alt Hacker NewsCopyright should be commoditized. A possible first step could be giving copyright owners a single obligation: you have to sell what you own. That thing you have must be available on the market.
This rules out negotiations. They imply a possible negative result, hence the thing is not really available. A public offer, however, is fine.
This thing alone may change the situation quite a bit. Imagine a true market for textbooks or streaming media where every provider has the same selection of titles and has to actually compete.
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What happens if I wrote a book - sent around to a few publishers and then personally had a change of heart - perhap it has content which I now disavow.
Shouldn't it be within my right to withhold publication?
Or because I refuse to publish, but the publishers have a copy - I should lose the right to control my own work and the copyright falls and the publisher can just publish freely?
> A possible first step could be giving copyright owners a single obligation: you have to sell what you own
This would be wildly unreasonable and totally unethical. Every picture taken by a photographer has to be available on the market immediately?
Think through the ethical implications of that.
But what does “available on the market” mean? Let’s say I own the copyright to something of cultural significance. I make it “available on the market” but at a very high price. Or are you saying that the price would be enforced?