I'm not who you asked, but I think that digital copyright has poisoned society and needs to go because to enforce it, you need a way to shut content off, so you need to build infrastructure that grants somebody censorship power. That's a high value target, and attracts the attention of precisely the people you'd rather not have censorship power.
The internet infrastructure that allows digital rights holders to protect their intellectual property also lends itself to things like billionaires owning media platforms so that they can influence public opinion: It's about protecting capabilities that third parties use to influence discourse at the expense of the users. If you reshaped the landscape to remove the chokepoints, there would be nothing for those billionaires to buy, and our technology wouldn't be amplifying cults of personality to the extent that it currently is (or rather, it would amplify based on personality, not ownership... an upgrade?).
We're living in a sort of influence aristocracy which is protected by the seats of control that were created to protect digital copyright.
How would you otherwise protect the people who invest their time and resources into building digital tools and products? Without digital copyright isn't it open season on any digital idea since it can just be stolen?
Are you actually talking about software patents, not digital copyright? Software patents protect ideas (i.e. algorithms), software copyright protects implementations (i.e. source code and binaries).
My primary argument is that however bad it would be if content creators were left unprotected, the sort of platform abuse that we're seeing today is even worse. Happy artists are important, information symmetry (re: markets and re: democracy) is more important.
But yeah, suppose we've made that switch, and now we want a new way to encourage content. I'd propose that we build attribution into our protocols. Many years ago there was controversy over "reaction" videos on youtube. They were being taken down because half of the screen was copyrighted (while the other half included somebody seeing it for the first time).
Rather than having the content exist as a single thing that either is allowed to be public or is not, I'd say that the fight should converge on how much credit was given to the person who put together the reaction video (some), and how much credit goes to the creator of the reacted-to content (more).
When I say "credit" I mean that as you browse your browser would keep track of which content you consume, and which parts of it are attributed to which people (or maybe these are bank accounts or crypto addresses or whatever). Part of paying for internet access would be allocating some fixed amount, $15/mo say... for content. At the end of the month, you'd send the $15 to the creators of your content (split up based on your consumption) and send the ISP proof that you've done so. Otherwise, your ISP collects the $15 and it goes to some nonprofit dedicated to mediating credit disputes and to educating creators on how to ensure that they do in fact get credit for their work.
This way there's no incentive to not pay for the content you're consuming: you the consumer are out the money either way. Also, the browser doesn't have to share the consumption history with the ISP... in order to meet their regulatory burden, the ISP need only see proof that you have done so. Lastly, unallocated money goes towards ensuring that future money is indeed allocated to a content creator, so it's a negative feedback loop which would hopefully converge on a state where most people participate in funding their creators.
If ISP's don't cooperate, we tax the bejeezus out of them and remove their protections re: who gets to use which buried cables such that new ISP's emerge that will cooperate.
I like that you proposed a technical solution like that. The BAT (Basic Attention Token) integration with Brave sort of works that way. I will spend some more time ruminating on it and trying it out as a daily driver approach to see if it is viable anytime soon.
This would work for content, but so far I don't think it would protect developers of digital tools or other works that are more than just content. Like artwork or anything else that can be easily copy-pasted. But I think that you have raised interesting points and I am open-minded about it all and consider this to be an interesting and complex subject without an easy answer. Thanks for your comment!
I don't quite know how best to articulate why, but I agree.
Copyright sort of has the wrong idea. It's intended to prevent the copyright owner from missing out on the opportunity to capitalize on their work—similar to software patents (which are disgusting in their own right)—the rationale being the idea that if free copying ("piracy") were allowed to run rampant, the copyright owner would only ever make one sale.
However, this assumes that every pirate is the loss of a customer. This is certainly not the case, neither for me nor for most pirates out there. There are quite a few reasons people pirate software in practice, and almost none of them deprive the copyright owner of a potential customer. Either because the pirate never could have been a customer, or because they still are.
Here are some reasons I have either personally experienced, or commonly seen, for piracy:
- They can't pay at all. Say, kids without bank accounts. They may become customers later when they have money, but there's no use in campaigning against them now unless you want to make an enemy of them!
- They want to try before they buy. Some pirates buy software they like after pirating it. There's no point in buying something they won't use or like, especially if it's non-refundable. So they pirate first, as a sort of demo.
- They can't buy it even if they have money. For example, old media or retro games that are no longer being sold. There's no benefit to restricting people's freedoms here because there's no monetary gain to be lost because no sales are even being allowed.
- They can't own it with their money. Some people simply believe in owning the software they use and the content they watch. These people aren't going to care about streaming or subscriptions because it's viewed as a pointless expense. They'd be willing to pay more up front for real ownership, but if that's not available, they're not going to take a subscription.
- The buyer experience sucks. For example, streaming services or Adobe subscriptions. Many streaming services won't even do 1080p unless you use a smart TV. Adobe doesn't let you buy software to own anymore, only rent access to the latest offering, with whatever new changes their whims dictate. Microsoft has been moving in a similar direction for a while now.
- The price is too high. They aren't the intended customer and the copyright owner doesn't want their business anyway. No money lost by pirating.
- They don't want to give the copyright owner money. If not for piracy they still wouldn't consider the purchase.
But of course, there are still:
- The purchasing process is too annoying or too much effort compared to pirating. If pirating didn't exist as an alternative, maybe they would've had more patience, but even then, there's only so much bullshit that any one potential customer can handle.
- The desire to get something for free as the primary reason to pirate. This is typically how most copyright owners think of it, and yes, it does happen. It could be because of entitlement or because of a different philosophical belief (i.e. information should be free).
See Gabe Newell's "piracy is a service problem, not a money problem". I get all my games on Steam. I don't care about the DRM or the fact that I don't technically own the games. It's so easy, they treat me well as a customer, they respect my rights, so they're the natural choice for me. Not only that, they provide services which are genuinely helpful, such as P2P networking through their servers, which means anyone can host a multiplayer server and have their friends join. It is worth the money.
But I pirate shows I like once they're removed from Netflix or whatever other streaming service, because they're literally not available anymore. Literally, if there were a way for me to pay I would, but I can't pay money even if I want to. The copyright owner is basically telling me to go fuck myself. They shouldn't be allowed to do that and still prevent me from pirating the content that they won't sell me.
Wouldn't getting rid of digital copyright affect someone who produces the idea and the code, though? By empowering others to just steal their idea and their code.
> They shouldn't be allowed to do that and still prevent me from pirating the content
This is the only part I partially disagree with - privacy is a thing, and privacy of personal information is (or should be) a thing as well. This is the whole concept behind GDPR...
In case you don't think this is an actual problem, go look up Hunter Moore and the ethical issues with unfettered dissemination of information.
Of course its completely backwards that "movies" are given better protection than medical or other sensitive information....
The solution is not rampant piracy, for media concerns, all media/games/etc should be archived by e.g. the Library of Congress and available for purchase, unless determined by due process e.g. that the content is harmful (revenge porn, e.g.). This doesn't need to be a convenient process, obtaining e.g. such media can be a matter of requesting/buying/shipping encrypted usb drives around, perhaps (or purchasing a key for encrypted files online), licensing to distributors such as Netflix should still be the norm and more economically/ergonomically viable option.
But I do at least agree that piracy itself is not the problem, it is a symptom of a larger socio-economic issue.
Copyright shouldn't be what I have on my personal information. That's the wrong model to use. I'm not selling my own personal information and I'm not miffed by the idea of losing out on customers. In fact, I don't even want customers. My information is already being sold without my consent or involvement, and that's fucked up. I don't want them to come to me, I want them to go to jail.
The correct model is indeed privacy, which is that people should have the right to their PII not being sold or distributed without their express, informed consent. This has nothing to do with piracy or copyright. I'd say people should have the right to their PII not even being recorded in the first place, but consent to recording is often implied when you voluntarily provide it in exchange for a service, so we still need additional protections on top.
I'd still appreciate not being recorded without my express consent, though. I appreciate countries that have laws against it.
I do appreciate GDPR and its effects on data storage, retrieval and deletion. But it's only one piece of a complete set of privacy-preserving regulations, IMHO.
