Comment by fragmede

This position suggests that there was no progress before we had copyright. I think you're vastly overstating the power of the incentives we've set up to drive creative behavior, and even with your caveats I think you're overstating their efficacy. Copyright and patents have done more to consolidate wealth within middleman industries that aggregate these properties than they have to enrich the actual creatives doing the work, as it is with all systems. For every system we put in place to reward behavior that we enjoy, the system always benefits those that choose to game the system more than those that were originally intended to be rewarded.

And the results are observable empirically: very few people are told by anyone that's been out in the world that they should choose to become a writer or an inventor, because writers and inventors simply don't make that much money. The system you claim is so necessary seems to be completely failing in its core mission.

For example, take a look at writers making a decent living on a platform like Substack. Copyright is literally doing nothing for them. People can freely copy their substack and post it everywhere online. The value is that the platform provides a centralized location for people to follow the person's writing, and to build a community around it. In cases where artists and inventors have become rich, I look at the mechanism behind it, and often it's an accident that had nothing to do with intellectual property rights at all.

"are the most important human beings on the planet"

While I don't disagree with what you are trying to say, saying it this way is hyperbolic. There are so many people doing important things. Think about parents.

> Destroy rewards for original invention and creativity and you destroy all progress

You won't destroy the progress completely but there definitely will be a lot of unfairness like people monetizing someone else's music due to having better SEO skills and more free time than the artist. And the artist cannot hire SEO specialist because he has no money.

Nah I made a beautiful bench just the other week. I’m not well-paid artisanal craft carpenters and/or designers/studios.just a regular fella who has a dab hand at carpentry

There’s plenty of people who create without external reward.

Or simply for the most minimal of external rewards: recognition and respect.

Or for the purest: seeing others live longer and happier as a result.

You’re right—original inventiveness drives progress. But IP protection isn’t the only (or best) way to reward it. Removing it often accelerates innovation.

Look at open source. If Linux had been closed-source with licensing fees, the internet wouldn’t exist as we know it. Open ecosystems build faster. Contributors innovate because they can build on each other’s work freely.

Market pressure drives innovation. Reputation beats monopoly. Monopolies slow everything down. And collaboration multiplies progress.

yeah we should abolish copyright and make it so that creators get paid for every eyeball that's looking at your content. first, we establish a total panopticon. and then you get paid when people engage with your content, like, the system records that a person watches your movie, doesn't matter how they got a copy of your movie, but this person watches your movie, and that watch gets sent into the system and you get paid out from it. no more copyright, just horribly invasive tracking of everything everywhere. Call it copythrough.

That would never work, but like writing sci-fi.

JK Rowling never has to work again in her life because she wrote a couple of books that were exceedingly popular. Because she doesn't have to work, she's not been forced to come up with new stuff. How is that not stifling?