I consider the viral thing of copyright a good thing, similar to a meme going viral. While technically the law, people were pretty upset when a "meme tax" was being discussed because the copyright owners of the sources of many memes were seeking compensation.
The idea of going viral as making it something everyone can partake in and something nobody can tell you not to do as long as you don't try to restrict others is pretty positive.
Companies and copyright firms will have us believe the "viral" just refers to the way COVID is viral, but it's become more than that.
Any company advocating against or complaining about GPL isn't worth paying attention to, in my opinion. In this case, the one of an individual developer, that's not the case though. Not everyone who chooses GPL wants to kill copyright, especially people in the game dev world whose entire business is that of copyright. For those people, GPL is the wrong license to release their source code by for many reasons, though it's also the right license to release their source code by for many others.
I've always seen copyleft as a fight against copyright, an abuse of the system meant to accumulate private wealth and restrictions, by forcing people to give up their private gains or make them reinvent the wheel if they wish to keep their IP to themselves.
Any patent owner will say IP is necessary for the market to stay competitive, anyone who's ever had to buy patents (media codecs, mobile communication, etc) or who's been sued by patent trolls will likely say that patents stifle innovation instead. It's all about what you gain personally.
I like the idea of copyright for individuals, but corporate copyright as a thing that can be sold, bought, or pooled, has been so terribly restrictive to most of the world that I'm in favour of a massive reform.
Most reasonable people agree that copyright on creative works is a good thing, but it has to be short. 10 years is plenty. What we currently have is "life plus 70 years"! That means well over 100 years. 100 years! It's totally insane, but most people just don't question it.
Are we really to believe that there is anyone out there encouraged to write because they know their work will still be copyrighted for 70 years after they die?
If a work loses its copyright after 10 years, I could grab emacs 23.3 and make some changes and release it all close source. Or gcc 4.6.1. iText became AGPL in '09.. version 5.1.1 was released 10 years ago (5.5.13 is current) and it could be brought to a closed source library.
Whats more, I believe that the photographs that I took 10 years ago still have as much value as the day that I took them. There are a lot of photographers who's livelihood is based on their library of photographs that they have taken over the years.
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Lifetime plus 70 was done in the era where publishing content had a very long tail and the estate (and children) were able to collect from that long tail for their lifetime too.
While I'm in agreement that lifetime + 70 is too much, I believe that 10 is far too little.
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A prediction / alternate world -- if copyright was 10 years on software, you'd get an EaaS model - everything as a service. You wouldn't have anything that you could install. No libraries - nothing. You make calls out to services to do whatever you need. This would likely include connecting to VMs controlled by large companies from rather low powered terminals. Yes, this looks a lot like chrome books and the cloud for everything.
Copyright is a complicated thing and I don't pretend to have all the answers. I'm not suggesting to simply reduce the length of copyright and keep everything else the same. I would like to see copyright on software gone completely. Software has a unique purpose in our lives and should not be treated like other creative works such as music and literature. I believe software development would still be good business without the protection of copyright. Vendors could focus on documentation and support rather than the code itself.
> There are a lot of photographers who's livelihood is based on their library of photographs that they have taken over the years.
There are a lot of people whose livelihood is based on crime. This isn't a valid argument for what is right or wrong.
Copyright is supposed to encourage new works for the greater good of society. This is written into the US Constitution, no less. It would be interesting to see if lengthening the term of copyright has caused an increase in the number or quality of creative works being produced. I highly doubt that it has.
> A prediction / alternate world -- if copyright was 10 years on software, you'd get an EaaS model - everything as a service.
Why would it change anything for existing free/open-source software? We'd still have GNU/Linux and the BSDs. If it made proprietary software even worse, then so be it. More reason to use free software.
> There are a lot of people whose livelihood is based on crime. This isn't a valid argument for what is right or wrong.
You are suggesting depriving artists and writers of their livelihood.
I will agree that the Disney Micky mouse mess is ugly and does make things worse, but making it so that a photograph that I took {N} years ago is no longer something that I am able to protect and gain value from is... not something that I'm ok with. I do still sell the occasional print from a photo I shot a decade (or two) ago. Having someone else take that print and then make a poster from it and sell that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
> Why would it change anything for existing free/open-source software? We'd still have GNU/Linux and the BSDs. If it made proprietary software even worse, then so be it. More reason to use free software.
Open source would lose its protections after that decade. MongoDB for example went AGPL in '09... and that wouldn't be enforceable anymore on that version.
My prediction is that open source would die shortly afterwards since there would be no way to enforce the GPL or any copyleft on old code.
No, open source wouldn't be thriving in that world as it can't enforce its license through copyright.
BSDs wouldn't really notice. Linux and the GPL would find itself closed source - not just locked down and tiviozed. GPLv3 and AGPL would lose all their teeth.
The GPL is there to try to make it easier to hack or tinker with the things you own that use something that has been GPLed. With copyright toothless on old code, that GPL and AGPL gets used without contributions. Proprietary steps up its DRM and licensing - where you're "renting" an application with a subscription so copying it from one computer to another is pointless... but then we're already there for proprietary applications.
A short term copyright is a loss for artists and open source - it doesn't make it worse for exiting proprietary applications.
> but making it so that a photograph that I took {N} years ago is no longer something that I am able to protect and gain value from is... not something that I'm ok with.
That's unsurprising.
> Having someone else take that print and then make a poster from it and sell that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Don't share it then. Simple solution. Nobody will ever enjoy your pictures but you.
> The GPL is there to try to make it easier to hack or tinker with the things you own that use something that has been GPLed.
No it's not. The GPL is not about you or me. The GPL is about society. This is what you don't seem to get. Maximising the greater good for society rarely coincides with maximising individual interests. Think of it like global optimisation vs local optimisation. Permissive licences seem to locally maximise individual freedom, ie. if you happen to have the source code right now, you have complete freedom to do what you want, up to and including denying others that freedom. The GPL tries to globally optimise freedom by "disabling" copyright. So you have the freedom to do what you want, but you don't have the freedom to deny those same freedoms to others.
If we reformed copyright, of course a few individuals would lose out. But society as a whole would be far richer.
The idea of going viral as making it something everyone can partake in and something nobody can tell you not to do as long as you don't try to restrict others is pretty positive.
Companies and copyright firms will have us believe the "viral" just refers to the way COVID is viral, but it's become more than that.
Any company advocating against or complaining about GPL isn't worth paying attention to, in my opinion. In this case, the one of an individual developer, that's not the case though. Not everyone who chooses GPL wants to kill copyright, especially people in the game dev world whose entire business is that of copyright. For those people, GPL is the wrong license to release their source code by for many reasons, though it's also the right license to release their source code by for many others.
I've always seen copyleft as a fight against copyright, an abuse of the system meant to accumulate private wealth and restrictions, by forcing people to give up their private gains or make them reinvent the wheel if they wish to keep their IP to themselves.
Any patent owner will say IP is necessary for the market to stay competitive, anyone who's ever had to buy patents (media codecs, mobile communication, etc) or who's been sued by patent trolls will likely say that patents stifle innovation instead. It's all about what you gain personally.
I like the idea of copyright for individuals, but corporate copyright as a thing that can be sold, bought, or pooled, has been so terribly restrictive to most of the world that I'm in favour of a massive reform.