Post #4217665

2026-07-29 21:21 UTC

I have a problem with these statements: it’s a licensed monopoly enforced by the state, which gives the copyright owner power over many many things, present and future, not actually owned by them. I do own my copyrighted material. You own a copy. You can’t redistribute it (without my permission), because I own the copyright. But I think we can all agree that the currently landscape of intellectual property legislation is utter nonsense, that it’s gotten completely out of hand, and that it mainly encourages concentration and gatekeeping. We cannot agree. It’s not gotten out of hand. It needs to be enforced and strengthened, in order to protect creatives from AI companies stealing our IP. So yes, the model producers have blatantly disregarded copyright, and have gotten away with it in ways which are not available to us peasants. Exactly. That’s why we need to strengthen copyright protection. But we’re the copyleft people, we should be pointing at this and shouting that the emperor is finally naked, and that it’s time to curtail all that nonsense legislation once and for all, so that we can all be a little freer from the shackles of corporate monopoly. That would literally give corporations more power over our creations. And instead, we (the copyleft guys!) are just sitting here clutching our copyright pearls while muttering “but… But… Copyright! It violates the precious copyright!”. Because it does violate our copyrights. I didn’t release my code as open source so that it could be copied and stolen without regard to the license I specifically chose to protect it.

Replies (1)

@skarn@discuss.tchncs.de 2026-07-29 22:34

I do own my copyrighted material. You own a copy. You can’t redistribute it (without my permission), because I own the copyright. So you have a right over my copy, and you can decide what I do with it. That’s what I said. You are the sole person to have the right to produce copies. There’s a word for that, it’s a monopoly. And since your material can, materially, be copied, copyright only exists as enforced by the state. It’s a state enforced private monopoly. And so are patents. And these didn’t exist until the states introduced them. This is pretty factual. We cannot agree. It’s not gotten out of hand. So you think that at automatic, untraceable term of 90 years if perfectly reasonable? You think that the ability by large corporations of amassing and gatekeeping (no derivative work without their permission) 100 years of human culture is just fine? The ability to keep under control works that they are not even distributing, which then means that these can’t even be read, listened or watched… This is all fine? You like how the US patent systems grants a patent without any real examination for basically anything that written in English, no matter how ridiculous? You love the endless cultural slop milking the same damn IPs for nostalgia? It pleases you that every artist who records a version of “my favourite things” (or any other jazz standards) ends up giving 90% of the proceeds to the heirs of the same two dead white dudes? Or how sampling basically destroys the revenue potential of a new song because the author of the sample is going to eat up the work of new artists? You think your viral video wouldn’t have been adequately protected with, say, a 30 year term? You think 5 years in jail for a private copy of a blue ray is good and proportional? Because it does violate our copyrights. Apparently it often doesn’t. Courts have already ruled on this. When the billionaires do it, it’s fair use.

Open ##4217664