Discussion
Regarding copyright... While I do find the excessively long time it takes for a copyright to expire highly questionable, I find I don't feel that strongly about repealing it. Unlike many of the techies around me.
What I do want to repeal is the provisions against breaking "effective technological protections"! The art I want to enjoy should not limit the software I use to do so! That's anti-competitive.
And it really doesn't do anything for workers' rights.
@alcinnz the case of patents pretty blatantly distinguishes itself from copyright with its first-to-submit methodology which eschews the well-defined process of infringement from copyright in favor of the internal machinations of the USPTO
I guess one difference is the 2Decade limit of a patent
Lots of stuff I worked on, at the start of my career are now fully free patentwise
But all the copyrighted stuff is still locked away from the publics free use
@ColmDonoghue @alcinnz i would argue that the time limitation is an admission that patent restrictions are so onerous that they can't be justified without reference to business profit. i have a really big problem with patents covering "ideas", and not specific expressions of those ideas like copyright. this is especially because of the first-to-file mechanism as opposed to adjudicating who actually had the critical idea
@alcinnz more generally patents introduce the assumption that an idea can be novel and attributed to an individual without being tied to a work product which is a direct realization of the idea. this is why software patent trolls can exist (which include microsoft and google), because any independent work can be argued as infringing the patent, because the patent is not tied to a work product. it is a really direct demonstration of how believing in the great man theory of history leads to absurdities and how that framing of "intelligence" is misused for corporate power.
@alcinnz DRM through the reagan CFAA and bush DMCA is just a naked protection of tech monopoly profits. one of the many cases in which corps demonstrate they only hate regulations that protect human rights and the rest of the time work to create "regulations" that criminalize not paying a tithe to the pope
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@alcinnz DRM via the CFAA and DMCA is precisely an example of the cynical misuse of copyright. corporations do not have rights—those are extremely strong legal protections reserved for individuals. human labor implies labor rights for these reasons. DRM, like patents, does not protect labor—they protect profit. both of them are directly intended to produce a monopoly over a product category.