Dismantling the megaconglomerates' excessive rents and freeing up vast swaths of content for fair use looks exciting. That being said, the "exclusivity" that you talk about is relevant only for people who are famous, so I still see some downsides for people with lower profiles. For instance, an animated cartoon creator could have all their cartoons reuploaded onto another account with no recourse.
There are some great protections you pointed out. I imagine blockchain's proof of authenticity being integrated into our application interfaces, first as third-party browser extensions, and later built-in to browsers and mobile apps. For example, before you donate to someone, YouTube or PayPal or etc would verify that you're donating to the original creator of the content.
But when it comes to consuming content, people will happily do it without respect for the original creator. The reputation, views, and advertising dollars that would otherwise accrue for the creator will often be directed to some other source. I suppose there's an underlying discussion about our values here; perhaps if we decide that people have the right to consume anything that's been created then this is a fine outcome.
And going back to the movie industry, it does seem fair that if Disney invested billions in producing, promoting, and distributing a movie they alone should reap the rewards i.e. someone else shouldn't be able to upload it for free watches. This seems like a basic notion of property rights, no? How does erasing this right coexist with your libertarian principles?
To answer your last question first, 'stealing' intellectual property differs significantly from all other types of property theft in that it isn't actually stealing, it's just copying. Copy-pasting a string of ones and zeroes or repeating an idea that you heard from someone else doesn't take the information or idea from the original creator. Their access to the content is just as full as it would be if no one else had it in their minds. This is very unlike other forms of property like a car or cash where when someone takes it from you, you can no longer use it. The master recording of Snow White is completely unaffected when someone uploads a copy online, so how could it be stolen?
For this reason I think the presumption should be to allow people to make copies of things. This has lots of other big benefits too like allowing people to consume great knowledge and entertainment for free. The argument against this presumption is that creators need to be paid for their work or nothing will be made. This is true, but the costs of creation are lower than ever (how have IP protections been trending over the same time?), plus the exclusivity guarantees a source of revenue from people who truly care about the work you create.
The fact that ideas are non-rival is their greatest power, we shouldn't put that behind monopoly pay walls if we can avoid it and I think that we can.
Dismantling the megaconglomerates' excessive rents and freeing up vast swaths of content for fair use looks exciting. That being said, the "exclusivity" that you talk about is relevant only for people who are famous, so I still see some downsides for people with lower profiles. For instance, an animated cartoon creator could have all their cartoons reuploaded onto another account with no recourse.
There are some great protections you pointed out. I imagine blockchain's proof of authenticity being integrated into our application interfaces, first as third-party browser extensions, and later built-in to browsers and mobile apps. For example, before you donate to someone, YouTube or PayPal or etc would verify that you're donating to the original creator of the content.
But when it comes to consuming content, people will happily do it without respect for the original creator. The reputation, views, and advertising dollars that would otherwise accrue for the creator will often be directed to some other source. I suppose there's an underlying discussion about our values here; perhaps if we decide that people have the right to consume anything that's been created then this is a fine outcome.
And going back to the movie industry, it does seem fair that if Disney invested billions in producing, promoting, and distributing a movie they alone should reap the rewards i.e. someone else shouldn't be able to upload it for free watches. This seems like a basic notion of property rights, no? How does erasing this right coexist with your libertarian principles?
To answer your last question first, 'stealing' intellectual property differs significantly from all other types of property theft in that it isn't actually stealing, it's just copying. Copy-pasting a string of ones and zeroes or repeating an idea that you heard from someone else doesn't take the information or idea from the original creator. Their access to the content is just as full as it would be if no one else had it in their minds. This is very unlike other forms of property like a car or cash where when someone takes it from you, you can no longer use it. The master recording of Snow White is completely unaffected when someone uploads a copy online, so how could it be stolen?
For this reason I think the presumption should be to allow people to make copies of things. This has lots of other big benefits too like allowing people to consume great knowledge and entertainment for free. The argument against this presumption is that creators need to be paid for their work or nothing will be made. This is true, but the costs of creation are lower than ever (how have IP protections been trending over the same time?), plus the exclusivity guarantees a source of revenue from people who truly care about the work you create.
The fact that ideas are non-rival is their greatest power, we shouldn't put that behind monopoly pay walls if we can avoid it and I think that we can.