>Sure, I agree, but isn't that seen as a good thing in the capitalist perspective? Wouldn't you want to have that accumulation of wealth by the few, who can then wield that power, as a proponent of capitalism?
No. Capitalism works when people are equals, which is why we need a strong Democracy and brakes on unchecked money-earning optimisation. We must maximise people's freedom to create.
Personally the form of copyright I would support would be something like
1. Sharing without direct monetary gain is allowed. The reason I don't see a problem with this is because we already have a vibrant piracy culture and yet people want to pay creators. As long as you're not getting paid for warez it doesn't seem like it would be a problem in itself. Ad-supported torrent index sites would also be OK because they're not profiting off the warez themselves, they're just providing a search index. This is basically updating libraries to the 21st century.
2. As a creator you own an exclusive right to your creations and you cannot give that right away. So if you write a song as a "work for hire", you can still sample the song you wrote. You can change it and release it on your own. If you are a programmer, you cannot have your code taken away. If you write e.g. a UI component and then decide you want to make your own site, you can still use that UI component freely. Of course you can give a permanent non-exclusive license to your employer to do whatever they want with your code/song/dance/performance/etc.
This will maximise the freedom to create, minimise exploitation of artists and knowledge workers, and maximise the freedom to share culture, while still affording creators enough protection to make sure others aren't unduly profiting from their creations.
I'm not sure about the length of copyright though. The easy thing would be to say it should be 10 years, with exponentially increasing renewal fees, but I'm not sure that's the best idea. Another option is compulsory licensing, where someone who profits from your work has to pay you a fee proportional to how much of his creation uses how much of your creation. That idea has some gnarly enforcement problems however, and I suspect big companies will just tread over little guys who can't litigate anyway.
Personally, I'm currently for short copyright lengths - and industry-dependent, based on independent estimate of true ROI and technology turnover, and balanced against the public good. So e.g. in chemistry/drug manufacturing this could be a decade, in software industry no more than two-three years. Definitely not "almost a century after the death of the author".
I would be a bit conscious about the "sharing without direct monetary gain" part, I'd like it to explicitly exclude "sharing for free in exchange for viewing ads (and accepting tracking)". I think "free with ads" business models are fundamentally anticompetitive and poisonous to our society; you can find them at the center of a lot of problems currently afflicting the western world. I would like to see these business models gone.
No. Capitalism works when people are equals, which is why we need a strong Democracy and brakes on unchecked money-earning optimisation. We must maximise people's freedom to create.
Personally the form of copyright I would support would be something like
1. Sharing without direct monetary gain is allowed. The reason I don't see a problem with this is because we already have a vibrant piracy culture and yet people want to pay creators. As long as you're not getting paid for warez it doesn't seem like it would be a problem in itself. Ad-supported torrent index sites would also be OK because they're not profiting off the warez themselves, they're just providing a search index. This is basically updating libraries to the 21st century.
2. As a creator you own an exclusive right to your creations and you cannot give that right away. So if you write a song as a "work for hire", you can still sample the song you wrote. You can change it and release it on your own. If you are a programmer, you cannot have your code taken away. If you write e.g. a UI component and then decide you want to make your own site, you can still use that UI component freely. Of course you can give a permanent non-exclusive license to your employer to do whatever they want with your code/song/dance/performance/etc.
This will maximise the freedom to create, minimise exploitation of artists and knowledge workers, and maximise the freedom to share culture, while still affording creators enough protection to make sure others aren't unduly profiting from their creations.
I'm not sure about the length of copyright though. The easy thing would be to say it should be 10 years, with exponentially increasing renewal fees, but I'm not sure that's the best idea. Another option is compulsory licensing, where someone who profits from your work has to pay you a fee proportional to how much of his creation uses how much of your creation. That idea has some gnarly enforcement problems however, and I suspect big companies will just tread over little guys who can't litigate anyway.