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0 pointsknorker4y ago0 comments

This is showing an extreme ignorance of history, and of copyright.

There are countries (e.g. Sweden) where it's legal to rip a CD and give a copy to your friends. "Always" has been.

But it's not legal to sell copies. Or to put the music in a "holywood" movie you made and make a profit.

Copyright protects both of these. And if you think holywood movies don't properly license their music then you are mistaken.

Could a reform be in order? Well, could you come up with a laws or precedents where me putting a funny meme picture on my facebook wall is legally fine, but holywood taking my art and selling it as part of their product is not?

Because when you say "abolish copyright", that means no more games or movies as we know them today. You may say "good riddance", but you don't have to watch them. You can choose to only listen to music and see movies made under creative commons license. But you'll be pretty alone in that. Your life will look like that of Richard Stallman.

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matheusmoreira4y ago

> But it's not legal to sell copies. Or to put the music in a "holywood" movie you made and make a profit.

Okay. Selling copies makes no sense anyway. So let people share their files in peace. No profit will be made.

> There are countries (e.g. Sweden) where it's legal to rip a CD and give a copy to your friends. "Always" has been.

My country has similar laws. Does it matter to the monopolists? No. They put DRM in their stuff specifically to stop you from exercising your legal right to copy. I remember one case where one guy backed up a game disc, lost the original and had to sue the company because the game wouldn't accept his copy. Judge made them give him a new disc. Fair use? Doesn't matter to the monopolists either. They'll DMCA content and sue companies out of existence whether they're legally justified or not.

Besides, the copyright monopolists are always trying to destroy these laws. They have considerable lobbying power and the US government imposes american laws on foreign countries via trade agreements.

> Could a reform be in order?

You can certainly make copyright tolerable. Make terms last 5-10 years. More than enough time for creators to make their millions. Anything more than that is rent seeking.

> Because when you say "abolish copyright", that means no more games or movies as we know them today.

Fine. Between computing freedom and the whole copyright industry, I choose computing freedom. Computing is much more important than some entertainment industry and I hate the way its potential is being limited because of these monopolists.

Stallman would probably disagree with me. Free software licenses depend on copyright to work.

knorkerOP4y ago

> So let people share their files in peace. No profit will be made.

This is so naive and ignorant. Some people will maintain the huge libraries of movies. And it won't be free to do so.

They will do this service for pay.

This happens today, with pirate topsites and even closed torrents.

> Make terms last 5-10 years.

I'd say 10-20, but no more than that.

> Between computing freedom and the whole copyright industry, I choose computing freedom.

Good thing we don't have to make that choice.

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