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tencentshilltoday at 5:41 PM4 repliesview on HN

Some consider copyright to be unethical. "Information wants to be free".


Replies

thewebguydtoday at 5:57 PM

Information also wants to be expensive, and that tension will never go away. "Information wants to be free" is only one side of the context of that quote.

> On the one hand you have—the point you’re making Woz—is that information sort of wants to be expensive because it is so valuable—the right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information almost wants to be free because the costs of getting it out is getting lower and lower all of the time. So you have these two things fighting against each other.

Information may want to be free, but the humans creating it still need to eat and pay rent. Copyright isn't necessarily unethical more than its a flawed tool, and lasts far too long in the law's current state. It needs to last only and exactly as long for the original creator to profit from the work for a specific duration of time, and then thats it.

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altcognitotoday at 5:59 PM

Great framing for your case, but I think it is less that it is unethical and more that ideas/copyright isn't perpetual, nor should it be fully transferrable to a corporation (a non-person entity)

I'd struggle to find an idea, art, technique etc... that wasn't an extension of something that came before it.

RRWagnertoday at 5:46 PM

I would propose that copyrights not be eternal

layer8today at 6:43 PM

Copyright isn’t about information.