alt Hacker NewsI don't think people not understanding licenses are the problem. Licenses are.
It's just that for the longest time people didn't have to think about them, because if you had a license to consume a game/movie/album and also had a copy of it on physical media it was basically impossible for the media owner to take it away from you. But when everything is digital only, doing exactly that is easy as pie.
This feels like how sometimes laws from the 1800s are used to convict people of computer-related crimes. Maybe that was always possible, but it still seems unfair.
I'll emphasize that using something without a legal base isn't a crime.
It isn't even about legality (because laws usually don't regulate how one can interact with entity they have no legal ties to) but only about litigation risk.
There are no legal or moral obligations requiring valid license. Only interested organizations are brainwashing people into thinking otherwise.
But I don't think licenses are the problem. It's quite obvious. You have 100 works of art (music, graphics, code and text). You want to make money. If you sell it - you lose all the rights. You can give it out but then there's no profit.
The only way to not transfer ownership and give away for free is exact middle ground called the license.