> How have our democracies not abolished copyright law yet? These laws only serve the 1%

Yeah, fuck those billionaire authors and artists in coffee shops not wanting people to rip off the books and art they create without compensation.

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roblabla 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I find it extra funny that you think copyright protect small time authors and artists, when we have _very clear_ examples of it not protecting them for shit, even before the entire IA saga. Remember the Disney/Star Wars saga where they refused to pay the Star Wars author for the books they were selling?

https://archive.bookstr.com/article/royalty-wars-over-star-w...

Copyright doesn't protect small-time authors - because small-time authors don't have the means to harness the legal system to their advantage the way that big corpos that take advantage of them do.

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numpad0 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Authors and artists have no basis for payment in the absence of copyright laws. Like, anything they make would be literally free to steal. Literally... 1700s? Late 1600s?

What would be controversial is the current form of copyright that had been extended and expanded multiple times even during lifetime of many of us alive, often said semi-jokingly said to have been forced by Disney to keep Mickey Mouse covered under it until it had finally expired 70 years after the first publication and long after the death of its creator.

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betterunix2 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Copyright was established for the benefit of publishers, not authors. In the 1600s publishers were licensed, as part of a censorship system; the point was to only give licenses to publishers who followed the censorship rules. It was quite profitable for the publishers because they faced far less competition than they otherwise would.

The censorship system was abolished but the publishers wanted to keep the licensing system, so they came up with a new idea: licensed monopolies to publish specific books.

	▲	arto 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Exactly right. Karl Fogel's excellent write-up recaps the history: https://questioncopyright.org/promise/index.html

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cyanmagenta 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don’t necessarily disagree, but by that same logic we shouldn’t have any civil laws because regular people can’t afford to hire lawyers to sue people.

But still, if someone posts a copy of your book or painting online, you can pretty cheaply file a DMCA request that it be taken down, and most large players will comply. If you throw out copyright law altogether, you get rid of that too.

	▲	warkdarrior 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> But still, if someone posts a copy of your book or painting online, you can pretty cheaply file a DMCA request that it be taken down, and most large players will comply. If you throw out copyright law altogether, you get rid of that too. Good, get rid of copyright law! It has only lead to pure rent seeking.

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nish__ 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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AndroTux 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The 1% just copied all available data without consequence. Yet, Quad9 gets sued and loses.

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surgical_fire 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

AI companies already ripped those things off.

I am back to piracy, now on a moral imperative. I can pay for stuff, but I think the morally superior thing to do is to pirate away.

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sham1 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

While your point is valid enough -- although it could have been made without this kind of snarky and sarcastic snide -- it seems clear that global copyright legislation is a lot more beneficial to the wealthy capital owners rather than the artists that you were alluding towards. Now, this is no insurmountable obstacle at least in theory. The laws could be modified in a way that lets small artists etc focus on following their passions without starving, without allowing capital to do what is essentially the intellectual equivalent of enclosure of the Commons.

Of course, one thing needed for this is the political will as well as getting rid of the idea of defending exploitation by the billionaire class by conflating their needs with the needs of starving artists because one can technically argue that copyright helps both, despite everyone knowing that one party is benefiting a lot more from it than the other.

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rickydroll 4 hours ago | parent [-]

All copyright does is give you standing to sue if somebody reproduces your work, in whole or in part. To sue "successfully," you need more financial resources than the copier.

The small artist copyright is a red herring. I think the number of small artists who make money from their work is frightfully small. For example, my partner makes some rather nice jewelry that is different from anything out there. We're doing the craft fair circuit to see if she can sell any and if it's worth continuing to make them.

She sells a relatively small number of pieces at each fair. Occasionally it's even enough to cover expenses.

Would copyright help her? No, because we wouldn't have the money to sue. Small copyright violations might be worth a cease and desist. Large copyright violations would have more money than us for the lawsuit. We would need that Goldilocks-sized violation. They are small enough to be responsive to the threat of a lawsuit but big enough that they have enough money that would be worthwhile suing them, i.e. enough to pay our lawyer.

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bigstrat2003 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> All copyright does is give you standing to sue if somebody reproduces your work, in whole or in part. To sue "successfully," you need more financial resources than the copier.

That is the fault of the way the legal system works, not anything to do with copyright law. It is true that we need a system in which you can't just get away with breaking the law if you have deeper pockets than your victim, but that will be true whether or not we have laws protecting copyright.

	▲	rickydroll 35 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The question I have is what is copyright for? As far as I can tell, it is used for censorship, and rent extraction.