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this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
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I hope generative AI obliterates copyright. I hope that its destruction is so thorough that we either forget it ever existed or we talk about it in disgust as something that only existed in stupider times.
Thing is that copywrite did serve a purpose and was for like 20 years before disney got it extended to the nth degree. The idea was the authors had a chance to make money but were expected to be prolific enough to have more writings by the time 20 years was over. I would like to see with patents that once you get one you have a limited time to go to market. Maybe 10 years and if you product is ever not available for purchase (at a cost equivalent to the average cost accounted for inflation or something) you lose the patent so others can produce it. So like stop making an attachment for a product and now anyone can.
"Thing is, land ownership also served a purpose before lord's/landlord's/capitalists decided to expand it to the point of controlling and dictating the lives of serfs/renters/workers. "
Creation's are not that of only the individual creator, they come from a common progress, culture, and history. When individual creator's copyright their works and their works become a major part of common culture they slice up culture for themselves, dictating how it may be used against the wishes of the masses. Desiring this makes them unworthy of having any cultural control IMO. They become just as much of an authoritarian as a lord, landlord, or capitalist.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that copyright also harms individual creators once culture has been carved up: Producing brand new stories inevitably are in some way derivative of previous existing works so because they are locked out of the existing IP unless they sign a deal with the devil they're usually doomed to failure due to no ability to have a grip on cultural relevance.
Now, desiring the ability to make a living being an individual creator? That's completely reasonable. Copyright is not the solution however.
yeah and its sorta silly to even pretend that there is private ownership of land given property tax and regulations. The truth is the state owns the land that it holds by military might and the citizens rent portions for their needs.
The problem with these systems is that the more they are bureaucratized and legalized, the more publishing houses and attorney's offices will ultimately dictate the flow of lending and revenue. Ideally, copywrite is as straighforward as submitting a copy of your book to the Library of Congress and getting a big "Don't plagiarize this" stamp on it, such that works can't be lifted straight from one author by another. But because there's all sorts of shades of gray - were Dan Brown and JK Rowling ripping off the core conceits of their works, or were religious murder thrillers and YA wizard high school books simply done to death by the time they went mainstream? - a lot of what constitutes plagarism really boils down to whether or not you can afford extensive litigation.
And that's before you get into the industrialization of ghostwriters that end up supporting "prolific" writers like Danielle Steele or Brian Sanderson or R.L. Stein. There's no real legal protection for staff writers, editors, and the like. The closest we've got is the WGA, and that's more exclusive to Hollywood.
yeah its the same with patent. I often think both should only be given to individuals and entities should not be able to have them.
Interesting take. I'm not opposed, but I feel like the necessary reverse engineering skill base won't ramp up enough to deal with SAS and holomorphic encryption. So, in a world without copyright, you might be able to analog hole whatever non-interactibe media you want, but software piracy will be rendered impossible at the end of the escalation of hostilities.
Copyright is an unnatural, authoritarian-imposed monopoly. I doubt it will last forever.
Copyright is a good idea. It was just stretched beyond all reasonable expectations. Copyright should work like Patents. 15 years. You get one, and only one, 15 year extension. At either the 15 or 30 year mark, the work enters the public domain.
This more closely aligns with my perspective, although I also believe no work should be able to be covered by both copyright and patent (e.g. software).
I'm even willing to give longer terms as long as they are limited by the lifespan of the living sentient creator, and not subject to legal games around corporate personhood.
But, I can certainly see the motivations behind eliminating copyright entirely.
Absolutely, copyright or patent, not both. Though if, and only if, they function identically in duration, I wouldn't see the downside of having both other than additional expenses actually filing for both
Lightly edited copy paste of my response elsewhere:
Creation’s are not that of only the individual creator, they come from a common progress, culture, and history. When individual creator’s copyright their works and their works become a major part of common culture they slice up culture for themselves, dictating how it may be used against the wishes of the masses. Desiring this makes them unworthy of having any cultural control IMO. They become just as much of an authoritarian as a lord, landlord, or capitalist.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that copyright also harms individual creators once culture has been carved up: Producing brand new stories inevitably are in some way derivative of previous existing works so because they are locked out of the existing IP unless they sign a deal with the devil they’re usually doomed to failure due to no ability to have a grip on cultural relevance.
Now, desiring the ability to make a living being an individual creator? That’s completely reasonable. Copyright is not the solution however.
I find that very unlikely to happen. If AI is accepted as fair use by the legal system, then that means they have a motive to keep copyright as restrictive as possible; it protects their work but allows them to use every one else's. If you hate copyright law (and you should) AI is probably your enemy, not your ally.
I suspect your assessment is at best subconsciously biased and at worst in bad faith. You'll need to elaborate on the mechanism of how they'd "keep copyright as restrictive as possible" in a world where it is not possible to copyright AI generated works.