Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money
torrentfreak.com
Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money
1–10 of 61 posts
Re: Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money
#2That 2% figure is quite interesting (and the study beautifully typeset), but I can't read Swedish. Can anyone find a translation anywhere?
Re: Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money
#3How about a little full disclosure? The author of the cited article is Rick Falkvinge, founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, so not exactly an unbiased source.
Aside from that, this whole article is one strawman after another. I don't know anyone who supports copyright and believes it to be the only way for creative folks to make money.
The creative argument in favour of copyright is simply that more useful works get generated and distributed with it than without it.
The economic argument is also very simple: the people making those works need to put food on the table. Despite all the rhetoric, nothing is stopping them from doing that in other ways right now, yet relatively few people actually are.
Really, all the anti-copyright people have to do to make a rock solid argument for their case is show that industrial-scale creative work is more effective using alternative business models rather than relying on copyright. There's an entire world of creative industries and bazillions in cash going into those industries, so finding more than an occasional study and isolated success story shouldn't be that hard... if their position is actually correct.
Re: Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money
#4Imagine if, before intellectual property, you put 20 smart people in a room, and tell them to come up with solutions to add incentives for creative works. None of them would have come up with "Hey! Why don't we grant inventors monopolies over inventions! We could increase the ammount and quality of inventions by limiting what others can invent!". No one would ever think that's a good idea. It's completely backwards and counter intuitive. They would come up with things like y-combinator, angel funds, startup incubators. Or straight up government money investments. These are the obvious ideas that come up when you're trying to figure how to incentive ideas. You incentive ideas by investing in them, not by limiting them.
And of course, as most people here probably already know, that's not how IP was invented. It was not a conclusion from trying to come up to a solution for investing in ideas. No sane human being would have thought that was a solution. IP was invented as a monarchy monopoly to give power to the king. The "but it's good for innovation" meme was an excuse invented later when they figured they could actually make a lot of money from it, so those who were profiting off monopolies had to find an excuse to keep it.
It's so mind boggling to watch so many discussions where people ask "the ultimate hard question" of "but how else could be possibly incentive ideas without copyright???". C'mon, it's so straight-forward and we've been doing it for centuries. YC alone has done much more for promoting innovative creative works than copyright has done since it's invention. Do you really care about investing in ideas? Then put your money where your mouth is, become an angel investor, and stop pretending it's a hard problem to solve.
Re: Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money
#5Please ... this article is trolling copyright holders. Each point is weak, easy to dismantle, and unsubstantiated. I started to write a long response and decided perhaps this isn't the forum, but I am surprised to see this on the front of hacker news.
Re: Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money
#6How about a little full disclosure? The author of the cited article is Rick Falkvinge, founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, so not exactly an unbiased source. Aside from that, this whole article is one strawman after another. I don't know anyone who supports copyright and believes it to be the only way for creative folks to make money. The creative argument in favour of copyright is simply that more useful works get…
Disclaimer: I have slightly skimmed the article and I don't exactly know what your usage of the word 'copyright' implies.
I am making this post anyway because I think you'll benefit from these links I mentioned in an earlier post.
Re: Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money
#7How about a little full disclosure? The author of the cited article is Rick Falkvinge, founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, so not exactly an unbiased source. Aside from that, this whole article is one strawman after another. I don't know anyone who supports copyright and believes it to be the only way for creative folks to make money. The creative argument in favour of copyright is simply that more useful works get…
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/ Also, your complaint about them being 'strawmen' is true, but makes no sense. They are common 'myths, which is to say exaggerations of things people claim everyday. You yourself make several of his 'myths' in your post.
> The creative argument in favour of copyright is simply that more useful works get generated and distributed with it than without it.
Translation:
> Myth: Without the incentive of possibly getting money, nobody will go into artistry and create.
> The economic argument is also very simple: the people making those works need to put food on the table. Despite all the rhetoric, nothing is stopping them from doing that in other ways right now, yet relatively few people actually are.
Translation:
> Myth: With free sharing, nobody will spend money on entertainment.
They aren't supposed to be perfect quoted arguments from real live people; just push back on common rhetoric.
Re: Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money
#8Imagine if, before intellectual property, you put 20 smart people in a room, and tell them to come up with solutions to add incentives for creative works. None of them would have come up with "Hey! Why don't we grant inventors monopolies over inventions! We could increase the ammount and quality of inventions by limiting what others can invent!". No one would ever think that's a good idea. It's completely backwards a…
"The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying."
-- John Carmack.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010124060000/www.voodooextreme....
Re: Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money
#9Imagine if, before intellectual property, you put 20 smart people in a room, and tell them to come up with solutions to add incentives for creative works. None of them would have come up with "Hey! Why don't we grant inventors monopolies over inventions! We could increase the ammount and quality of inventions by limiting what others can invent!". No one would ever think that's a good idea. It's completely backwards a…
Copyright isn't about incentivizing innovation. It's about preventing free-riding. You think any sensible VC would have invested in Microsoft if there was nothing preventing Tandy, etc, from buying a single IBM machine, copying the OS off the disks, and selling as many machines with Windows loaded as they wanted without paying any licensing fees to Microsoft?
As for YC, etc... What a ridiculous bit of self-important exaggeration. Scribd, AirBnB, Discus... Oh my god all the innovation! More innovation than has ever been made possible by the patent laws or the copyright laws over the course of history! Seriously, I think YC, etc, is great, but let's not forget that there is a whole world of technology out there, and internet startups are one small niche. In most technology fields, all the money YC has ever handed out would barely make a dent in the capital requirements of bringing a product even to the prototype stage.
Also, let's not rewrite history here. Intellectual proponents of copyright and patent law include people like Thomas Jefferson, who none would accuse of being a monarchist.
Re: Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money
#10How about a little full disclosure? The author of the cited article is Rick Falkvinge, founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, so not exactly an unbiased source. Aside from that, this whole article is one strawman after another. I don't know anyone who supports copyright and believes it to be the only way for creative folks to make money. The creative argument in favour of copyright is simply that more useful works get…
[deleted]