Aigars Mahinovs <[email protected]> writes: > Just because something can be done cheaper or at scale with help of > automation does not make the method of automation for it to become > morally wrong. See torrent, see mass manufacturing techniques that allow > factories in China to make millions of knock-offs of known toys.
I'm sorry, I flatly and completely disagree with this as a general statement. There are indeed some things that do become wrong because they are done at scale. This is part of what it means to live in a society: we have to balance good and harm and put some thoughtful rules in place around what part of someone's work becomes fair use and what part of someone's work remains under their control. Those are necessary compromises within our current economic and political system if we want people to be able to afford to make new work, if we want to avoid fraud and misrepresentation, and if we want to respect the human dignity of artists and their right to be associated with their work and to *not* be associated with things that are *not* their work. I am extremely sympathetic to the argument that copyright as currently designed does not succeed in balancing these factors correctly. It certainly has a wealth of problems. But you will never have my support for simply breaking it and to hell with the consequences and anyone who gets hurt in the process. If you want to replace the foundation of a building, you need to build the new foundation first, not just knock down all the support pillars and then blame the building for failing to remain standing. > Here we have a *monumental* movement in the development of both software > and the entire copyright landscape as a whole - a movement that could, > finally, permanently wound the corporate silos keeping the lid on the > boiling pot of human knowledge. We finally have a legal tool that could > finally free all that knowledge that is currently locked behind > copyright walls and make it available for everyone to use freely and > automatically. This position is hopelessly, almost cartoonishly naive. If you think that copyright is primarily protecting corporations from you, rather than the other way around, then you have completely misunderstood the entire history of copyright law, not to mention basic facts about how power works in a society. If there is no organized force based on moral principles in place to force a balance, the most powerful entities in society will crush anyone who opposes them. Corporations absolutely do abuse copyright law to their own ends, just like corporations attempt to abuse every other law to their own ends because they are fundamentally amoral entities. But just because a law is abused doesn't mean that the underlying principle is entirely erroneous and should be discarded. If you want to make copyright law more friendly to individual people and more hostile to corporations, you have my support. If you have some other non-copyright system that will protect the moral rights of artists and their ability to negotiate for food and shelter in exchange for their work because we unfortunately still live in a capitalist society, I will listen to your argument. If you want to replace capitalism with some different system that no longer requires people to barter their art for the means of existence, I'm right there with you, but I hope you're aware that it's going to be a lot of work. If you just want to smash everything that is abused by someone you don't like and to hell with anyone who gets hurt in the process, I think your politics are an active danger to people I care about and I will do what I can to oppose you. -- Russ Allbery ([email protected]) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
