I really don’t understand why they’re simultaneously arguing that they need access to copyrighted works in order to train their AI while also dropping their non-profit status. If they were at least ostensibly a non-profit, they could pretend that their work was for the betterment of humanity or whatever, but now they’re basically saying, “exempt us from this law so we can maximize our earnings.” …and, honestly, our corrupt legislators wouldn’t have a problem with that were it not for the fact that bigger corporations with more lobbying power will fight against it.

Almost everything you’ve said is just factually incorrect. We know why Calvin and Hobbes wasn’t franchised; in Bill Waterson’s own words, he wanted to, “write every word, draw every line, color every Sunday strip, and paint every book illustration,” not, “run a corporate empire.” His publisher had no worries about copyright infringement though, and pressured him to franchise.

Also, there was no chance he would have run into trademark issues because that’s not what trademark means. Trademark is a name, copyright is the content. Trademark is why I can open a restaurant called Spider-Man, copyright is why I can’t publish my own Spider-Man comics. While we’re at it, Nintendo is suing Palworld for Patent violations, not copyright, so this has nothing to do with the similarity of the characters, it has to do with some game mechanic that Nintendo believes is proprietary technology.

Finally, the average working class person wasn’t writing, but they were consuming printed media, and that’s why publishers were making so much money off of authors. That’s why copyright mattered. Copyright only lasted 14 years, with the option to renew it for another 14, and its sole purpose was to break up the publishers’ monopoly. The idea that it was designed to create an artificial scarcity of ideas is an ahistorical conspiracy theory that you’ve dreamed up.

First of all, literacy rates were about 70% in 1710, so the average commoner could absolutely read (at least among men, but copyright law isn’t to blame for patriarchy). This is about 300 years after the printing press, literacy had gone up.

Second…I just don’t know what to say to this anymore. You’ve created a strawman artist who believes their work is entirely original, even though no artist would claim they had no influences. You’re pretending that copyright is an edict that says ideas can never be shared, as though the Public Domain, Creative Commons, and fair use didn’t exist, or Substantial Similarity didn’t have to be proved (which, by the way, is the reason that Hobbes isn’t infringing on Tigger). And worst of all, you’re acting like artists who want to be paid for their art are greedy capitalists, not artists that live under capitalism. How is an artist who wants make a living by creating art all day, every day, somehow less worthy than an artist who works 9 to 5 at a crappy job and then does art when they have free time?

You seem to think abolishing copyright will lead to some sort of artists’ uptopia, but it’s pretty much the opposite. Let’s say copyright disappeared tomorrow. First, anyone making a living on Patreon will basically be done. If their videos or podcasts are now public property, there’s nothing to stop anyone from uploading their Premium Content to YouTube within minutes of publishing, so no one’s going to subscribe. Some of them will keep producing things, but since they’ll need a new source of income, they’ll definitely produce less.

Then there’s the cooperations. They’ll gobble up everything they can. Sure, you’ll be able to make your own Spider-Man comics, but if any publisher likes them, they’ll just sell them, along with any original IP you have. Of course you’ll be able to sell them too, but since they can afford more advertising, higher quality printing, and merchandising, they’ll out-sell you easily. You’ll be lucky it anyone’s even seen or heard of your version, even though you’re the author. It’d be like trying to compete with Coca-Cola by opening a lemonade stand, and Coke is allowed to use your lemonade recipe.

I’m not saying copyright is being done well now; cooperations have an outsized ability to enforce copyright claims, they’ve manipulated the law to retain IP for an insane amount of time, and they have far more power in negotiations over licensing and rights than artists do. But your solution to that is, “What if artists had no rights? That would be better!” and I’ve just…I’ve run out of ways to react to that. It’s truly insane to me.

intellectual property, including copyright was created by and for monied interests.

It’s literally the opposite. The first copyright law was passed in 1709 in England to give authors rights to their works instead of publishing companies. The Stationers’ Company, a guild of publishers, had a monopoly over the printing industry, and they we’re deciding amongst themselves who would get to reproduce and publish books. They took the labor of authors, changed it however they saw fit, and reproduced them for profit. Authors never saw a dime, and instead had to find wealthy patrons to subsidize their work.

Yes, for the majority of human history, people used to create art with no expectation of ownership, but for the majority of human history, there weren’t methods to mass reproduce art. Owning the rights to your books didn’t matter when the only way a second could get made is if a monk decided to hand copy it and bind it himself. When the only way to reproduce your painting was to have someone create a forgery, ownership of the physical copy was all that really mattered. If the only way you could get paid for a song was to sing it at the local tavern, it didn’t really matter if you got writing credits.

We’ve already seen a world where the cooperations that control media production can use any work they want. They carved up artists’ works like mobsters dividing up a town and kept all the profits for themselves. Maybe if we lived in a post need, post currency society, you could make an argument for abolishing copyright, but in the system we have, copyright is the only protection artists have against cooperations.

I’ve run out of ways to tell you that’s not correct. The explicit purpose of the copyright law in the constitution is to allow creators to profit from their work. If you’re arguing that we should live in a pure communist society, where the products of all labor, including intellectual property, belong to community, fine, but we don’t live in a communist utopia. We live in a capitalist hellscape, and you’re looking at one of the only protections artists have, seeing how it’s been exploited by capitalism, and claiming the protection is the problem. It’s like looking at the minimum wage, seeing how cooperations have lobbied Congress to keep it so low it’s now starvation wage, and coming to the conclusion that the minimum wage needs to be abolished.

Right, but as I said to someone else in this thread, the fact thar copyright can’t protect 99% of creators is a problem with capitalism, not copyright. The fact that our courts favor the wealthy isn’t the fault of copyright law itself.

Also, you’re correct that most art is created for pleasure, not profit, but that doesn’t mean the need to protect artists’ rights to their creations isn’t necessary, even beyond capitalistic reasons. Bill Waterson, the creator of Calvin & Hobbes, refused to merchandise his art simply because he didn’t want to ruin the image of his characters for a licensing deal. Without copyright law, any company could have slapped his characters on t-shirts and coffee mugs to make a quick buck off of his labor. But because of copyright law, he was able to refuse his publisher’s attempts to franchise his characters (reportedly, he even turned down Spielberg and Lucas’ pitch for an animated series based on the strip).

Well, I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree. To me, most of the updates have been set dressing, not significant changes to the formula or gameplay. But I guess that’s a matter of opinion, not fact.

First of all, no, publishers don’t necessarily own the copyright. Most authors do a licensing deal with a publisher, but they retain the copyright to their work. My understanding is that music industry contracts vary a lot more, since music is usually more collaborative, but lots of artists still own the rights to their songs. But even if that were true, artists being forced to sell their rights to cooperations isn’t an issue with copyright, it’s an issue with capitalism. It’s like blaming America’s shitty healthcare on doctors instead of a for-profit system controlled by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Literally everyone who’s ever written a book, recorded a song, painted a painting, or created any other artwork.

No, Copyright exists to protect creators. It’s just been perverted and abused by the wealthy so that they can indefinitely retain IP. Disney holding on to an IP for 70 years after an author dies is messed up, but Disney taking your art and selling it to a mass audience without giving you a dime is worse.

I agree with you almost entirely, but if we’re being honest, there really hasn’t been a lot of innovation in their games since Gen 4, and that was almost 20 years ago. Once they figured out the physical/special split, nothing really changed in the major mechanics. They have a new gimmick mechanic every game, like Z-Moves or Dynamax, but they’re always dropped by the next game. I guess camping/picnics are evolving into a new feature, but that’s about it.

Yeah, I meant people generally give away this data, not you specifically, and again, I can see the potential for abuse, but alcohol isn’t like other goods and services. When a bartender serves you alcohol, they become legally liable for your actions if you overconsume, in civil and (in some states) criminal court, and for good reason; irresponsible alcohol sales can kill people. Regulating how this data can be used is one thing, but sharing data on what customers are liabilities is objectively good, not just bars, but public safety.

Your email app will give your messages to other companies, your navigation app will share your exact location with marketers, and your dating app will sell your sexual preferences to the highest bidder, but sure, bars having a way to warn each other which costumers tried to assault a waitress is a bridge to far.

Yeah, and a lot of this will depend on how it’s used. If I were still in the service industry and I saw that a guy had been to 20 bars in the last year, and I saw he got flagged at one for violence, I would think, “Well, this doesn’t seem to be a pattern of behavior, maybe he wasn’t the instigator, I’ll keep an eye on him but I’m not too worried.” But I could see a lot of larger places, like clubs, who aren’t hurting for business, just rejecting people who are flagged out of hand. The information seems objectively good to have, but the application could be really problematic.

That’s very true, although I think it’ll be unlikely that an individual bartender will get blamed for overserving in a large venue. I worked at a relatively small venue (280 at capacity) and on a busy night it would be difficult to tell you who served an individual customer, much less who gave him the drink that, “overserved,” them.

Possibly controversial opinion, but this sounds reasonable. The flags they can put on customers are, “violence, assault, destruction of property, sexual assault, fraud, and theft.” Those aren’t petty gripes like, “rude,” or, “poor tipper.” I was bar staff for a while, and I’d have wanted to know if the guy I was serving got violent the last time he went out.

That being said, I could see how this system could be abused. If one power-tripping bouncer claims you sexually assaulted someone, and no one will serve you anymore, that’s bullshit. Some regulations around how businesses use these databases would be good.

Honestly, I spent a lot of years tending bar, and most of the time, if someone was too drunk, it was my fault. Sure, there were times when someone was pre-gaming too hard or snuck in alcohol, but 9 times out of 10, if someone overconsumed, it was because I overserved.

I still get emails from my dormant account, and according to my Gmail, the sender is, “X (formerly Twitter),” so I don’t think we’re done with that yet.