this post was submitted on 15 May 2023
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The enforcement of copyright law is really simple.

If you were a kid who used Napster in the early 2000s to download the latest album by The Offspring or Destiny's Child, because you couldn't afford the CD, then you need to go to court! And potentially face criminal sanctions or punitive damages to the RIAA for each song you download, because you're an evil pirate! You wouldn't steal a car! Creators must be paid!

If you created educational videos on YouTube in the 2010s, and featured a video or audio clip, then even if it's fair use, and even if it's used to make a legitimate point, you're getting demonetised. That's assuming your videos don't disappear or get shadow banned or your account isn't shut entirely. Oh, and good luck finding your way through YouTube's convoluted DMCA process! All creators are equal in deserving pay, but some are more equal than others!

And if you're a corporation with a market capitalisation of US$1.5 trillion (Google/Alphabet) or US$2.3 billion (Microsoft), then you can freely use everyone's intellectual property to train your generative AI bots. Suddenly creators don't deserve to be paid a cent.

Apparently, an individual downloading a single file is like stealing a car. But a trillion-dollar corporation stealing every car is just good business.

@music@fedibb.ml @technology #technology #tech #economics #copyright #ArtificialIntelligence #capitalism #IntellectualProperty @music@lemmy.ml #law #legal #economics

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[–] kkarhan@mstdn.social 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

@panamared27401 @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon which is why I want #IP like #Copyright to be limited just like #Patents are:

A fixed period of 10-25 years and that's it!

Anything else is a gross violation of social contract given the fact that noone can make content past their death, so 70 years postmortal IP protection can only serve corporations and license administrations and noone else.

[–] lispi314@mastodon.top 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

@kkarhan @panamared27401 @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon 25 years is a long ass time to turn ideas into cognitohazards you can't watch nor use in culture.

Any time at all is quite long for deciding you can choose what others may think and say.

#AbolishCopyright

[–] chucker@norden.social 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

@lispi314 @kkarhan @panamared27401 @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon i think it depends on type of content. Song, book, film? Whatever.

Software, though? IT moves so fast, and copyright can cripple interoperability so much, that perhaps for software, it should be much shorter.

[–] ajsadauskas@aus.social 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

@chucker @lispi314 @kkarhan @panamared27401 @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon The other factor with software copyrights is the issue of legacy software.

There's a lot of software out there in the world that's still in use, still under copyright, but no longer sold or supported by a vendor. In some cases, it might not even be clear who actually owns the copyright.

Sometimes it's for specialist equipment that's built using obsolete software. (Hello, OS/2 ATM machines.)

Sometimes it's for large enterprises that still use legacy VAX machines, token ring ethernet equipment, CP/M applications and Windows XP desktops.

Sometimes it's run by retro computing hobbyists who really loved the Atari ST or Speccy.

There's a good argument to be made that all abandonware should be released to the public domain. It would certainly make life a lot easier for many people.

[–] j_feral@digipres.club 1 points 2 years ago

@ajsadauskas @chucker @lispi314 @kkarhan @panamared27401 @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon The Software Preservation Network is working on this in the US, carving out exemptions for software preservation under the DMCA. https://www.softwarepreservationnetwork.org/core-activities/law-policy/

[–] forthy@mastodon.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@ajsadauskas @chucker @lispi314 @kkarhan @panamared27401 @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon Share alike is better in many respects than PD. This is purely to make life easier, not for another round of making profits by adding some little modifications here and there.

[–] chucker@norden.social 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@forthy @ajsadauskas @lispi314 @kkarhan @panamared27401 @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon maybe, but like any license, share alike only works if you continue a work’s copyright in perpetuity

[–] forthy@mastodon.social 1 points 2 years ago

@chucker @ajsadauskas @lispi314 @kkarhan @panamared27401 @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon This is work that still has copyright. When doing discussions with authors of abandoned work, they are much more willing to go for share alike than for PD.

Anyways, PD should have been share alike from start.

[–] lispi314@mastodon.top 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@chucker @kkarhan @panamared27401 @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon I think that being unable to use nor remix music for years is far too long.

It doesn't remain broadly relevant for all that long in popular culture anyway. Before the internet that cycle was at the very most decade-long, now it has shrunk dramatically as information travels faster and more broadly.

Copyright also inherently assumes you have a right to control the minds of others, which I deem unconscionable.

[–] panamared27401@mstdn.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@lispi314 @chucker @kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon I think a lot of musicians (cf. R.E.M.) with sizable back catalogs to which they own the rights would disagree with you, and honestly, I don't know what the right answer is.

That said, if you would, please explain why you mean by "copyright also inherently assumes you have a right to control the minds of others." I'm not following.

[–] lispi314@mastodon.top 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@panamared27401 @chucker @kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon Copyright inherently means you cannot replicate an idea you might have come across before in any way without licensing it (which is profoundly exclusionary due to the economic dynamics involved).

Given that human culture generally involves the sharing of stories and ideas, it turns all culture covered by copyright into cognitohazards that poison any attached material.

[–] lispi314@mastodon.top 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

@panamared27401 @chucker @kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon Much like patents it also fails to account for the concept of parallel invention, which is made worse by the general way humans assimilate patterns from stories and art with the distinct possibility of reusing some bit without even meaning to (hence the cognitohazard bit).

[–] panamared27401@mstdn.social 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@lispi314 @chucker @kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon OK. So let's say there were no such thing as copyright law. How, then, would artists, writers, musicians, etc., make a living?

[–] lispi314@mastodon.top 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

@panamared27401 @chucker @kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon The same way any other creative labor is paid.

I certainly wouldn't write code for companies without fair remuneration.

Most other forms of creative work also lend themselves a bit better to crowdsourced patronage & merch than my own craft.

In any case, the value is with the labor, not the resulting work. Mostly only labor can lead to new works or improvements to old ones.

[–] panamared27401@mstdn.social 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@lispi314 @chucker @kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon Your model for writing code implies that all code writers must be someone else's employee. But what if they want to be independent? How do those folks get paid?

[–] lispi314@mastodon.top 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@panamared27401 @chucker @kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon Well, that's where the crowdsourced patronage & merchandise models (among two typical options) come in.

Both unfortunately rely on popularity with an audience will & able to pay to really work.

They're hardly the only options, streamers have found corporate sponsors for example, but I couldn't call myself an expert in alternative monetization practices.

[–] panamared27401@mstdn.social 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

@lispi314 @chucker @kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon Having been a freelancer and independent contractor off and on for 45 years, I've looked into most of them, and in most cases, for them to "work" -- by which I mean provide a living -- the artist must still be protected by copyright law; otherwise, others could duplicate and sell his/her work as their own and receive money that otherwise would have gone to the creator.

[–] salarua@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 years ago

what do you think of a hypothetical law that would allow reproduction and modification of work and selling it, but only at cost and one would have to include credit to the original author?

[–] lispi314@mastodon.top 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@panamared27401 @chucker @kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon One would think the ease of attribution and finding out plagiarism on the internet would help mitigate that.

Credit/attribution remains essential.

[–] panamared27401@mstdn.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@lispi314 @chucker @kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon Even with copyright law, plagiarism happens all the time, albeit usually on the personal level rather than the industrial level. Imagine how bad, and how industrialized, it would get if we had no copyright law.

[–] lispi314@mastodon.top 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

@panamared27401 @chucker @kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon I think it might finally motivate people to participate in the indexing efforts I care about, since they're the only real way to mitigate that.

Currently other than archival nerds and data hoarders, barely anyone seems to care.

[–] panamared27401@mstdn.social 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@lispi314 @chucker @kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon Your mileage may vary, but in my experience, particularly online, when people can get a copy of a particular work they want without paying the creator, that's what they do, if only because it's one less step.

[–] lispi314@mastodon.top 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@panamared27401 @chucker @kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon Well yes, the notion of productivized digital works is an inevitable casualty (it never really made sense either, as Taxxon highlights in her videos).

Voluntary support remains.

On the software side of things, I'd most definitely welcome the death of proprietary software and productivized software.

It has led to an absolutely awful amount of corporate malware being normalized, among other atrocities.

[–] panamared27401@mstdn.social 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@lispi314 @chucker @kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon For reasons on which I'm not immediately clear, there seems to be a lot more of an appetite for that sharing approach in the coding community than in the musician community.

[–] lispi314@mastodon.top 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@panamared27401 @chucker @kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon I've noticed that too. I think it might relate to the difference in how usually it's seen as normal & necessary to hire us for labor rather than to buy (or license 😬) specific products/works ready-made.

With musicians having the rougher end of things there. Their labor is less commonly recognized.

And then of course malware, corporate or not, tends to have direct negative impacts on users or their victims.

[–] salarua@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] lispi314@mastodon.top 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@salarua Stuff like MusicBrainz or the various boorus & iqdb/saucenao, for two examples that are mostly crowdsourced (whereas Google Images is very much a corporate-made tool that's also often much harder to use).

[–] salarua@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 years ago

i'm gonna be totally honest, i forgot Musicbrainz existed lmao

but i do care about the preservation of our history and culture, and i'll make an effort to contribute to these archives/indexes once i'm less buried in college work. are there any other indexing efforts that need help at the moment?

[–] panamared27401@mstdn.social 1 points 2 years ago

@lispi314 @chucker @kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon Also, the guy in the video says we should either ban copyright or severely shorten its length. Those are two VERY different things. I have to wonder whether severely shortening its length and streamlining the process for obtaining rights wouldn't solve most of the problems currently surrounding U.S. copyright while still allowing creative people a chance to make money.

[–] panamared27401@mstdn.social 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@lispi314 @kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon Agreed. My 2 cents is that it's a reasonable compromise, but I get that people may disagree.

[–] kkarhan@mstdn.social 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@panamared27401 @lispi314 @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon Personally, I think that any number lower than lifetime + 70 years is an improvement.

Either way the system is just absurd.

[–] panamared27401@mstdn.social 1 points 2 years ago

@kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon Oh, I quite agree. Coble's hometown paper editorialized against the copyright changes Disney bought through him at the time, but nobody else listened. Coble certainly didn't.