> making copyright liberalization a topic for your elected officials
It'd be nice to have that luxury. But the situation these days doesn't really allow that. We're facing an all-out assault on environmental regulations, a persecution of all people brown and a possible compromise of our government by a hostile foreign power. Hell, even techies have net neutrality to try to try to regain. There's just very little reason for politicians to care about an issue that both parties largely agree on.
The days when I wrote my congresswoman about copyright issues feel like a pleasant dream, at this point, and not something I'd waste what little political influence I have on right now.
Not that you don't have a point: prioritisation is extremely important. But also keep in mind that it's a normal political sleight of hand to keep you occupied with X, while the real goal is Y. For example, someone who wanted to push forward copyright changes, but expects problems could propose a subsidy for burning coal and while people are distracted by that, to push through their copyright changes.
If your elected official only thinks that X is important, then they may be willing to give up Y whenever anyone threatens X -- no matter how serious a threat it is. Holding public officials accountable is very hard work, which is another reason why they can frequently get away with questionable actions and still get re-elected.
I tend to think that directly actionable things are better to focus on. So promoting free and open source software, and ensuring that it becomes the backbone of software development is more effective than discussing copyright issues with your congressman. However after making the issue important to a wide class of people, you can't neglect the political side.
On the other hand, I would never criticise someone for deciding to prioritise a cause like the environment, or government corruption over copyright issues. A single person can only do so much. But if you are motivated by copyright issues, then I wouldn't hold back just because there are other, seemingly more important issues on the table -- because that hesitation will be used against you.
This difference is important because, while Democrats express plenty of concern for racial issues, “there's just very little reason for politicians to care about an issue that both parties largely agree on”. In this case, the issue being sidestepped is economic inequality, and by misidentifying this, you’re hurting the brown people who you’re trying to help.
To be clear, the result of misidentifying the problem is the persistent evidence of racial disparities, despite so much apparent effort to address it, because brown people in America have always been at an economic disadvantage (see slavery, Jim Crow). They weren’t just made this way because of an uptick in racial discrimination. Rather, they are staying this way because of a drop in economic mobility at the hands of “both parties”. Of course there is simply far more evidence to the latter than the former, so we should take note.
Of course, the wider issue is social mobility, which is contingent on economic mobility. Scapegoating the economic part is a dirty game and ultimately a losing proposition.
While I agree with most of what you said, I called out the racial persecution because that's the part that got so much worse over the past couple years. The government isn't separating white children from their guardians or turning a blind eye towards police violence against white people.
The unstated part of my post was Trump and the point was that we can get back to worrying about issues like copyright once we've figured out how to get rid of him. But as long as he's president, he's going to continually make things worse on so many fronts that trying to work on less pressing issues like copyright reform is like a doctor telling a fat man with a gunshot wound to exercise more because he's at risk of heart disease. You have to treat the immediately-life-threatening issue first.
None of this is to say that systemic economic unfairness isn't an issue that needs addressing, just that there's no way to treat that disease until we've dealt with the gunshot we received in the 2016 election.
The government isn't separating white children from their guardians or turning a blind eye towards police violence against white people
Isn't it fairly standard practice to separate children from their guardians when they are detained by law enforcement? We can of course have a discussion about whether this is warranted or not, I'm of the opinion that it isn't in the case of non violent offenses, but I would assume it happens fairly regularly to white people who are accused of breaking the law.
With regards to police violence, it definitely does disproportionately affect minorities, and in particular black men, but I feel in general the government is pretty good at turning a blind eye to police brutality and prosecutorial overreach even when it affects whites.
Is it standard practice to remove children completely from the care of any adult family members and place them in cages while completely losing track of who their parents/family are?
IDK, so many things seem normal these days. Was it two legs, or four?
Crowd funding is one example. You’re not going to crowd fund a $200m blockbuster but I don’t see why we need to have those kinds of movies. Copyright and intellectual property laws benefit a small minority of people at the expense of the masses, and strike me as unfair. If a $200m movie is only feasible with draconian copyright laws, perhaps such a movie is unnecessary? I’d rather have the freedom to remix art and benefit from others doing so than live subject to surveillance just so the state can be sure I’m not copying movies that can be copied at no loss to others.
I don’t make movies but I have been working nights and weekends for nine months on a robot design [1] that is CC0 licensed, which means no copyright public domain.
The work can be a reward on its own, and work done by this kind of passion has a character very different from a massively for profit movie. Personally I’d enjoy the art more if we had no copyright. Then only those passionate about the art would make it, and people would fund what they enjoy. I’d vastly prefer that system.
Sure, and one whose economics could be supported without made up rules about how to exchange information that can be copied for free. That is what I claim.
In other words, I believe artists and drug manufacturers alike would still find ways to fund important work even without intellectual property law or secrecy of information.
Yeah movies would be reduced to commercials. Commercials are free after all, so that proves it is possible. So we would probably still have movies like Transformers and Star Wars, so I guess geeks would be happy.
That reads like an indication that you don't want to use HN as intended, so I've banned the account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
As movie equipment gets cheaper and more widespread, movies become less and less expensive to make. Of course the more special effects, post production, high-rate actors and actresses, etc., the higher the cost. But a lot of the barriers getting smaller over time. And I'm not an expert, but I'm willing to bet there's plenty of fat to potentially be trimmed from Hollywood budgets.
An open license might contain a non-commercial restriction. It could hypothetically be given an open license at some point after its initial, non-open release. For example, not a movie, but Id software has released the code for Doom and Quake several years after their release.
Additionally piracy will always take a piece out of your potential customer base.
Let's look at how movies make money now.
Ticket sales: Showing the movie first in theaters. The great majority of ticket sales happen around the time the movie is initially released. There's no reason a movie couldn't be given a more liberal license after this period. Ticket sales have also been dropping, probably because streaming has become so ubiquitous, but it hasn't stopped. Many people enjoy the huge screen, popcorn/etc. experience, which can't exactly be "distributed" in the same way as a video file.
DVD/Blu-ray sales: Again, with a non-commercial open license, there's no reason they couldn't continue to make and sell these. Bootlegs would be easier to obtain (and just as infringing as they currently are), but they'd be just as easy to pirate as they currently are too.
Streaming: The biggest feature that drives streaming subscriptions is convenience. Being able to watch a program just about anywhere, on most or all of your devices, in high quality(1080p, 4K, and probably even higher in the future). A copy distributed under a non-commercial license would mean you couldn't charge to stream the content, so you'd be stuck with a bill for the bandwidth. Studios could strike separate commercial license deals (like they already do) for streaming distribution. You could use something like bittorrent (in fact this already exists, streaming movies via torrent), but you're not necessarily guaranteed quality.
Merchandise: I'm sure I'm sounding like a broken record now, but a non-commercial license could prevent sales for merchandise. Also you'd still have all of your trademark rights. Plus most merchandise is pretty cheap to produce at scale,
I could be wrong, but my impression is that people are generally willing to pay for things - as long as they feel like it's a fair deal. They don't care about licenses, deals with streaming services, reasons behind strange restrictions on distribution, etc. They want to watch movies without jumping through hoops. There's plenty of money to be made on merchandise, experience (theaters), and high quality for-profit distribution.
Additionally content (subject to jurisdiction) eventually becomes public domain anyways, the most open of licenses. :)
Oppose them by
* boycotting hollywood movies
* making copyright liberalization a topic for your elected officials
* creating and distributing art under open licenses