Utopia 1: Copyright is abolished. Music is produced for a combination of self expression, fame, concert ticket sales, and merchandise sales (merchandise is also largely copyable, but many people buy it from the artist anyway). Movies are mostly crowd-funded through places like kickstarter, some low-budget ones are self-funded initially and then rewarded with donations. Widely used software is mostly open source. Where GPLed software (no longer protected by copyright) is modified and distributed without source by a large company for profit, righteous hackers reverse engineer the program and bad mouth the company publicly, so it’s generally seen as not worthwhile. Small GPL violations by individuals are usually ignored.
Dystopia 1: Fair use is abolished, so derivative works can only be produced by the large companies who own the original copyright, or those with permission. Some companies have large copyright portfolios and have an uneasy truce against mutually destructive lawsuits for parodies and occasional references to each other. Positive reviews are often given permission to quote from a work, but negative ones never are. Singing with others present, or playing a CD through speakers instead of headphones, is considered a public performance and requires a license. Letting someone use your e-reader to read your books is forbidden. Sometimes companies sell widely referenced works to copyright trolls who don’t publish anything and can freely sue all the other companies who have derivative works without being sued themselves. Anonymous communication on the Internet is banned and putting up an individual website is very expensive, as hosting. General purpose PC’s require an expensive permit and monitoring software. iPads and Android devices can only run approved software, and it’s much more expensive due to lack of competition and the approval process. Old public domain texts end up effectively owned, as slightly modified versions come into common use, and many key phrases become trademarked after use in advertisements. It goes without saying that Disney’s copyrights never expire.
Utopia 2: Copyrights and patents are easy to register and enforce, and micropayments make them easy and convenient to pay for, so most individuals have some registered ideas, jokes, or stories making them at least a little money, without undue burden on the users. Patents have reasonable legal limits on how expensive they can be. Copyrights have voluntary limits on how expensive they can be—overly expensive stuff is ignored and avoided, e.g., many radio stations have a guarantee that any song you hear on their station can be purchased for a reasonable price.
Dystopia 2: the Internet made copyright unenforcable and very few movies and very little music is produced. Most of it is crap. Some is a mixture of good stuff with a just-bearable amount of ads for generic Viagra and fraudulent money-making schemes, somehow made integral to the story. Very little consumer software is produced, though malware is thriving due to common software not getting security updates. Individuals cannot make money from software except through fraud.
ETA—oops, that Utopia 2 may be a weirdtopia for me. The problem is I was trying to come up with a utopia and dystopia from a pro and anti copyright viewpoint, and also Utopia 2 was largely inspired by an sf book I vaguely remember. Possibly by John C Wright.
Where GPLed software (no longer protected by copyright) is modified and distributed by a large company for profit, righteous hackers reverse engineer the program and bad mouth the company publicly, so it’s generally seen as not worthwhile.
Note that the GPL does allow you to modify and distribute your program for profit, you just have to release the source code and cannot slap additional restrictions on it. So the sin (contra-normative but legal behavior) in this case would be for the company to sell an obfuscated or compiled version without providing source, keeping the source code secret and forcing all programmers who work on it to sign confidentiality agreements as a condition of employment.
It’s a good question as to whether this particular practice would remain against social norms for long if it were not illegal. To what degree does the legality of something impact its social permissibility?
This would be a great topic for Utopia, Dystopia, Weirdtopia
I’ll do two versions of the utopia and dystopia.
Utopia 1: Copyright is abolished. Music is produced for a combination of self expression, fame, concert ticket sales, and merchandise sales (merchandise is also largely copyable, but many people buy it from the artist anyway). Movies are mostly crowd-funded through places like kickstarter, some low-budget ones are self-funded initially and then rewarded with donations. Widely used software is mostly open source. Where GPLed software (no longer protected by copyright) is modified and distributed without source by a large company for profit, righteous hackers reverse engineer the program and bad mouth the company publicly, so it’s generally seen as not worthwhile. Small GPL violations by individuals are usually ignored.
Dystopia 1: Fair use is abolished, so derivative works can only be produced by the large companies who own the original copyright, or those with permission. Some companies have large copyright portfolios and have an uneasy truce against mutually destructive lawsuits for parodies and occasional references to each other. Positive reviews are often given permission to quote from a work, but negative ones never are. Singing with others present, or playing a CD through speakers instead of headphones, is considered a public performance and requires a license. Letting someone use your e-reader to read your books is forbidden. Sometimes companies sell widely referenced works to copyright trolls who don’t publish anything and can freely sue all the other companies who have derivative works without being sued themselves. Anonymous communication on the Internet is banned and putting up an individual website is very expensive, as hosting. General purpose PC’s require an expensive permit and monitoring software. iPads and Android devices can only run approved software, and it’s much more expensive due to lack of competition and the approval process. Old public domain texts end up effectively owned, as slightly modified versions come into common use, and many key phrases become trademarked after use in advertisements. It goes without saying that Disney’s copyrights never expire.
Utopia 2: Copyrights and patents are easy to register and enforce, and micropayments make them easy and convenient to pay for, so most individuals have some registered ideas, jokes, or stories making them at least a little money, without undue burden on the users. Patents have reasonable legal limits on how expensive they can be. Copyrights have voluntary limits on how expensive they can be—overly expensive stuff is ignored and avoided, e.g., many radio stations have a guarantee that any song you hear on their station can be purchased for a reasonable price.
Dystopia 2: the Internet made copyright unenforcable and very few movies and very little music is produced. Most of it is crap. Some is a mixture of good stuff with a just-bearable amount of ads for generic Viagra and fraudulent money-making schemes, somehow made integral to the story. Very little consumer software is produced, though malware is thriving due to common software not getting security updates. Individuals cannot make money from software except through fraud.
ETA—oops, that Utopia 2 may be a weirdtopia for me. The problem is I was trying to come up with a utopia and dystopia from a pro and anti copyright viewpoint, and also Utopia 2 was largely inspired by an sf book I vaguely remember. Possibly by John C Wright.
Note that the GPL does allow you to modify and distribute your program for profit, you just have to release the source code and cannot slap additional restrictions on it. So the sin (contra-normative but legal behavior) in this case would be for the company to sell an obfuscated or compiled version without providing source, keeping the source code secret and forcing all programmers who work on it to sign confidentiality agreements as a condition of employment.
It’s a good question as to whether this particular practice would remain against social norms for long if it were not illegal. To what degree does the legality of something impact its social permissibility?
Good point. Example fixed to be “without source”