100, author+50, or author+70 years is absolutely absurd rent-seeking corporate greed that subsumed the protections of individual creators because of damn corporate personhood. Copyright should exist for a period of 2x "life sentence" used by Scandinavian criminal courts: 42 years. No extensions, no exceptions.
As a copyright abolitionist I think 10 years is an alright compromise if alternative funding models really don't work out.
Long enough to be painful enough to spend money, short enough that you can build upon the previous decade's work. If you have a childhood show, once you become a young adult, you can build on it legally. Simple to calculate too!
Nothing but greed will break if it becomes 3 years. On the contrary, IMO this will actually considerably reduce piracy, because things entering public domain would be something one can wait for. You either go to a cinema to see the hot new movie right now, or you see it legally for free in 3 years.
My fear is that shortening copyright now won’t do anything to stem corporate greed at all, but it would let the corporations pillage all the modern works of the massive sea of independent artists and individual creators while they’re still alive and trying to make a living.
The way I see it, which is potentially overly naive, there are two trains of thought that make sense to me.
Either you believe that it is more valuable for humans to compete with each other for technological advances to sell them as a product in the free market. These people would probably argue that the ability to sell your idea in a market with some amount of anti-competitor protection is what spurs people to make these advancements at all.
Or you believe that it is more valuable for humans to collaborate and build off of each other's ideas, which copyrights and similar legal protection concepts stifle. These people probably believe that their argument prevails over the previous camp's argument, or they may even believe that people would ultimately advance technology without copyright protections anyway.
Looking at it in one of those two ways, it seems pretty clear how one could draw the conclusion that copyrighting holds back humanity.
Learning materials are under lock and key and people need education.
We desperately need more and better scientists yet publishing houses hold them hostage.
Hundreds of thousands of lives are being wasted working on the legal systems in place to protect a few huge companies profits.
In just the last 20 years there has probably been more free learning materials produced, than in the last 5000 years, and we can translate them all in to nearly any language instantly for free thanks to LLMs. There is no shortage of materials, we just need more people to point young people in their direction. MIT's entire computer science courses have been freely available on youtube since ~2008 and they're quite good and updated moderately frequently (more than is neccessary)
Learning materials are more available to more people, especially people without resources, than at any point in the preceding 150 years. That expansion of material and access to material occurred during a historic expansion of copyright.
…for people who are unwilling to pay. There are explicit carve outs in the DMCA for anyone who is legitimately doing any of those things to break DRM to make copies.
It's not just about payment. It's about licensing. Preserving/archiving legally-obtained copyrighted works without a license is in a grey area even if you never share the archive with anyone until the term is over. Grey area means "do at your own risk". Preservation without distribution is not fair use, since fair use can only be decided on a case-by-case basis in court. What if the copyright holder charges an unaffordable amount for a license for archival? (Don't forget, the preservationist is the one doing the preservation work.) What if the copyright holder doesn't offer a license to archive their works for any price? What if the copyright holder wants their work to go away forever, even though that completely flies against the stated purpose of the Copyright Clause [1]? (You can't have progress of knowledge if the knowledge disappears.) What if the US Copyright Office didn't grant an exception for archival in the current three-year round of DMCA 1201 rule-making? (Why do these crucial exceptions to DMCA 1201 have to expire every three years?) What if you can't find the copyright holder, especially in the case of orphan works?
Copyright is a real, not hypothetical, obstacle to preservation [2]:
> Films have disintegrated because preservationists can’t digitize them. The works of historians and journalists are incomplete. Artists find their cultural heritage off limits. (See studies like the Hargreaves Review commissioned by the UK ns of the availability of copyrighted works and public domain works, and economic studies of the effects of copyright.)
I'm not arguing about whether copyright "holds back humanity". I'm just pointing out that "you just need to pay for the material" is a fundamental misunderstanding in the context of preserving copyrighted works. And personally, I think the US Congress should add a bright-line exception to copyright for preservation/archival without distribution by anyone.
Archiving doesn’t mean what you think it means; ripping a disc and then preserving the file so you can watch it on your phone is not “archiving”.
The congress has added a process for the rule-making authority to draw bright-line distinctions for actual archivists to archive things, and they have done so. It’s just that it only applies to people who are actually archiving, not people who want to violate the terms of a license because they think they’re entitled to for some nebulous hand-wavy reason.
The rest is just being mad that people who own a thing, in this instance copyright to a work, are allowed to do whatever they want with their thing. Rights holders are not people who are temporarily holding something which belongs to mankind, quite the opposite. It’s their thing, they can do whatever they please with it. If you don’t like it you can kick rocks.
When people own their hard drives, they are allowed to do whatever they want with it, including ripping it and backing it up. It's their thing, they can do whatever they please with it. If copyright monopolists don't like it they can kick rocks; not like they can find out anyway.
In other words, keep your hands off my hard drive. My copy that I bought is not "your thing".
> Archiving doesn’t mean what you think it means; ripping a disc and then preserving the file so you can watch it on your phone is not “archiving”.
There are two separate issues:
1. Archiving so that the file will be accessible in the future to anyone once the copyright term expires is one issue, the only issue I wrote about in my previous comment, and the very subject of the ancestor comment by 1letterunixname: "It prevents archival, reproduction, and examination of interesting legacy works before they and their contemporary supporting materials disappear.".
2. Copying/recording a file so that it can be accessed using different devices or at different times for personal use. (This involves non-robust "archival" at minimum as a necessary constituent action but is better described as time shifting or place shifting depending on the situation.) By claiming that "Archiving doesn’t mean what you think it means", you're bringing up a second issue to ignore and dismiss the first issue.
In this comment as well, I am only discussing archival and preservation of the first kind.
> The congress has added a process for the rule-making authority to draw bright-line distinctions for actual archivists to archive things, and they have done so.
The closest thing I can find to an existing law allowing archival is "17 U.S. Code § 108 - Limitations on exclusive rights: Reproduction by libraries and archives" [1]. To which I say, 1. it's outdated for this age of fast information transfer and 2. it's too narrow in regards to who can perform the actions of archival and in which cases [2]:
> In order to take advantage of the exception, libraries and archives must follow certain ground rules. They must be either open to the public or allow access to non-affiliated researchers; the copying cannot be for “direct or indirect commercial advantage”
...
> Using Section 108, libraries and archives can start preserving old digital files in their collections. It does not help them, however, preserve materials that they do not own, such as networked resources or Web sites. Nor does Section 108 help individuals who want to preserve a digital files they may have legally acquired or obtained from the Internet. For this sort of preservation, we must rely on fair use.
...
> Since individuals cannot use Section 108 to make copies, even for preservation purposes, they must turn to the Fair Use provision in US copyright law.
Under current federal law, the only parties who are definitely allowed to perform archival actions are organizations which provide archival to render specific services to some subset of people outside of the organization. Other organizations are out of luck, including groups which archive things and lock them - rather than curate/display them - until the respective copyright terms expire. All individuals are out of luck as well. There's fair use, but fair use can't provide the bright line I was arguing for in my previous comment. Setting aside the fact that copyright terms can reach decades longer than all modern human lifespans, what if I want to preserve things but will never share my backups with anyone else (except for an escrow party otherwise upholding the same rules in case the copyright terms outlive me) until the copyright terms expire? I should have a First Amendment right to do that.
The freedoms of speech, expression, and the press are not merely freedoms to convey information to others. They are also freedoms to receive information [3], so it follows that I should be able to store legally obtained information until I can convey it to other i.e. let others receive it once the copyright terms expire. These freedoms are subject to reasonable exceptions such as copyright and privacy, but the First Amendment overrides the previous parts of the Constitution - including the Copyright Clause - in cases of conflict. Copyright and archival often do conflict in reality [4]:
> The verdict is in: adding an extra 20 years to the US copyright term was a “big mistake.” This is not a quote from someone who is equivocal about copyright; it is a quote from the former head of our Copyright Office. Another former Director of the Copyright Office proposed shortening the copyright term by 20 years unless copyright owners “assert their continued interest in exploiting the work by registering with the Copyright Office in a timely manner.” Copyright holders such as Disney could readily secure “the full benefit of the additional twenty years,” while all of the works no longer being exploited would enter the public domain, fulfilling copyright’s goal of benefiting the public.
> Indeed, there is a consensus among policymakers, economists, and academics that lengthy copyright extensions impose costs that far outweigh their benefits. Why? The benefits are minuscule—economists (including five Nobel laureates) have shown that term extension does not spur additional creativity. At the same time, it causes enormous harm, locking away millions of older works that are no longer generating any revenue for the copyright holders. Films have disintegrated because preservationists can’t digitize them. The works of historians and journalists are incomplete. Artists find their cultural heritage off limits. (See studies like the Hargreaves Review commissioned by the UK government, empirical comparisons of the availability of copyrighted works and public domain works, and economic studies of the effects of copyright.)
The US First Amendment's freedom of the press is not limited to press organizations and employees of press organizations. In the US, literally anyone can exercise freedom of the press under the First Amendment. US governments don't get to pick who is or isn't a journalist. Performing actions of journalism is a right. For example, using a phone to record an interaction between a police officer - a public servant - and a civilian is a First Amendment right due to freedom of the press. The same should apply to archival. Archival organizations and libraries should not be the only parties allowed to perform archival actions. In other words, the First Amendment should be interpreted to include a right to archival. Moreover, Section 108's restrictions on which things can be copied and how many copies can be made [1] conflict with data redundancy [5].
And just so we're clear, the public is entitled to unrestricted access to things in the public domain. In the US, the main purpose of copyright is to ensure that the public domain gradually gets filled with new works, including copyright works whose terms have expired. As I wrote in a different comment about the Copyright Clause [6]:
> In the US, copyright is a statutory right granted by the copyright laws written by Congress. Congress' authority to make copyright statutes and patent statutes is dependent on promoting the progress of knowledge and inventions
> The Copyright Clause allows Congress to produce short-term restrictions as the means to fulfill a long-term purpose. Congress can add and remove from copyright, but both actions must be for the purpose of promoting the spread, development, and eventual unrestricted public access to creative works. Emphasis on both "eventual" and "unrestricted". In simpler terms, copyright is a means to ensure that the public eventually gets access to every creative work.
I also wrote a different comment on the meanings of the terms "Science" and "useful Arts" in the Copyright Clause [7].
I would argue that, like every economic compromise, copyright introduces certain friction. For example, authors cannot easily build on works of other authors; even if you had a brilliant idea about a new Mickey Mouse movie, you would have to obtain licence from Disney for that. That sort of goes against the entire cultural tradition of humanity before copyright; Disney themselves made enormous money on adaptations of folk tales in public domain. Art does not exist in a vacuum and most works are at least inspired by previous works.
Ofc authors and publishers benefit from this friction, that is why copyright exists at all. But it is a legitimate question where precisely that tradeoff should lie.
Already in the 18th century in England, the Law Lords rejected "eternal" copyright as undesirable. 95 years isn't exactly eternity, but it is a lot longer than the original 14+14 format.
Knowledge is an empowering thing. To transmit and copy it freely means empowering all of humanity. Therefore any constraint to that holds back humanity. Copyright is such a constraint.
It doesn't though, as long as you're willing to throw yourself out there. Meetup groups is a great way to meet fellow nerds, especially if you share interests. You'll probably meet some shitty people sometime, just stay clear and keep trying, you'll eventually find at least one or two people who you fit with :)
Acquaintances perhaps, but I wouldn’t say actual friends. I could try it again though. I don’t/can’t use social media so when I got rid of that years ago, almost everyone I knew then went with it.
Friends are just acquaintances you know better than others. You start as acquaintances and as you develop the relationship, you'll eventually be friends.
Some people have so good relationships they even use the label "bestie", which is just a really good friend, who at the beginning surely was a acquaintance :)
Thanks for your input. Being honest, my situation has been like this for so long now I’ve given up hope and lost interest in it ever changing. Used to my own loneliness nowadays so it doesn’t really matter. Fine with being someone who is only ever in the background of other people’s day.
For the past eight years I’ve been telling myself that I was going to end my life if things didn’t improve by this year, and they only ever get worse and worse, so 2024 is my final one on earth. Currently in the process of wrapping up all my business and getting rid of all my stuff so there’s nothing left behind for anyone to deal with. Really not going to miss living or living the life I’ve lived. Eight billion other people on the planet who will get on fine without me.
Sorry to hear that. I’m not in a position to help you but there are many selfhelp support networks in your neighbourhood that can help(most likely, assuming you live in a city).
I’m really just not someone people enjoy the company of or want to get to know or have around. Kind of my conclusion after 40 years of living in cities. Have tried all kinds of groups and programmes. Have tried putting in the interest but everyone I know or meet fades out, either quickly or slowly. Don’t have any family either, or a significant other.
You need to start changing coefficients in your “life physics” and see what happens. Increasing the amount of new social contact is always a good starting point.
„ We need to think about failure differently. I’m not the first to say that failure, when approached properly, can be an opportunity for growth. But the way most people interpret this assertion is that mistakes are a necessary evil. Mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. They aren’t evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new (and, as such, should be seen as valuable; without them, we’d have no originality). And yet, even as I say that embracing failure is an important part of learning, I also acknowledge that acknowledging this truth is not enough. That’s because failure is painful, and our feelings about this pain tend to screw up our understanding of its worth. To disentangle the good and the bad parts of failure, we have to recognize both the reality of the pain and the benefit of the resulting growth.“
When in high school, I returned home after a ski weekend with friends. When I returned home, my relatives, who didn't ski, asked if I fell at all during the weekend. I remarked that I had, especially while navigating some expert trails. They consoled me saying "that's OK, maybe you'll do better next time."
I was confused at first until I realized that they thought of falling as a tragic outcome instead of a natural part of the learning process.
Probably mostly a function of them having no idea what skiing is like. If you never fall you either only use boring routes or ski very slowly - or you are professional skier and have such a breakneck speed you can’t fall (but even then it happens looking at Schumacher)
Oh yea agreed, and I admit I’m often at fault for this as well. Some topics I tend to have an instant emotional reaction to and leave low quality ragebaiting comments - it’s hard to unlearn a decade of being trained to respond like this on places like facebook.
Lately I strive to get better and often type out a comment, wait a minute reread it and then close the window. Often it’s best to just shut up.
Entrepreneurs have an empathy for one another that can have many aspects -- stoic philosophy, self-reliance, resourcefulness, resilience, motivating oneself and those around one. Founders have less time for banality)
Seventhed - I've written to HN's email address and received a personal response from Daniel the same day. You could have the greatest, most expensive commercial support contract and it wouldn't get you a Daniel!
It is not fulfilling its purpose for a long time now and is holding back humanity as a whole.