Anybody remember how books were made before Gutenburg's press? They were copied by scribes, by hand. The church burned the first run of bibles, they were "too perfect", the work of the devil. The truth is, it cut the church out of money and control. What about the player piano? The companies that sold sheet music went nuts, claimed it was theft and would kill their business if people could just trade songs out and not need multiple copies to learn / play from. The early VCRs went to court over being able to time shift broadcast television (nobody was duping tapes way back then). And Nintendo tried to get videogame rentals outlawed from the get go in the USA, to match the strict controls in Japan. (I think the thriving market of the 80s and 90s proved them wrong on that attempt.) I could go on and on.
Instead, why -does- copyright exist? Patents? Is it so that the first person with an idea can prevent anybody else from ever using it? Heck no. Patents expire after so many years. But corporations keep getting the laws changed, so these time periods keep getting extended. But not everything illegal is wrong, and vice versa. It's about control, not commercial utility.
Again, what about copyrights? In the USA, it's Disney and Bono that have gotten the length of copyrights extended MANY YEARS beyond the original creators death. This only helps corporations. These stories, this art, and the experiences they create become part of a shared public consciousness. No one company, no one person, really owns it at that point. And no one was ever supposed to.
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Re: Nintendo Is Now Going After YouTube Accounts Which Show Its Games Being Emulated
Anybody remember how books were made before Gutenburg's press? They were copied by scribes, by hand. The church burned the first run of bibles, they were "too perfect", the work of the devil. The truth is, it cut the church out of money and control. What about the player piano? The companies that sold sheet music went nuts, claimed it was theft and would kill their business if people could just trade songs out and not need multiple copies to learn / play from. The early VCRs went to court over being able to time shift broadcast television (nobody was duping tapes way back then). And Nintendo tried to get videogame rentals outlawed from the get go in the USA, to match the strict controls in Japan. (I think the thriving market of the 80s and 90s proved them wrong on that attempt.) I could go on and on.
Instead, why -does- copyright exist? Patents? Is it so that the first person with an idea can prevent anybody else from ever using it? Heck no. Patents expire after so many years. But corporations keep getting the laws changed, so these time periods keep getting extended. But not everything illegal is wrong, and vice versa. It's about control, not commercial utility.
Again, what about copyrights? In the USA, it's Disney and Bono that have gotten the length of copyrights extended MANY YEARS beyond the original creators death. This only helps corporations. These stories, this art, and the experiences they create become part of a shared public consciousness. No one company, no one person, really owns it at that point. And no one was ever supposed to.