Bless my soul. Plasmasnake said something intelligent that I agree with.

Copyrighting and intellectual property is relatively new in the history of western civilization, but I believe it came about and was developed for greater benefit. Look at Shakespeare. Actors of The Theatre and The Globe would learn and perform a play, and then go to a publisher (in secrecy and much to Shakespeare's chagrin) and recite what they knew by memory. The publishing of a certain volume was registered, per the Stationers' Register. These would sometimes become the quartos of Shakespeare's plays, and they were almost always wrong in many respects. Shakespeare never saw a dime from them, and the population - usually the poor who would be the ones to buy quartos - got shafted with substandard plays. Who knows what would happen if we didn't have copyrighting? I guarantee that someone will still get a cut - but I doubt the original, creative mind will - and the production wouldn't be of equal quality.

This post was edited by Interesting on May 7 2013 05:45pm

I think we would see more innovation without copyright, not less.
My take on it is this:
You make call of duty 1, its a success.
You then make 300 shitty near identical copies of it, you never have to innovate, fanboys will just keep buying it.

Without copyright:
You make call of duty, its a success.
Now you have to make something new, there is already thousands of fan mods that are actually better than anything you could hope to make and you can not sue them into oblivion.

Kickstarting is the way of the future, people pay for your product before its completed, no drm, no copyright, no bullshit, you make the game, you get paid, every one is happy, and you are not stuck working for a huge publisher making the same stale bullshit for 20 years.

Myself i do not completely want copyright removed, but i would rather see a 5 year limit instead of 75 years + the life of the creator (thanks disney).

This post was edited by Lifebane99 on May 7 2013 05:44pm

good

If we removed copyright laws, then you could legally sell phony/counterfeit products. That is, I could make knock-off Apple hardware and not get in trouble for it.

Patents and trademarks would still exist.
Though id heavily reform both systems.

This post was edited by Lifebane99 on May 7 2013 06:44pm

Copyright law is bogus. Needing to protect your personal market share means you aren't as effective as the next guy, which distorts the market.

If you can make a better Macbook Pro for cheaper, there's no reason you shouldn't. Prices are artificially inflated by copyright law. It prevents a true free market from forming because it limits competition.

This post was edited by inkanddagger on May 7 2013 06:51pm

Sadly i partially agree, people build whole corporations around sub par products with strong copyright backing.
Samsung being sued because of rounded corners on their product is a great example.
Nevermind the fact that the jury foreman had phone related patents.

This post was edited by Lifebane99 on May 7 2013 06:52pm

I'm not interested in a free market.

Fair enough. So you'd support a guy who stole someone's story and published it under his own name.