Cost and money is a hallucination we've invented over time that has very little if any connection to real world values. Virtually all the problems we discuss on a daily basis - pollution, patents, copyright related dreck and so on - are only money-system generated problems, not reality related ones.
People would still create art even if they weren't paid to do so. They would still grow food. They would still play music. If anything, they would do more of those things if they weren't forced to spend their days standing in a McDonalds flipping burgers instead. We could easily meet everyone's needs in society today without making everyone wage slaves to "earn" it, and as a result we would even do away with virtually all the problems of the day - pollution, poverty, starvation, war and certainly there would be no more of these idiotic entirely man made "financial crisis situations" like the upcoming second great depression.
Patents (and copyright) service the money side of society to the detriment of said society. Two options then appear - do away with patents (which is a symptom) or do away with the folly of allocating resources via a money system (the cause).
Any doctor - and any sensible engineer - would tell you that what you have to fix is the root cause, not try to patch the symptom...
For your argument to make any sense whatsoever, you first have to have proof that "piracy has evaporated billions". Nobody has yet managed to demonstrate that believably, not even the RIAA/MPAA. Especially since even that part of the copyright brouhaha have had to admit that people who copy also buy a lot, and that the copying may well act as a form of advertising.
Music used to be unique too. There used to be new artists doing new music (well... new-sounding, since you can only string so many sounds together in so many ways until you run out) - and that stuff got played by mostly independent DJ's on mostly independent radio stations, which allowed for a great deal of diversity. The big record companies had to at least try to innovate (or at the very least, allow new acts to grow). Then came radio deregulation, Clear channel, and suddenly there was basially one big radio station covering the continental US, and payola was institutionalized in the form of "independent promotors" - and it sure wasn't cheap anymore to get anything on radio.
So the big record labels in their nutty quest for fantasy profits decided that they didn't want to take any more risks, to get their money back after the payola payments and so on, everything had to sell - and since people are hardwired to equate "familiar" with "good", hellooo fifteen trillion remakes and remixes and re-recordings of old hits. That's basically all we get out of the big labels these days, any innovation happens on the Internet or independently.
So why this long discussion about the horrors of radio deregulation? Because the same mechanisms are in place for the movies, I think. Familiar = good, remember? In the incessant quest for more money, going with something that has once been a hit and mildly massaging it and doing it again, the studios hope for a surefire moneymaker, and innovation and art etc don't even register on anyone's radar.
Copyright schmopyright, this is all completely anchored in the profit motive. To these people, music, movies or TV are just a cash machine with the output being a side product, not the goal.
Even in todays world, money is a vastly destructive force and the concept of a profit-based is literally destroying the world... so anyone who would retrofit copyright, patents and similar horror-concepts onto a world that had matter/energy conversion is completely beyond me. The only basic core function of copyright and patents are to secure a monetary flow from something that has been created - something that would be beyond nonsensical in a replicator-level civilization and already in our current one has got to go.
On the post: It's Not About 'Free,' It's About Sharing
Nothing acttually costs anything, so...
People would still create art even if they weren't paid to do so. They would still grow food. They would still play music. If anything, they would do more of those things if they weren't forced to spend their days standing in a McDonalds flipping burgers instead. We could easily meet everyone's needs in society today without making everyone wage slaves to "earn" it, and as a result we would even do away with virtually all the problems of the day - pollution, poverty, starvation, war and certainly there would be no more of these idiotic entirely man made "financial crisis situations" like the upcoming second great depression.
On the post: Planet Money Continues To Show How Damaging Software Patents Are To Innovation
Now let's take one more step in the logic chain
Any doctor - and any sensible engineer - would tell you that what you have to fix is the root cause, not try to patch the symptom...
On the post: Planet Money Continues To Show How Damaging Software Patents Are To Innovation
Re:
On the post: Without Copyright, Hollywood Would Never Be Incented To... Make A Bunch Of Remakes?
Movies, music, same thing
So the big record labels in their nutty quest for fantasy profits decided that they didn't want to take any more risks, to get their money back after the payola payments and so on, everything had to sell - and since people are hardwired to equate "familiar" with "good", hellooo fifteen trillion remakes and remixes and re-recordings of old hits. That's basically all we get out of the big labels these days, any innovation happens on the Internet or independently.
So why this long discussion about the horrors of radio deregulation? Because the same mechanisms are in place for the movies, I think. Familiar = good, remember? In the incessant quest for more money, going with something that has once been a hit and mildly massaging it and doing it again, the studios hope for a surefire moneymaker, and innovation and art etc don't even register on anyone's radar.
Copyright schmopyright, this is all completely anchored in the profit motive. To these people, music, movies or TV are just a cash machine with the output being a side product, not the goal.
On the post: Star Trek In The Age Of Intellectual Property
Are we THAT hung up on money? Really?
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