Hacker News Reader

Comment by dageshi | Hacker News Reader

Theft in this case is bad because you're removing the ability of someone to make a living from the thing they created.

On the basis it's digital.

I don't care if it's digital, I care if it took time and effort to create. If it did, it does not matter if it's digital or physical, it's theft.

View on HN

Today, practically zero new indies make a living from selling digital copies of a thing they created. That income is eclipsed by giving away their main work, then asking for donations, maybe selling merchandise, early access, tailored commissions, or some other token (and sponsorships but those unfortunately hurt quality).

So abolish copyright, and indies still make money from creating digital works - at least almost as much as they do now, but probably more, because it will further normalize the alternate incomes.

Copyright maybe used to help indies, but every copyright case I’ve heard anywhere in the last decade, the plaintiff is a publisher with more than enough revenue. Meanwhile, in many cases the defendant hasn’t actually infringed, but regardless suffers from the DMCA, C&D, or lawsuit. Copyright relies on wishful thinking to provide an illusion of helping small-time creators, in reality far more often it hurts them.

I regularly see posts on reddit r/royalroad where people write amateur stories and have their works stolen and put up on other platforms for money.

https://www.reddit.com/r/royalroad/comments/1uwyuf1/psa_stol...

Here is an example of the theft you endorse.

Please go tell those people they should be happy for someone else to steal their work and charge for it even after they've given it away for free.

It doesn't matter whether "few" people make a living from it. Copyright does not guarantee you an audience. Copyright going away would not guarantee you more of an audience.

The only thing it guarantees is that if you manage to write something that resonates with an audience you have the potential to earn a living from it. That is what you want to take away.

These only further my point. Everything published on RoyalRoad is already free; the issue the authors face is trademark, not copyright, violation, because their works are republished under a different name. Also, while OP found resolution, most of the other commenters did not, demonstrating that IP laws don’t reliably protect indies anyways.

IMO the solution to protecting trademark is to ensure anyone who discovers a repackaged work (like those examples) also discovers the original author and their free version, so they know it’s a ripoff. It doesn’t require the finicky legal system.

> removing the ability of someone to make a living from the thing they created.

So layoffs should be illegal?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com