Well, it’s not wrong to say that about the basic concept of copyright. The original purpose of copyright was to allow authors to feel free to publish stuff more widely without fear of it being “stolen.” Without copyright there’d be a lot more proprietary information being squirrelled away in private archives.
But of course, that concept has been completely hijacked over the years. The duration no longer makes sense for that original purpose.
Yeah. Copyright should exist for like, 20 years or so? Or no more than 10 years after the holder’s death so dependent family can adapt. This 90-100 years is bullshit. It doesn’t benefit the creators, it benefits the rights holders. Almost always a corporation profiting off the back of their workers.
believe it or not, that wasn’t the original purpose of copyright. copyright was invented as a form of censorship. in 1556, the Charter of the Stationers’ Company was given the exclusive right to control the operation of printing presses in England, up to and including the ability to seize offending books and burn the printing presses that made them (L. Ray Patterson, Copyright and “the Exclusive Right” of Authors, p. 9)
Agreed. The fundamental concept doesn’t seem bad. Usually it is harder to create than copy. So for someone to invest resources into creating something, we might want a system that allows him to recoup those costs before someone else who didn’t need to front load those costs undercuts him.
!["Copyright fuels creativity [...] promotes free speech", heh](https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/5d18d6da-5d50-4870-b8db-5d271b615c4b.webp){kind=link}
Well, it’s not wrong to say that about the basic concept of copyright. The original purpose of copyright was to allow authors to feel free to publish stuff more widely without fear of it being “stolen.” Without copyright there’d be a lot more proprietary information being squirrelled away in private archives.
But of course, that concept has been completely hijacked over the years. The duration no longer makes sense for that original purpose.
Yeah. Copyright should exist for like, 20 years or so? Or no more than 10 years after the holder’s death so dependent family can adapt. This 90-100 years is bullshit. It doesn’t benefit the creators, it benefits the rights holders. Almost always a corporation profiting off the back of their workers.
believe it or not, that wasn’t the original purpose of copyright. copyright was invented as a form of censorship. in 1556, the Charter of the Stationers’ Company was given the exclusive right to control the operation of printing presses in England, up to and including the ability to seize offending books and burn the printing presses that made them (L. Ray Patterson, Copyright and “the Exclusive Right” of Authors, p. 9)
Agreed. The fundamental concept doesn’t seem bad. Usually it is harder to create than copy. So for someone to invest resources into creating something, we might want a system that allows him to recoup those costs before someone else who didn’t need to front load those costs undercuts him.
But as you said the current system is broken.