Ask HN: What are the biggest benefits of copyright for society? - OleLukoje
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RugnirViking
The fundamental idea underpinning copyright is that it allows people to make a
profit from their work, be that recorded video, audio, a written computer
program, or any other kind of intellectual property.

If there was no such thing as copyright, if you recorded a music track and
gave it to somebody, they could legally sell it themselves to other people,
and undercut you or just give it away for free. (of course people still do on
a person-to-person basis, but this would make it completely legal for even a
movie theatre to show hollywood movies without paying any rights)

Why is creators being able to make money in this way from their creations good
for society? Well, previously, the method to make money from art before
copyright was the patronage system, which involved wealthy individuals
sponsoring an artist to create things on their behalf, with varying levels of
interference in the process. This worked to some extent, but the fundamental
idea underpinning copyright is that if everybody sponsors a small amount for a
product then it will be better for most people, rather than catering to the
specific tastes of a single wealthy individual.

You see this kind of thing happening nowadays with platforms like patreon - it
is possible to earn a living from a relatively small subset of the people that
actually consume your content, and even while giving it away for free, simply
because those people have a desire to see more of the same stuff. The problem
with patreon is that it has to overcome a little bit of a tradgedy of the
commons problem, whereby stopping your own individual contribution is unlikely
to have much of an impact on the quality of art produced. Nonetheless, it
seems to have found it's niche, and is only growing.

What about if nobody pays for art? There are plenty of parts of our culture
that nobody got any money for. Often things created by relatively nameless
folk expecting nothing in return but the love of creating are some of our
greatest cultural works, be them folk songs or open-source software.

While I speak mainly about art and music in this piece, any kind of
intellectual property that can be copyright works in mostly the same way.
There is relatively little that is different in the grand scheme of things
between monetising a song and monetising a coputer program - both are
practically impossible to do without allowing the user to share it futher
without your control.

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OleLukoje
> but the fundamental idea underpinning copyright is that if everybody
> sponsors a small amount for a product then it will be better for most
> people, rather than catering to the specific tastes of a single wealthy
> individual.

Doesn't it work the other way around currently? Instead of sharing the
intellectual property for the better of the most people we lock the property
in the hands of a few. Probably as the time goes the wealthy will accumulate
all of the IP in their hands eventually.

~~~
RugnirViking
It's not about ownership, but about the content of the IP itself. The wealthy
can only concentrate IP by making things that work for the majority of people.

Wheras previously, things were often super eclectic and weird, to suit the
tastes of a particular individual.

Whether things that work for the majority of people results in lower quality
art is an open debate. Personally I believe that it does end up with worse
results, but the thinking behind copyright as it is implemented right now is
that it is better.

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muzani
Best case: There's an open source Quran app & site, done by people whose
primary motivation is to use their tech skills as an act of worship. The more
people use it, the more they benefit. The more people fork it, the more divine
favor they get. A lot of people donate to the project, even though the team
has no problem with server costs, etc.

But it's protected with a GPL-3.0 license. You can't just clone it, build, and
sell it.

I think the base idea is that it's _unfair_ for one person to spend years on a
product and someone else to sell it. It's _unfair_ for the people who have
donated to the team that has built it.

The sense of unfairness prevents people from contributing.

~~~
bruce511
>> But it's protected with a GPL-3.0 license. You can't just clone it, build,
and sell it.

You absolutely can. You can absolutely rename it, re-brand it and sell it for
whatever you like. Your interpretation is exactly at odds with the expressed
wish of the GNU Project. (see
[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html))

The GPL is about software freedom, not price.

[As an aside I've heard arguments that it's "unethical" to sell a GPL program.
Which is absurd since it gives the buyer more choices, not fewer. If I choose
to compile a GPL program into a binary, and provide it to the market in a
useful form (with source code of course), the market can then absolutely
choose to pay me to do that. Red Hat is a multi billion dollar company built
on completely this premise. To declare that "unethical" is like saying that
selling food is unethical because everyone could just grow their own (ignoring
the value added by picking, distribution etc.) The conclusion being that value
is added at many points in the supply chain, not just the first one, and
people are certainly free to pay for that value.]

>> I think the base idea is that it's unfair for one person to spend years on
a product and someone else to sell it. It's unfair for the people who have
donated to the team that has built it.

The team (or individual) that creates the product absolutely determines the
license for that product. By _choosing_ the GPL license they are _explicitly_
allowing people to rebrand it and sell it. So, no, it's not unfair to do what
_they_ have explicitly allowed you to do. By suggesting it is "unfair" you are
asserting that either you are not aware of the actual provisions of the GPL,
or the authors were too lazy to select a license that matched their actual
intentions.

If you want to prevent people from selling the work, then don't use GPL,
instead use a license that prevents people from selling your work.

>> The sense of unfairness prevents people from contributing.

The license will absolutely determine how interested people are in
contributing to your project. Of course, as you have shown, that doesn't stop
contributors from being very unhappy when they think a license "means"
something, and it turns out it doesn't. That is on the contributor though, not
the project author.

In summary, if you are going to care about what happens to your work after
contributing, then please make sure you understand the actual license that
project is using and don't just assume terms that are not in effect.

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hnarn
The question seems somewhat biased, why is copyright assumed to be strictly
beneficial? Of course it has benefits, but surely it can't have only benefits.
Isn't a more honest question to ask: "What is the impact of copyright on
society"?

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Konnstann
I think the point was that copyright is typically discussed in terms of its
negative impacts. I, for instance, have never seen any discourse about the
benefits of copyright.

The benefits seem obvious but there's still a place, in my opinion, for this
topic.

~~~
OleLukoje
> The benefits seem obvious

They don't exist until I find them on Wikipedia

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sarcasmatwork
This is a good start imho:
[http://web.utk.edu/~kperkey/reporthtml/benefits.html](http://web.utk.edu/~kperkey/reporthtml/benefits.html)

~~~
OleLukoje
> Having the assurance that a work is protected encourages developers and
> publishers to create more works

Why is that though? Would the progress just stop without such "protection"?

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luhego
Because people want to be rewarded by their work. If you remove the
incentives, a great number of people will stop producing art.

~~~
muzani
Many artists don't need the incentives, but having other people easily claim
and use it is a big turn off.

