I understand the opposing argument as, "Yes the guy 'needs' to be able to make a living. Just like I 'need' a private jet. He needs to make a living, but NOT at the cost of bringing bits into existence that I am not allowed to copy!! That is supremely unfair. It's better if those bits don't exist at all. I just can't stand the existence of bits that in any sense 'belong' to someone, and it's better if he doesn't create them at all. If you create some bits, and I can view them, then I REQUIRE the right to copy them. THis is my inalienable freedom. If infringing on this freedom is what allows for the economic creation of amazing bits, then that system is flawed and those bits shouldn't end up getting created."
The above is honestly how people who are currently greyed-out in this thread seem to feel. (Though they don't say it as clearly.) It really is a supreme case of entitlement.
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Edit: last sentence originally read supreme sense of entitlement; to be clear, the last sentence is my own personal judgment. I don't agree with these people, and I am fine with the existence of bits I am allowed to view but not to copy, i.e. that in a sense are owned by someone else who has an exclusionary right to them, that they can use to keep me from doing certain things without their permission.
I'll agree to the jist of your "opposing argument" above, except for the uncomfortable tone, and this derogation:
> It really is a supreme sense of entitlement.
That doesn't follow. Why do you attribute such disrespect to people who prefer a different economic/social organization for creative works?
I am a content producer. By trade, by hobby, by lifestyle. I license my works as CC0 as much as possible, and use copyleft for software so that those same works can't be held against me by the copyright system I'm trying to escape. I simply value my freedom of expression, including a philosophy of sharing works, and I also think it would lead to increased economic efficiency for the society.
It's a different perspective, I don't see a reason why you must call it "a supreme sense of entitlement" when I am one of the people creating these works that I want to be shared. It's just a different way for us to structure our resources and freedoms.
"That doesn't follow. Why do you attribute such disrespect to people who prefer a different economic/social organization for creative works?"
Because there are plenty of people out there who say exactly that. Granted, in general, they are not content producers themselves. People who believe that they are entitled to these things because they wouldn't pay for them anyway.
if you want to update your profile with an email (or email me) I can summarize my thoughts on society privately - it would just be noise in this thread.
It seems that he is (or, used to be) making a living from a specific business model that only exists because it is upheld by copyright law. I am of the opinion that copyright law should be (slowly, responsibly) abolished. As long as people have a need for photographs, we will fund their development.
As long as people have a need for photographs, we will fund their development.
Fantastic! My email address is my profile. Please send me a list of your requirements with advance payment through Paypal - I'll eat the fees - as I am unable to locate any checks or money orders from you. I look forward to doing business with you!
That would've been more true 10 years ago. Now, the overwhelming majority of HN users make their living in yet another business model that exists increasingly because of the relative obsolescence of the previous business model - namely, by shifting into the $foo-as-a-service realm.
The wages of all those people wiring up form fields to databases for cat sharing companies are propped up --- drastically propped up --- by scarcities engineered into the economy by copyright.
How do you figure? Nowadays, a very large majority of web devleopment primarily consists of taking some collection of open-source tools and other services in order to create a service. The entire justification for the existence of such a service is the idea that most people aren't inclined to do all this themselves.
This isn't a matter of scarcities at all (other than the time of the end user), let alone engineered/artificial ones. It's a matter of "I'm too lazy to setup my own web server to share my cat GIFs, so I'm gonna just use Imgur instead, since they've already done the hard part".
Not really. You can't copy SAAS (assuming we disallow e.g hacking into servers, which seems fair in so far as you also can't read my diary, since it exist exclusively in my house). You can't copy a cloud system and you cannot meaningfully copy hardware.
I think you're making a logical error in applying the open-source software development model to the arts.
First, software packages are typically collaborative works of many people, improved over time. A photograph is created by a single photographer in an instant (excluding editing time for rhetorical purposes).
Second, photographers are not fungible resources, while software developers are, even controlling for skill level. The photos I take aren't the same as the ones you take, nor are those of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston.
> I think you're making a logical error in applying the open-source software development model to the arts.
I am not. I have not said anything about software. I think all copyright should be abolished (slowly, responsibly). I have considered the ramifications for different types of arts. Relatedly, I think the areas to which we have (by convention) chosen that copyright should or should not apply in law is arbitrary and sometimes silly (e.g. copyright of fashion).
> Second, photographers are not fungible resources, while software developers are, even controlling for skill level.
Software developers are not fungible resources. Two authorings of software to the same requirements will be substantially different; same for photography.
After thinking about this more, I believe that some of the answer is whether the copyrighted material is art or craft. I would define art as a creation where the form is more important than the function, and conversely craft as something where the function is more important than the form.
Clearly, there's an analog scale between these two poles. But, take for a moment an http request library. Given a certain spec, multiple programmers (or teams of programmers) might take different approaches to meet that spec -- but the result is functionally the same, and if they faithfully follow the spec, they are all going to be more or less interchangeable.
I think a photograph is qualitatively different. If I were to ask a photographer to "take a picture of an ant", I could get radically different results that are not interchangeable.
I know I'm not going to convince you, so I'm not going to keep trying, but I think abolishing copyright would provide a dire challenge to people who create visual art for a living.
One obvious way is taxation. It's the same way we fund expensive photographs of space, and high-quality journalism, and world-class educational materials... all of which contribute to the common good, like these insect photos.
There are many other ways. Is it hard to think them up yourself? Private foundations, crowdfunding, tangential services and showcases (he's already doing that), etc...
This isn't some novel idea, it's how a great amount of our works are produced today even though we also have copyright. Without copyright, we would lubricate different models for the knowledge economy. It's not like the world could only possibly be the exact way we do things now.
You're going to have to provide proof for that assertion. You're also going to have to provide proof that images of the same quality are going to be produced.
