this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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ai and copyright can both suck my balls
A ball sucking AI would truly change the world
insert copyright is good, change my mind meme
Copyright law as currently implemented limits expression and prevents expansion of ideas - think less House of Mouse and more like "screws, but different"
What are you talking about with "screws, but different"? Are you confusing patent law. with copyright law..?
Patents protect the design and/or mechanism of physical inventions vs copyright which protects written works (books, articles, papers, source code, etc) and similar media assets (music, movies, tv shows, etc) from unauthorized reproduction?
WRT patents, I agree they suck, and they need rethought (or at least, there needs to be a much higher bar to getting a patent).
Copyright does very little to limit expression and actually encourages people to come up with original work vs simply reproducing or altering in the smallest way possible an existing work. Through fair use, copyright even permits sufficiently derived works like parodies and satire.
Copyright is not a perfect system, by a long shot. Copyright lasts way too long. 70 years after the death of the author. That is just too much. It means you cannot use any copyrighted works that you enjoyed as a child. It also gets abused far too much by large companies taking down IMO legitimate derivative works from smaller creators to suppress and control their content with iron fists. And that is a limitation of expression.
What if I told you patent and copyright law were too similar? Would that make my metaphor make sense?
People often communicate with what is known as figurative language
https://www.newmediarights.org/business_models/artist/what_are_major_criticisms_copyright_laws_us
No, and you'd be wrong. A patent applies broadly to any and all inventions using a similar mechanism, copyright applies to specific instances.
e.g., if a patent on a "fictional hero with extraordinary powers" was allowed to exist, there would not be DC vs Marvel discussions (or if there were, one company would be shelling out money to the other for using their patented comic book formula). Meanwhile, we can have Captain Marvel and Superman (and numerous other permutations of the formula) under copyright law. We can also create software which functions very similarly to another (Lemmy and Reddit) but are implemented via independent means; meanwhile patent law would almost certainly forbid this as it would be based on the underlying central ideas (e.g., communities holding posts which can be commented on and up voted/down voted -- each of these things could compose patents or the whole could compose a patent if trying to use one system in place of another).
... okay?
The criticism on fair use being enforced in the court is fair, but steps into a more general problem of frivolous lawsuits and suppression of competition via the court system; i.e., it's a not a problem unique to copyright law.
This does not address my copyright concerns in any way, especially with regard to digital property.