Technorealism (1998)

Which is precisely what they are doing: freely expressing what at the time was a distinctly minority view.

For a list of signatories, see: https://www.technorealism.org/faq.html

You'll have to use the Wayback Machine on many of those links, though HN readers who've followed this debate should recognise at least some names. I've highlighted a few in an earlier comment.

Several (and perhaps most) of the signatories have written books (either before or after the launch of Technorealism), and/or articles in the tech or general press.

It's true that cyberspace and other recent developments are challenging our copyright laws and frameworks for protecting intellectual property. The answer, though, is not to scrap existing statutes and principles. Instead, we must update old laws and interpretations so that information receives roughly the same protection it did in the context of old media. The goal is the same: to give authors sufficient control over their work so that they have an incentive to create, while maintaining the right of the public to make fair use of that information. In neither context does information want "to be free." Rather, it needs to be protected.

What I think this misses is that the progress of technology has it made impossible to go back to the status quo 40 years ago. Copyright seems like a reasonable middle-ground if works are mostly published on physical media which you can own, play whenever you want or even sell of give away - but which are relatively rarely copied.

In today's world, that option is gone - instead, we have two opposite extremes:

One is anarchy, in which a popular work will almost instantly be pirated and distributed all across the world

The other is DRM and complete control, in which the consumer does not own anything except an ephemeral license to consume a work. But the rights-holder can suddenly control exactly who may consume the work, when, how often, under which circumstances, what the may or may not otherwise do with the work, etc - and all those circumstances may change at a moment's notice. In extreme cases, the rights-holder may even revoke the license and effectively erase all copies of their work at once.

- The present effective gate to the Internet is online service providers and mobile telephony / data providers.

- A combination of UBI (sufficient to support authors, musicians, and other creators) and reputation / merit-based compensation (for works of more substantial effort, notably jouranlism, investigation, and research) should be able to support creatives. Note that this is more a career than strictly performance ("units moved") basis. People don't turn out substantial work consistently, and much of what's turned out on a consistent basis ... is less than substantial.

- The "free Internet" already costs ~$800 billion/year, which divided amongst the roughly 1 billion inhabitants of North America and Europe (we'll include Japan and Australia by proxy) works out to ... $800/head, or $3,200 for a family of four, per year. That's the global advertising bill. And yes, it largely makes sense to allocate that amongst the OECD, the world's richest billion.

- A small fraction of that would support all existing journalism, music, and publishing handsomly, as well as much television and video production.

It's quite possible that there'd be some reallocation of compensation from the present mix. That might not be all bad.

I've suggested this a few times:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26822263

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26893033

Human society shifts with literal priorities, not politically or socially preferred. We rebuilt after WW2 and churn around repainting, but a lot of folks need to get over the narrative not being about their tribe specifically

I include myself in this; if tech salaries implode because ML, oh well. I am not just a utilitarian gig