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Copyright reform is necessary for national security

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Re: Copyright reform is necessary for national security

#61

Post by JumpCrisscross »

absolutelastone wrote: post #42
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #15

This wouldn't be the first time IP laws hurt Western innovation and security. When WW1 started - despite the airplane being invented in Dayton, Ohio - the US had fallen so far behind they had to use French aircraft. Why? The Wright brothers' patent wars had effectively frozen US aviation development. Today it's not just one industry - Western IP laws are slowing progress across multiple tech frontiers. While companie…

I think our IP laws are optimized to maximize benefits for the legal system.

> our IP laws are optimized to maximize benefits for the legal system

Versus the content owners?!?

Re: Copyright reform is necessary for national security

#62

Post by martin-t »

ranger_danger wrote: post #33
RyanShook wrote: post #18

I’m afraid LLMs are making copyrights obsolete and unenforceable. If an author uses DeepSeek to write a book, piece of music, application, or patent did they break copyright? Is the new work protected if this is disclosed?

If I looked at a painting before making my own similar one, did I break copyright?

I am writing a master's thesis and notice somebody has written one containing a chapter than I also need to write. I copy paste the chapter but replace every word with a synonym. Did I break copyright? Did I commit plagiarism?

Re: Copyright reform is necessary for national security

#63

Post by JumpCrisscross »

wisty wrote: post #45
8note wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you do suddenly become popular, you can write a second book, and get involved in TV or movie adaptations of it. GRRM isnt included on ASOIAF content because hes the copyright holder, but because his influence makes people want to see the shows

You could argue that 14 years is a little short, especially for books which can get adaptations that pay more than the book. OTOH preventing adaptations stifles things. Imagine if Tolkein had managed to lock down his orcs and elves like Disney locked down the mouse. I think 20 or 30 years is fairer. But IIRC it's not about fair, the Constitution says that it should only be to encourage innovation, and long copyright…

> 14 years is a little short, especially for books which can get adaptations that pay more than the book

If you want to make an official adapatation, hire the author. If not, it's not official. This takes care of itself for authors who cultivate their fan base.

Re: Copyright reform is necessary for national security

#64

Post by bsder »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #6
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #2

I hope to see copyright duration go down to a reasonable length within my lifetime. There's tons of creative derivative work which builds upon existing content which cannot be sold due to copyright. The way I think about IP is that if you grew up with something, by the time you're an adult it should be possible to remix it in any way you like, because it's part of your culture. Nobody should get to lock down an idea…

14 years as originally intended would be fine. All the classic movies up to 2010, and I still have to pay a subscription to watch, and lots of them are unavailable because the studios want to haggle over licenses for 50 year old properties? It's the kind of thing that might drive a man to pirate. If your book hasn't made you rich in the first 14 years after publishing, I'm sorry, audience just isn't that into you. (I…

The original author (not an assignee) should get N years free and should be able to renew every N years for some fee that escalates upwards with a single retroactive period if you haven't paid. If you hit a second period that you haven't paid, copyright dropped. If you aren't the original author, you get to renew once for N years--no more.

This is a nice compromise in that it disincentivizes simply squatting on properties--you have to pay money to maintain later copyright so you have a strong push to make money on it.

Re: Copyright reform is necessary for national security

#65

Post by JumpCrisscross »

can16358p wrote: post #17

I honestly don't understand why this is not the case already. Actually copyright should be even less-enforceable. Information/access to data/works should be totally free and there should be other ways to support the creators. For example I could easily download MP3s of music and MP4s of series/movies but I don't: simply because of two reasons: - I want to support the artist (to an extent as possible) - Using Spotify/…

> copyright should be even less-enforceable

It should also be de-criminalized.

Re: Copyright reform is necessary for national security

#66

Post by Kim_Bruning »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #60
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy isn’t a legal problem—it’s a service problem [1]. Netflix, Spotify, and Valve (Steam) didn’t succeed because of copyright enforcement. They won because they made paying for content easier, faster, and better than piracy. Piracy isn’t hard, but these services solved the friction: instant access, high quality, fair pricing, and features that free alternatives couldn’t match. That’s why they still thrive today. […

> They won because they made paying for content easier, faster, and better than piracy PopcornTime would eat their lunch if it were allowed to work [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn_Time

Popcorn Time definitely set out to solve the service problem in a big way.

Re: Copyright reform is necessary for national security

#67

Post by hnad8125 »

artninja1988 wrote: post #56
qrwafn wrote: post #53

It is interesting that since January 20th all pro-copyright posts are downvoted. Is this the user alignment that the AI broligarchs speak of?

On the contrary. It's only been since the proliferation of genai that I've seen so many copyright maximalist takes on Hackernews, reminiscent of the you wouldn't steal a car propaganda run by big corpos.

Both is true. There have been more pro-copyright posts but these are getting downvoted recently. Last year they were popular.

Re: Copyright reform is necessary for national security

#68

Post by abetusk »

An exceptional post from people who have an ideological stake in knowledge preservation/dissemination and are at the center of it.

From the post:

"""

Our first recommendation is straightforward: shorten the copyright term. In the US, copyright is granted for 70 years after the author’s death. This is absurd. We can bring this in line with patents, which are granted for 20 years after filing. This should be more than enough time for authors of books, papers, music, art, and other creative works, to get fully compensated for their efforts (including longer-term projects such as movie adaptations).

"""

Re: Copyright reform is necessary for national security

#69

Post by chromanoid »

martin-t wrote: post #48
chromanoid wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think the rich get richer when operating an AI is a price competition and training new models gives only a short competitive advantage? I would hope that for each individual there opens an ocean of opportunities that is sustained by all humans that came before and poured their bucket of knowledge into it.

1) For starters, ML companies clearly go through enormous amounts of money, the rich people in control of them very obviously get compensated quite generously, if you're into euphemisms, which the people who built the "training data" (= their copyrighted works) get nothing. 2) It's not just ML companies but anyone using their products. A while ago everyone was upset that chatGPT regurgitated fast inverse square root…

Algorithms should not be subject to copyright IMO. If you publish code, AFAIK under EU law only blatant copies are an infringement. In case of art, copyright is enforceable anyway, at least not in any different form than before AI.

Yes, current AIs just remix their training data in a rather direct way. But in the end how different is that to how humans create? I would suggest we should embrace this new way of creating things while finding laws to empower all creators and not only those who were hired by deep pockets.

Re: Copyright reform is necessary for national security

#70

Post by Kim_Bruning »

martin-t wrote: post #30
kevingadd wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientific papers are available on web pages so they're publicly available for free too right? I can download an ISO or installer of almost anything if I go to the right website, so all software is already free? If you're going to ignore the existence of copyright and licenses we should extend it to everything that's ever been posted on the internet, not just "web pages". Why shouldn't all books and films count as fr…

I am surprised by how quickly I get downvoted to hell any time I try to propose that people should be compensated for their work fairly. And I get replies like the above, full of fallacies, which basically feel like trolling. So first, thank you for a sane reply. Now, it boils down to the typical issue of a current system being bad and clearly not serving its stated purpose so the choice is whether to abolish it or w…

> I fundamentally think if you build on other people's work, they deserve 1) credit 2) compensation according to what percentage of your work is based on theirs.

That’s not a naturally occurring principle—it’s a legal and social construct that people have come to see as an inherent entitlement. If the current system isn’t working, maybe that's the actual bit that's broken and needs reform?

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