Intellectual property protections have a finite lifespan to begin with, and as a tenet of Western Civilization are barely 300 years old.
For works published before copyright laws existed or after property protections expire, anyone should be able to use it for anything forever without consent.
Intellectual work still manages to get funded in this 'insane world' - although given the classical artist/patron system has given way to state-based grants and a select capitalisation of Art post-Warhol, the concept of Universal Basic Income tends to be promoted the desired successor.
Speaking of insane worlds, how does the concept of the Public Domain work in yours?
Are you really saying that because IP protections are (and should be, I agree) time-limited, they're not doing anything in the first place? This is patently ridiculous.
> Speaking of insane worlds, how does the concept of the Public Domain work in yours?
Can you elaborate on what you're asking? I don't understand your question.
Your contention was that it was an insane position that anyone should be able to use a piece of literature or a song for anything forever without consent. I simply highlighted the absurdity of that based on the fact that:
1. Copyright protections as a concept are an incredibly modern phenomenon, mostly limited in practice to Western Capitalist Democracies.
2. Outside of a short monetisable window (albeit one extended and irrevocably marred by Disney/Sonny Bono) your 'insane' hypothesis is in fact the status quo
3. Much intellectual work is published into the Public Domain, and all copyrighted work eventually ends up in the Public Domain. Your position appears to presuppose a world without such an entity.
As to what copyright actually achieves? It's mostly a mechanism by which the media gatekeepers and owners of capital use legislative and social imbalance of power to deny artist the rights and royalties for mechanical reproduction and otherwise impose financial serfdom.
This is achieved mainly by Copyright Enclosure, whereby musicians are typically pressured or contractually obligated to surrender their master recordings and intellectual property, and by contractual clauses like Controlled Composition Clauses, whereby Labels reduce the mechanical royalties they pay to artists who write their own songs, often paying below the standard statutory rate.
You assume your premise. But plenty of "intellectual work" is already done without legal cover. It just typically attracts normal profits, rather than super-normal rent-seeking ones.
Rents are just amounts beyond what's needed to cause the thing to exist. At the point of copying something, it already exists.
So payments for the right to do so aren't payments required to bring anything new into existence at that point, save for the legal fiction.
Now you might argue that the future copy-licencing rents are necessary to bring the _original_ creation into being. But that doesn't make them _not rents_.
But I would say that's the second assumption you're baking in here.
As in, we live in a world where e.g. the movie Toy Story exists. Now, certainly Toy Story does provide some good or value to the world. But I don't think you can assume such things provide more value than e.g. open science, free transformation of works, etc.
I get that people enjoy our current IP culture but saying certain things wouldn't exist in an IP-free world is just an argument from consequences that doesn't even really compare consequences between the two.
Lots of ways. Selling author signings, talks, authorized copies, subscriptions/merch, sponsorships. How do newfangled "content creators" fund their work? We already live in this world.
Maybe not all creative works are deserving of monopoly profits just by sitting on the ass in any case, and should stand on their own merits by producing downstream value that can be sold for whatever they can be sold for, by whoever puts in the work to deliver the value to the end user in a competitive manner. You know, open markets.
Attribution I can see. Consent or payment beyond market value, why? Just because you put in a billion hours to make a shitty $1 value output I should pay you a billion hours worth of labor?
Most of these turn intellectual work into that of indie musicians, or outright beggars. You are stepping dangerously close to stripping people rights in favour of giant AI companies.
> How do newfangled "content creators" fund their work? We already live in this world.
"Content creators" heavily rely on IP protections. You could always try taking some youtube videos with 100M views, altering them a bit an using them as your own and seeing how that goes down. Do let me know!
> Maybe not all creative works are deserving of monopoly profits just by sitting on the ass in any case, and should stand on their own merits by producing downstream value that can be sold for whatever they can be sold for, by whoever puts in the work to deliver the value to the end user in a competitive manner. You know, open markets.
And open market is not one where I can say that you are just sitting on your ass, so I'll take your stuff and sell it.
> Attribution I can see. Consent or payment beyond market value, why?
Because it's my stuff of course! And why should one even pay market value in your world? Why not always 0?
> Just because you put in a billion hours to make a shitty $1 value output I should pay you a billion hours worth of labor?
What in the world are you on about? If the price someone puts on their IP seems too high to you, you should not pay that price. We wholeheartedly agree. Where we disagree is where you from this conclude that you can just choose the price yourself and take it anyway!
Are you saying that if someone writes a book or records a song, anyone should be able to use it for anything forever without consent?
How does intellectual work get funded in this insane world if yours, pray tell?
Intellectual property protections have a finite lifespan to begin with, and as a tenet of Western Civilization are barely 300 years old.
For works published before copyright laws existed or after property protections expire, anyone should be able to use it for anything forever without consent.
Intellectual work still manages to get funded in this 'insane world' - although given the classical artist/patron system has given way to state-based grants and a select capitalisation of Art post-Warhol, the concept of Universal Basic Income tends to be promoted the desired successor.
Speaking of insane worlds, how does the concept of the Public Domain work in yours?
Are you really saying that because IP protections are (and should be, I agree) time-limited, they're not doing anything in the first place? This is patently ridiculous.
> Speaking of insane worlds, how does the concept of the Public Domain work in yours?
Can you elaborate on what you're asking? I don't understand your question.
Your contention was that it was an insane position that anyone should be able to use a piece of literature or a song for anything forever without consent. I simply highlighted the absurdity of that based on the fact that:
1. Copyright protections as a concept are an incredibly modern phenomenon, mostly limited in practice to Western Capitalist Democracies. 2. Outside of a short monetisable window (albeit one extended and irrevocably marred by Disney/Sonny Bono) your 'insane' hypothesis is in fact the status quo 3. Much intellectual work is published into the Public Domain, and all copyrighted work eventually ends up in the Public Domain. Your position appears to presuppose a world without such an entity.
As to what copyright actually achieves? It's mostly a mechanism by which the media gatekeepers and owners of capital use legislative and social imbalance of power to deny artist the rights and royalties for mechanical reproduction and otherwise impose financial serfdom.
This is achieved mainly by Copyright Enclosure, whereby musicians are typically pressured or contractually obligated to surrender their master recordings and intellectual property, and by contractual clauses like Controlled Composition Clauses, whereby Labels reduce the mechanical royalties they pay to artists who write their own songs, often paying below the standard statutory rate.
You assume your premise. But plenty of "intellectual work" is already done without legal cover. It just typically attracts normal profits, rather than super-normal rent-seeking ones.
I, too, hate rentseeking. Owning one's intellectual output, however, is not in and of itself rentseeking.
Rents are just amounts beyond what's needed to cause the thing to exist. At the point of copying something, it already exists.
So payments for the right to do so aren't payments required to bring anything new into existence at that point, save for the legal fiction.
Now you might argue that the future copy-licencing rents are necessary to bring the _original_ creation into being. But that doesn't make them _not rents_.
But I would say that's the second assumption you're baking in here.
As in, we live in a world where e.g. the movie Toy Story exists. Now, certainly Toy Story does provide some good or value to the world. But I don't think you can assume such things provide more value than e.g. open science, free transformation of works, etc.
I get that people enjoy our current IP culture but saying certain things wouldn't exist in an IP-free world is just an argument from consequences that doesn't even really compare consequences between the two.
Lots of ways. Selling author signings, talks, authorized copies, subscriptions/merch, sponsorships. How do newfangled "content creators" fund their work? We already live in this world.
Maybe not all creative works are deserving of monopoly profits just by sitting on the ass in any case, and should stand on their own merits by producing downstream value that can be sold for whatever they can be sold for, by whoever puts in the work to deliver the value to the end user in a competitive manner. You know, open markets.
Attribution I can see. Consent or payment beyond market value, why? Just because you put in a billion hours to make a shitty $1 value output I should pay you a billion hours worth of labor?
> Selling author signings, talks, authorized copies, subscriptions/merch, sponsorships.
Most of these turn intellectual work into that of indie musicians, or outright beggars. You are stepping dangerously close to stripping people rights in favour of giant AI companies.
> How do newfangled "content creators" fund their work? We already live in this world.
"Content creators" heavily rely on IP protections. You could always try taking some youtube videos with 100M views, altering them a bit an using them as your own and seeing how that goes down. Do let me know!
> Maybe not all creative works are deserving of monopoly profits just by sitting on the ass in any case, and should stand on their own merits by producing downstream value that can be sold for whatever they can be sold for, by whoever puts in the work to deliver the value to the end user in a competitive manner. You know, open markets.
And open market is not one where I can say that you are just sitting on your ass, so I'll take your stuff and sell it.
> Attribution I can see. Consent or payment beyond market value, why?
Because it's my stuff of course! And why should one even pay market value in your world? Why not always 0?
> Just because you put in a billion hours to make a shitty $1 value output I should pay you a billion hours worth of labor?
What in the world are you on about? If the price someone puts on their IP seems too high to you, you should not pay that price. We wholeheartedly agree. Where we disagree is where you from this conclude that you can just choose the price yourself and take it anyway!