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Then anything produced by AI should be free use and not able to be copyrighted.
Copyright shouldn't exist anyways. It only exists to support monopolization of distribution.
Copyright actually was a good idea at the time, it provided protection in exchange for enablment. It used to be copyrighted works would be kept secret or secular from the public, same thing as patent/trade secrets, but the copyright framework was devised so that the public could eventually benefit from the works for the price of initial protection of the producer. Disney bastardized it to high hell in court back in the 90s and it just never recovered or adapted to the modern age.
For those unfamiliar, here is the wiki for Statute of Anne. Generally regarded as the basis/advent of copyright.
In theory it is also supposed to be able to protect small-time creators who come up with a good idea from being copied and run out of the market by megacorporations.
To use video games as an example (trademark violation aside), imagine if EA made their own Celeste 2, or whatever close equivalent they could while avoiding Celeste branding, with no involvement or permission from Maddy Thorson. They copy all of Celeste's source code and put their legion of underpaid developers to make the shiniest, biggest budget version of Celeste imaginable, erase all of the trans allegory because they're worried about how it might impact sales, and flood the airwaves to make it seem like it's better than the original Celeste in every conceivable way.
Unfortunately, you're wrong in that interpretation. When copyright was devised mega corporations weren't exactly a thing. Copyright like patents has always been about trying to balance the benefits to society against the needs of the individual.
Copyright like patents has always been about trying to balance the benefits to society against the needs of the individual.
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Copyright has never been about balancing any kind of benefit to society.
It was invented in the 1700s and you directly benefit from the many many things it has enabled for you over the past 300 years so... No?..
You carry with you an extraordinarily propagandized view of what copyright is.
I carry with me a studied and rooted view of what copyright is. If you want to argue for what it should be that's fine, but you gain no ground by mudding the swap and doing your opponents work for you. It may get you up votes on an internet forum, but it won't solicit the social change I and presumably you wish to see.
I carry with me a studied and rooted view of what copyright is.
I mean you claim that then you get the basic details wrong. Copyrights origins are historically rooted in the protection of the corporate control over the means of distribution. Not in the protection of artists whatsoever. Copyright is not, and has not ever been, about protecting artists or creators. Its origin and use has always been about controlling the means of production and distribution. This goes all the way back to the Guild of Stationers in England.
I'm not muddling any ground when I say that copyright isn't about and never has been about protecting artists.
That's an extremely one sided view of history.
In fact, I'll clarify further. Specifically the statute of Anne. Here, in case you're unfamiliar, is the act which laid the bedrock for copyright. It's not the licensing requirements from the the late 1600s that you're likely confusing it with which while somewhat monitarily motivated were primarily driven by political motivations, specifically to stop the reprint of phamplets critical of the state.
So you just want to move the line on where the origins of copyright start?
I'm not confusing anything you dunce. You simply have a perspective of what copyright is that is fundamentally false, and one which the industries which benefit from copyright spent decades, centuries even, propagandizing as what copyright is about even thought thats not what it was ever about.
Don't waste my time if you are only coming to the table with this ley, mediocre understanding of the matter.
Oh please get a grip. You’re lumping the censorship in with the actual foundation for copyright law and calling it the same thing. It is not. The licencing of all press you're clinging to was about the state policing presses, period. The Statute of Anne flipped the script and legally vested the right in authors. The U.S. legislative implementation copied that model basically word-for-word. Pretending three centuries of author-centred statutes don’t exist just because publishers later bought those rights is just wrong and lazy. If you want to rage about modern corpos and be bitter whatever but stop rewriting history to suit your cynical opinion.
You're clinging to the Statute of Anne like it's some kind of moral turning point, as if suddenly in 1709 the crown and capital had a change of heart and decided to champion the little guy. They didn’t. Copyright didn’t begin with the Statute of Anne—it evolved out of earlier systems explicitly designed to control the press and consolidate publishing monopolies. That’s not opinion. That’s history.
And even after the Statute of Anne, authors didn’t magically start benefiting. The rhetoric may have shifted, but the power stayed right where it had always been: with printers, publishers, and eventually media conglomerates. The U.S. didn’t “flip the script”—it copied the same structure and handed the same economic levers to production companies. The only thing that changed was the branding.
So yeah, I’ll call it what it is. A system born in censorship, refined into monopoly, and still operating that way under the pretense of author rights. Waving three centuries of “author-centered” statutes around like they mean something in practice is historical cosplay at best, and gaslighting at worst.
You can keep defending the fantasy. I’ll stick to the facts.
You make it sound as if no amount of progress short of your idea of perfect would be good enough for you. That's a very cynical perspective that does not coincide with history. I'm also not even sure how you could argue it's been refined into a monopoly when the works fall long term in the public domain. Frankenstein, Dracula, and Sherlock Holmes would therefore all belong to a monopoly despite being freely usable in whole or derivative, including print? I see your desire for the balance to change and to call out abuse where it was but I genuinely do not understand your cynical position when there is measurable and concrete evidence that both the public and the individual benefit from copyright even in its flawed implementation vs the alternative of trade secrets or ghoulish rights management.
You need to work on your reading comprehension, because at no point have I presented an idea of how I think things should be. And if you aren't careful, I'm going to have to dig out my copy of A Philosophy of Intellectual Property and start quoting Drahos at length. Your ad hominem regarding my argument being cynical is a non-sequitur because I haven't made an argument as to how things should be. At the moment we're simply having an argument about what is or what isn't; you aren't remotely prepared to get into a conversation about how things should or shouldn't yet.
My position isn't cynical; it's practical.
And practically speaking, the spaces that operate without traditional copyright—like the Linux kernel, the wider free and open-source software (FOSS) ecosystem, and the federated social web (Fediverse)—are orders of magnitude more generative, collaborative, and democratic than the closed, monopolized alternatives. These ecosystems thrive not because of artificial scarcity or gatekeeping, but because they actively reject it. Linux runs the internet. FOSS powers most of the global infrastructure. The Fediverse offers decentralized platforms with real user agency, free from surveillance capitalism. These are not accidents—they’re direct outcomes of choosing openness over enclosure: of rejecting things like copyright. So if you really want to argue about what works, look at the communities where copyright holds no power, like the one were on now.
My comprehension’s hardly perfect, but it’s good enough to spot when someone jumps from describing history into prescribing it. You've kept asserting what copyright “really is” while smuggling in how you think it should work. Neither you, your book, nor Drahos is a final authority, so judging me from your ivory tower is such pure ego.
Your stance is cynical because it’s dismissive. you wave away all progress as meaningless re-branding.
And your Linux example actually shoots your own point. The kernel is released under the GPL, which only has teeth because each contributor owns copyright and licenses it under copyleft terms. If a company violated that license, in say... An embrace, extend, and extinguish mentality... Like oh... Microsoft maybe? Well it gets sued, precisely because copyright law backs the claim. Kill copyright tomorrow and any corporation could EEE all of FOSS.
You’re confusing recognizing the function of a system with prescribing how it should be. Pointing out that copyright law has historically served monopolists and gatekeepers is not smuggling in a policy position. It’s describing the power structure as it has played out, repeatedly, across centuries. That you interpret that as prescriptive says more about your own projection than anything I’ve said. I’m not judging you from an ivory tower. I’m just not playing along with the fantasy that this system was ever about authors.
Calling my stance cynical because I won’t pretend progress has been meaningful is lazy. Progress matters when it changes who holds power. Most copyright reforms haven't. If authors had actually gained leverage from the Statute of Anne or the US copy-paste version, we wouldn't live in a world where Disney locks up culture for a century while artists beg for rent.
Your FOSS example doesn’t contradict anything. It proves the point. The GPL uses copyright as a judo move. It flips a hostile system against itself to create openness where the default is enclosure. That’s not a sign that copyright is good. It’s a sign that people had to engineer an escape route inside a broken structure. Just because the court system enforces GPL violations doesn’t make copyright noble. It means there’s no better legal tool right now. The GPL is a hack, not a justification.
And still, despite all of that, FOSS works. Not because of copyright, but because people deliberately built something that rejects the logic of scarcity and control. Linux, the Fediverse, Creative Commons, public domain archives, these thrive because people choose collaboration, transparency, and shared ownership. They build and share because they can, not because a license tells them to. These systems are functional, open, and resilient, and they exist in spite of the legal framework, not because of it.
Copyright needs to die and its apologists have stockholm syndrome.
I'm not confusing anything, I'm providing a different perspective of the same historical record. Copyright has objectively empowered authors, and the public, even if it did not do so to what you (or I) deem adequate levels. Royalties, revision rights, and public domain releases are objective.
Calling out your stance as cynical is a observation of your continued insistence to ignore any and all silver linings to a system that has offered objective societial benefits and author protections. I don't hold the perspective that it is the system that could have been the most successful in that, simply that it has demonstrated objective good. Neither of us are in a position to fairly and fully evaluate that against the bad.
As for Linux and the GPL, It could not contridict you more as I've literally an example of a massive conglomerate corporation caught exploiting FOSS and open systems in order to capture them. This objectively happened (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish). Without the protection of copyleft this would still be perfectly possible, and in the absence of copyright likely standardized as practice. So the GPL is not people engineering a hack into a system to break it, it's people using the system as intended and designed to protect authored work.
As for copyright now, and historically, I make no apologies for the abuse or it's current bastardized state but as far as copyright dying, I see that as defeatist and cynical. It needs work, remade for the modern age even, but it has provided value to authors and necessary protections to FOSS.
It’s pointless arguing with that douchebag, they just want to pirate or steal anything they want and want it to be legal.
I don't agree. I stand with @kfogel@kfogel.org (I'm not sure we're federated, but this guy: https://kfogel.org/kfogel) in that I think that I fundamentally believe that information wants to be free. Copyright law was built fundamentally to limit and control the distribution of information for control. Its goal was to privatize censorship.
Copyright as Disney uses it is working exactly as intended.
More on copyright:
Copyright is 300+ years old rooted in people who'd spend their lives working to publish a singular book. You're just... Wrong? I'm not sure what else to tell you. You can make the argument that it's been shaped that way, but you're dismissing so much history and stand to further nothing with your stance.
You don't know what you are talking about do you? Go watch the video.
Copyright was specifically built to protect printers, who demanded a monopoly over publication.
Not the writers or creators of those works, who made nothing from copyright, but the publishing company. It was built to protect a means of distribution.
Technically it is as long as you don't have copyrighted characters or a human has been involved in the process.
That ok, it's not doable for me to pay for music, movies, and video games I won't own.
Or pay taxes.
Guys you are thinking about this all wrong, we have just been given a great loophole for the pirate bay 2.0
Then maybe AI companies aren't doable after all. It's not like we have the natural resources to spare anyway.
Fucking wild' its not doable for me either.
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It's not doable for me to need to use a subscription model for things I used to be able to own.
These companies get billions in funding. Something tells me they could handle a lot of royalty costs.
But if somehow they actually can't, you better be damn sure we are taking the whole copyright system out -- not just carving out exemptions for corporations.
I know. A guy can dream.