If it's owned by a few, as it is right now, it's an existential threat to the life, liberty, and pursuit of a happiness of everyone else on the planet.
We should be seriously considering what we're going to do in response to that threat if something doesn't change soon.
This has to change somehow.
"Machines will do everything and we'll just reap the profits" is a vision that techno-millenialists are repeating since the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, but we haven't seen that happening anywhere.
For some strange reason, technological progress seem to be always accompanied with an increase on human labor. We're already past the 8-hours 5-days norm and things are only getting worse.
This isn't a consequence of capitalism. The notion of having to work to survive - assuming you aren't a fan of slavery - is baked into things at a much more fundamental level. And lots of people don't work, and are paid by a welfare state funded by capitalism-generated taxes.
> "Machines will do everything and we'll just reap the profits" is a vision that techno-millenialists are repeating since the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, but we haven't seen that happening anywhere.
They were wrong, but the work is still there to do. You haven't come up with the utopian plan you're comparing this to.
> For some strange reason, technological progress seem to be always accompanied with an increase on human labor.
No it doesn't. What happens is not enough people are needed to do a job any more, so they go find another job. No one's opening barista-staffed coffee shops on every corner in the time when 30% of the world was doing agricultural labour.
Yes, it is. The fact we have welfare isn't a refutation of that, it's proof. The welfare is a bandaid over the fundamental flaws of capitalism. A purely capitalist system is so evil, it is unthinkable. Those people currently on welfare should, in a free labor market, die and rot in the street. We, collectively, decided that's not a good idea and went against that.
That's why the labor market, and truly all our markets, are not free. Free markets suck major ass. We all know it. Six year olds have no business being in coal mines, no matter how much the invisible hand demands it.
I think this should be an axiom which should be respected by any copyright rule.
Let's not forget the basis:
> [The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
Is our current implementation of copyright promoting the progress of science and useful arts?
Or will science and the useful arts be accelerated by culling back the current cruft of copyright laws?
For example, imagine if copyright were non-transferable and did not permit exclusive licensing agreements.
Copyright isn't the problem. Over-financialization is the problem.
Realize what it already has.
A foundational language model with no additional training is already quite powerful.
And that genie isn't going back into the bottle.
"The upside of my gambit is so great for the world, that I should be able to consume everyone else's resources for free. I promise to be a benevolent ruler."
When Google first came out in 1998, it was amazing, spooky how good it was. Then people figured out how to game pagerank and Google's accuracy cratered.
AI is now in a similar bubble period. Throwing out all of copyright law just for the benefit of a few oligarchs would be utter foolishness. Given who is in power right now I'm sure that prospect will find a few friends, but I think the odds of it actually happening before the bubble bursts are pretty small.
If software and ideas become commodities and the legal ecosystem around creating captive markets disappears, then we will all be much better off.
The people agitating for such things are usually leeches who want everything free and do, in fact, hold an infantile worldview that doesn't consider how necessary remuneration is to whatever it is they want so badly (media pirates being another example).
Not that I haven't "pirated" media, but this is usually the result of it not being available for purchase or my already having purchased it.