Hacker News Reader

Copyright is not going well. The rights of millions of people are trampled by companies, both the content we post on social networks and our private AI chats. Our voice doesn't matter.

Copyright was supposed to protect expression and keep ideas freely circulating. But now it protects abstractions (see the Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison test). It is much more difficult to be sure you are not infringing.

View on HN

Copyright has nothing to do with free expression but was intended to protect the interests of publishers. When the printing press arrived basically any popular book or booklet was quickly copied by others. This meant the original publisher (and sometimes the author, but usually they were paid one-off) saw nothing of the profit.

It seems like it was supposed to do the exact opposite per cursory wiki reading:

> The concept of copyright first developed in England. In reaction to the printing of "scandalous books and pamphlets", the English Parliament passed the Licensing of the Press Act 1662,[16] which required all intended publications to be registered with the government-approved Stationers' Company, giving the Stationers the right to regulate what material could be printed.[20]

> The Statute of Anne, enacted in 1710 in England and Scotland, provided the first legislation to protect copyrights (but not authors' rights)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com