite of it.

> [Copyright] primarily enables rent-seeking by publishers at the expense of the public

I think you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Copyright bestows the right of individuals to benefit from the value they create. Without talking about IP law more broadly in a capitalist system (which seems to be your gripe), I think this is a good thing.

I've benefitted greatly from the content of books, as have we all. If authors had to rely on live shows (for a book?), take commissions and sell subscriptions I think we'd all be worse off, because these provide little to no economic security for authors.

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