this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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Corporations aren't babies. Criticizing a corporation for behaving like a corporation feels to me like shaking a baby. The corporation is fundamentally innocent--pursuing only its basic programming. It can do nothing else. It's not even legal for it to do otherwise, it has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders, violating that subjects it to lawsuits. It's basically required to be evil and greedy by law.
What if we just dropped patent and copyright protections down to something like 10/20 years? That would kick pharma companies in the nuts too. I'm aware it would stifle innovation somewhat, but frankly I don't care. At least it would be a longer-term solution, where we wouldn't have to deal with whatever the next generation of this problem looks like in another couple decades.
Yes, now that you mention it, people should be able to copyright a meme. Not much point though, I don't think. Mainly an enforcement problem, we'd need AI tools just to keep up with the content produced. And for what gain? Hard to monetize a meme, and value is what everything is about at the end of the day. Not identity or structure, just how much money its worth.
On a side note, AI tools are going to make piracy a lot harder soon, I'd imagine.
It's less that people should be able to copyright a meme, though it is a creative work that might warrant it, but more like a whole lot of memes use pictures and clips from copyrighted works and the likenesses of people, and as the law is written people are not legally allowed to do that, however much it is entirely glossed over.
Dropping copyright every 20 years seems reasonable with the speed of internet culture and technology, and funny enough that's very similar to the length that copyright started as: 14 years plus an optional extension of another 14 years. It might be controversial, but that seems absolutely more reasonable than the 120 years that corporations get today. Can you imagine if people actually waited 120 years to play old Nintendo games? Chances all but a few collector pieces among the cartridges would have become rust already. It's not a reasonable length for technology-based media.
Yeah. I think you've brought me around actually. Because that is an achievable goal worth fighting for, too. It would have benefits in other spaces of society. That was my original reason for disagreeing in the first place.