Comment by ncallaway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ncallaway | Hacker News Reader

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The specific amounts were for example only. I could see making it much flatter for the first 20 years, and then escalating rapidly after that.

But, yes, in general, if you want to prevent it from being copied you would have to spend ever larger sums of money to accomplish that.

The entire point of copyright is a deal to encourage author's creating a work *so that it can enter the public domain*. This scheme is designed allow _most_ works to enter the public domain much earlier than they do now, while still allowing the most economically valuable creations to be pushed off for quite a while.

But, you the author wanting to prevent your book from being copied is a _harm_ to society. So, the goal with this scheme is that the extension costs should _roughly mirror_ those harms of continuing to lock a work up. The idea, then, is that when the economic benefit to you the author is _larger_ than those societal harms, then you'll pay for the extension.

But when those economic benefits to you the author is _less_ than those societal harms, then you'll stop paying for the extension.

> But, you the author wanting to prevent your book from being copied is a _harm_ to society.

I take issue with this. You are not harmed just because you don't have free access to something you want. Refusing to buy your kids some candy does not "harm" them.

Using this definition of "harm", you having money in your savings account is a "harm" to "society". Using your logic, the government then ought to force you to donate all your savings and excess possessions to "society" so that harm is reduced.

Sending people with guns just because someone shared sequences of words you claim "ownership" over is a cost and harm. Society does not inherently owe you keeping your ideas exclusively controlled by you. It's a form of a artificial, but pragmatic concession in the hopes it will encourage people to produce more interesting sequences of words. If it wasn't for social consensus you would not be able to control it and wouldn't be able to do anything about it (unlike physical property, which you can physically protect).

People saving money IS a harm to society and government does various things to discourage it at certain times. OP's copyright solution is similar in that it merely discourages keeping a copyright, it doesn't outright forbid it

It's absolutely not a harm. Increasing spending gives GDP a little bump, that's why governments encourage it. It helps re-election.

You guys are using "harm" to mean "slightly suboptimal". It's completely ridiculous.

> You are not harmed just because you don't have free access to something you want.

Yes I am.

Art is the language of our society. It being locked away is absolutely a harm. Art is our culture, and our heritage. To deny it to people is absolutely harmful. It may be a tolerable harm, and one that we think is necessary to endure. But it is a harm

If I download a movie from the internet, the state can force me (with all the power of the state: courts, judgements, guns, etc) to pay $30,000. That is a harm.

Copyright is a legislative restriction put on me by the Government. That is a harm. Now, it can be a harm that's worth it. We may collectively decide that it is worth the trade-off to threaten me with financial ruin for watching a movie, because if it doesn't happen movies wouldn't be made. So, we might all agree that it's a harm that we need to live with.

But to pretend it's not a harm to deny free access to our culture and our art is just flat out wrong.

If you think it's not harmful, then let me ask: why can't we just abolish copyright law entirely. If there is no harm to consumers, then I would argue that there is similarly no harm to creators.

Copyright is an infringement of everyone's right to free speech. That is a harm.

I think it's possible to sidestep the harm vs suboptimality discussion. It's clear that there is a benefit to the public when works become public domain, and copyright law should balance benefits to creators and consumers (though of course we all fill both roles to some degree). Laws also have to be politically viable, of course.

> Using your logic, the government then ought to force you to donate all your savings and excess possessions to "society" so that harm is reduced.

I would argue that governments do a "soft" version of this with redistributive tax schemes and social programs.

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