this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025
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Copyright in general is about suppressing and abusing competition, there's a little bit of difference now that the old Victorian-style copyright laws lasted as long as the author, more or less, and every legal action was taken through a court, not like these letters of happiness.
It's funny how we seem similar to the pre-WWI mood of "everything has been invented, abolish patents", I wonder if the "pre-WWI" part is too going to rhyme. Hope that not, of course, but most of the innovation seems to be in direct or indirect warfare (all of big tech is honestly that). And there's one nation whose elites seem to make weird destructive moves. And which is on the down trajectory in its GDP relative to the world for the last 50 years. And which has the world's biggest military spending.
After all, humans need a reminder that for the plethora of technologies that seem like a favorable to them weapon unseen before, there are also similarly many technologies that may be unfavorable to them weapons unseen before.
Nazi Germany used radio and encryption and maneuverability and wonderful air force to achieve successes, then the other sides used radars and computers and mass modular production and MLRS'es.
Perhaps the current rotting of copyright and patent system is because the elites think they don't need more natural peaceful development. Global bloodletting usually heals that kind of ideas. Some things can only be learned on your own experience.
Copyright is a surviving instance of the old system of royal warrants: monopolies granted by a monarch, usually to cronies, occasionally as a reward for some kind of good work (scientific discovery, work of art, etc).
It's a system that's full of opportunities for corruption and bureaucratic oppression, and should either be massively scaled back, or dumped entirely. It does far more harm than good.
I agree, unfortunately things only keep existing when there's balance between their sides in power.
Such balance is - those benefiting from copyright have a lot to offer and threaten to those making copyright, and the other way around.
It's all military logic now. 50 years ago it could have been solved by a popular movement, now any movement really threatening copyright will have its figures murdered left and right.