Yet more examples of how copyright destroys culture rather than driving it [Updated]
walledculture.org

One of the supposed justifications for the intellectual monopoly called copyright is that it drives creativity and culture. In the last few weeks alone we have had multiple demonstrations of why the opposite is true: copyright destroys culture, and not by accident, but wilfully. For example, the MTVNews.com site, along with its sister site CMT.com, …

One of the clearest demonstrations of how copyright is actively harmful is the lawsuit that four of the biggest publishers brought against the Internet Archive. As a result of the judge’s decision in favour of the publishers – currently being appealed – more than 500,000 books have been taken out of lending by the Internet Archive, including more than 1,300 banned and “challenged” books. In an open letter to the publishers in the lawsuit, the Internet Archive lists three core reasons why removing half a million ebooks is “having a devastating impact in the US and around the world, with far-reaching implications”.

Cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17259314

  • brax@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    If the publishers win, I hope every book they publish as long as they exist gets torrented into oblivion leading authors to ditch them in favour of self publishing

  • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    You should be legally required to offer content you have on a copyright or else allow people to “pirate” it. The same way you must defend trademarks. If you don’t actually offer content you have the copyright for them you shouldn’t be allowed to prevent people from distributing it as abandonware.

    • DebatableRaccoon@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      I would add creation within an IP to this as well. There are so many good IP out there that some large company has devoured and actively chooses to just sit on when we could be getting good fan-made content. One example that comes to mind since it was brought up is EA sitting on American McGee’s Alice. So many fans are desperate for good content from their favourite IPs and are getting corporate by-the-numbers drivel at best or simply nothing.

      I think a good trade off here is fans can make what they want then the owners are allowed to incorporate fan stories at their choosing so X fan game would be the official third game in a franchise then the IP owner could run with those ideas to make the fourth entry, for example. It’ll never happen but one can dream.

    • crossmr@kbin.run
      1·
      6 months ago

      Canada either did, or still does, have a law like this. Years ago back when getting chipped cards for satellites was a pretty big thing, a lot of people near the US border could get ones from the US that weren’t available in Canada and get the chipped card or whatever it was. At one point the company made a request to the Canadian authorities to crack down on it, and the response was something to the effect of ‘your product isn’t available here, you don’t have standing to ask us to do that’.

      It’s easier to define it as this:

      If you commercially release something and region restrict it, people in any region where you don’t also provide a legal way to purchase/use it should be free to get it however they want.