alt Hacker NewsI wonder how many of the books I love would still have been written in a world where somebody could scoop them all up and post them on the internet for free (and run ads).
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Simple piraciy is not even the worst possible outcome.
Without copyright, nothing stops one from simply selling a book under their own name.
Big publishers could just reprint anything and get it into brick & mortar stores. No money for authors.
Advocating for absolutely no copyright is wild.
The worthwhile ones would still be written. Even if they are not enjoyable. The dissemination of ideas from an activist perspective is uninhibitable
People have been pirating books online for 20 years and in that time the number of books published per year has increased 15-fold. A number of my favorites have been released in that time.
I wonder how many would be written if copyright was only 20 years instead of more than a century? To the point that most people will never be legally allowed to directly build off of the culture they grew up in.
Lord of the rings will be under copyright til roughly 2050. I think Tolkien's estate has gotten more than enough money from that book and it's time to let other use the word hobbit without the threat of a lawsuit.