this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
520 points (95.9% liked)
Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
54758 readers
276 users here now
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
Rules • Full Version
1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy
2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote
3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs
4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others
Loot, Pillage, & Plunder
📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):
💰 Please help cover server costs.
Ko-fi | Liberapay |
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Copyright doesn't encourage new works. If anything, copyright discourages new works by locking fair use and transformative behind an expensive legal process. Digitization in America is illegal by default except for books where a judge ruled it's transformative enough.
The proven method to encourage new works is to have no copyright. But alas, publishers back then didn't appreciate that others print "their" books. Higher quality cover? More durable paper? Book is out of print? Zero profits? Give me money or fuck off. Publishers sure didn't change.
Yeah nothing says "write a book" like all revenue going to whichever corporation bootlegs it on the fanciest paper.
Yeah sure let's ignore out of print books that nobody will ever see again unless you pirate it.
Gosh wow if only people like me had a solution for that.
The explicit, stated purpose of copyright was to encourage sharing of ideas. When it lasted originally 14 years, it worked. Before that, you might have had a great idea and kept it to yourself because why take years of your life researching a subject and writing a book when a publisher's going to immediately copy it and pay you nothing? 14 years is plenty of time to get a return on your investment and most importantly, after that, it didn't belong to you anymore. It belonged to everyone.
For example, that would mean District 9 and Hunger Games would be in the public domain right now.