apersona

> Ownership of "content" is a legal fiction invented to give states more control over creativity.

1. I hate the argument of "legal fiction" because the whole concept of law itself is a "fiction" invented that gives states more control. But I imagine you wouldn't want to live in a "lawless" society, would you?

2. Can you please explain how ownership of content gives states more control over creativity? There are so many way better methods of control a state can do (state-approved media, just banning books, propaganda) that this sounds like a stretch.

3. Alot of mainstream media is underdog rebels beating an Empire, and ownership of content definitely stops the spread of that idea.

How does copyright limit creativity? If you want to write a new story about a boy wizard going to school, no one can legally stop you. If you want to make a new Mario-inspired platformer, no one can legally stop you.

But if you want to make money and do it from riding the brand name association of Harry Potter or Mario, they can.

You can't do a damn thing with it not because of copyright, but because you don't have the resources to make the movie in the first place.

Copyright can't legally stop you from making a movie about wizards fighting each other with laser swords in space.

Let's separate the implementation of copyright and the concept of copyright. I don't think you would find anyone who would say the US's implementation of copyright is flawless, but the OP seems to be talking about the concept itself.

> Additionally plenty of people making videos for YouTube have had their videos demonetized and their channels even removed because of the Content ID copyright detection scheme and their three strikes rule. In some cases to a ridiculous extent - some companies will claim ownership of music that isn't theirs and either get the video taken down or take a share of the revenue.

Let's take YouTube videos as an example. If the concept of copyright doesn't exist, there is nothing stopping a YouTuber with millions more subscribers from seeing a trending video you made and uploading it themselves. Since they're the one with the most subs, they will get the most views.

The winner of the rewards will always go to the brand that people know most rather than the video makers.

I think you have a misunderstanding of what's copyrightable.

> This idea that they own the very idea of 'boy wizard who goes to school' is insane and plays right into this flawed and pernicious idea.

Copyright protects an expression of an idea, but not the idea itself. No one can legally stop you from writing your own story about a boy wizard who goes to school.

Nintendo fan games can be released (even sold) if they changed it up a bit so they're no longer associated with that IP.

> Copyright is important but does/should not extend to every time I want to print out a picture of a boy wizard for my kid.

You can. No one will sue you. No one will send you a cease and desist. It happens when you try to print Harry Potter and try to make a business out of it.

> We have millions of teachers going above and beyond expectations. We have mothers and caregivers. We have comedians crafting jokes for comedy and they have no ability to protect those jokes. We have brilliant chefs creating recipes after years of work, experience, and effort and they too don't have protections.

I agree with this, but why is your proposed solution to remove protections from everyone instead of giving everyone else protections? People who put in work should be rewarded.

Ah yes, USAID, the agency that provides foreign aid (disaster relief, combatting poverty, providing technical advice) to create a strong, positive impression of the US is "working against your interests".

Please tell me what you have against USAID.

You are not a machine.

Have you noticed that authors and artists love sharing their inspirations? Let's say you're an up-and-coming author. In an interview, you list your sources of inspiration.

Using your logic, why does the creative community celebrate you and your inspirations instead of crying foul like they are with LLMs?

This is so reductionist, it's not even funny.

Imagine debugging your own code (your code being your intellectual work) and this guy barges into your room and says "Why are you wasting your time? Why didn't you just pick a better 'number'?"

I saw someone say they stopped reading after this line:

> At one point, we wanted a command that would print a hundred random lines from a dictionary file. I thought about the problem for a few minutes, and, when thinking failed, tried Googling.

...and I don't fault them for doing so and making the assumption that the author is not an experienced coder

I'm sorry, but I am really baffled by what I'm reading.

> Like I ranted recently here in HN, can we stop with the millionth LISP interpreter already?

Except, the millionth LISP interpreter is a hobby project, that people are making on their own time, not during work? I get it's annoying to see something you've seen before, but you know, you can ignore it.

Play is an important part in learning. The millionth LISP interpreter, game engine, whatever is fine. From my experience, the people building these things gain a lot more valuable experience than just doing college or even just having a prior job.

> We have people dying in hospitals because the software of the heart monitor glitched or misread a sensor. Can we get on those problems instead?

Do you have any idea how current problems actually get decided for in industry (not only software, but in general)? It's not "this problem gets tackled because it's cool", it's because of money. Do you think bright software engineers love working on Microsoft Word or better AdSense because they think it's fun?

Also, this sounds really stupid to say, but this seems to be what you're implying when you say "keep play out of work": do you really think the same people working on embedded systems for heart monitors are the ones writing LISP interpreters...somehow...at work?

There's also something that plagues HN and it's that they think the software industry is somehow uniform. Medical devices get regulated under the medical devices industry, commercial airplanes get regulated under the aviation industry. The pure software industry is not the only place that hires software engineers.

I'm sorry, but have you tried the Quest Pro's pass-through?

I have, and it was an awful experience. They had color pass through but faked it and it felt like a grayscale video that someone shoddily tried to paint over it. There was significant warping and text (like a poster on my friend's wall) was barely readable.

It "exists", but was completely useless in terms of usability. If Apple can get pass-through to actually work well, I would call that "new" in the sense that it's a feature that's usable.

I didn't believe it either until I met one. They exist, but it takes more than an interview to gauge and they're so rare it's not worth trying.