From the perspective of "The general purpose computing device I own should be able to run any instructions written by anyone without legal issues" then copyright sucks. Massively abused by corporations to unproductively charge rent by squatting on obvious implementations.

From the perspective of "I'm an artist and I want to make a living off the things I create" copyright has some utility. (Although also gets in the way at times, as in bad faith music plagiarism cases)

I feel both perspectives. On a moral level not sure how to unite them in a way that doesn't enable some kind of abuse.

I'm sure we can improve the current systems though.

Funny how copyright used to be held to such extreme value before that many governments agreed to implement the "empty cassette laws" which then got conveniently also applied to empty cd-s, even though there's no guarantee that every single empty cd would be used to burn copyrighted material. And now that the copyright has become an annoyance to AI training, suddenly there's voices and support to abolish the whole thing.

I agree that it is broken and probably needs to be reformed, but abolished outright would lead to a ton of issues right?

Many comments here are throwing arbitrary numbers. These are driven just by some internal feelings instead of a data driven policy. The best solution would be to abolish it completely. It's a practice that wouldn't exist without the violent backing of the state. It's a monopolistic practice abused by wealthy. (I do realize the implications for R&D heavy businesses)

Copyright shouldn't be abolished, it should be reformed however.

It should be 20 years, with right to renew, your first 10 year renewal is free, then the cost skyrockets, with proof required that you are still using the work in commerce, and after that first term, you get a flat rate 5 year extension, then it must be renewed annually with escalating fees.

It allows the big IP places to hold on to their family jewels, but also would return a significant amount of orphaned work to public domain.

It has issues but I would rather see reform of patents first. Given the greater pace of developments now, effectively they now represent a proportionately longer period now than in the past. And they are too broad, along with various abuses (especially around novelty)

Copyright needs to be shorter, but also it should be non-transferable and unable to held by anybody except the individual it originates from. Corporations shouldn't have rights to start with, only restrictions, and they certainly shouldn't have rights over thoughts or ideas.

Did google circa 2012 write this?

All of this is a problem because someone exerted influence over the US government.

Google _knew_ that openai was scraping youtube to train whisper et al. They didn't stop it because they realised that they if they sued them, they would have to pay to train.

So they silently also did the same thing.

With that, copyright in training went to shit.

Copyright, should, allow you or me to make a living from "intellectual works" or anything else tangible/not tangible

Funny how people writing such things are also at the forefront of accusing LLM companies of stealing big time. Because of copyright violations.

So, which one is it?

What's the most generous, charitable definition of an alternative?