from Hacker News

Copyright reform is necessary for national security

by artninja1988 on 2/1/25, 9:11 PM with 109 comments

• by Kim_Bruning on 2/2/25, 12:32 AM

  This wouldn't be the first time IP laws hurt Western innovation and security. When WW1 started - despite the airplane being invented in Dayton, Ohio - the US had fallen so far behind they had to use French aircraft. Why? The Wright brothers' patent wars had effectively frozen US aviation development.

  Today it's not just one industry - Western IP laws are slowing progress across multiple tech frontiers. While companies navigate complex IP restrictions (In EU and US), China's development is following a sharp exponential curve. You can already see it clearly in robotics, electric vehicles, and now these last weeks with AI.

  While in the west you deal with predatory licensing (try talking with Siemens, Oracle, or Autodesk), and everyone keeps working on barriers and moats; other nations that allow a more collaborative approach (voluntary or not) are on an accelerating trajectory.

  IP law is clearly no longer suitable for purpose - we need a system that encourages collaboration more directly. A complete free for all isn't ideal either - and I certainly don't advocate that- but even that appears to be better than what we have now.

• by TheAceOfHearts on 2/1/25, 11:40 PM

  I hope to see copyright duration go down to a reasonable length within my lifetime. There's tons of creative derivative work which builds upon existing content which cannot be sold due to copyright.

  The way I think about IP is that if you grew up with something, by the time you're an adult it should be possible to remix it in any way you like, because it's part of your culture. Nobody should get to lock down an idea for their lifetime.

• by abetusk on 2/2/25, 1:43 AM

  An exceptional post from people who have an ideological stake in knowledge preservation/dissemination and are at the center of it.

  From the post:

  """

  Our first recommendation is straightforward: shorten the copyright term. In the US, copyright is granted for 70 years after the author’s death. This is absurd. We can bring this in line with patents, which are granted for 20 years after filing. This should be more than enough time for authors of books, papers, music, art, and other creative works, to get fully compensated for their efforts (including longer-term projects such as movie adaptations).

  """

• by wayathr0w on 2/2/25, 1:50 PM

  Fuck national security & fuck "the west". These are not things we should seek to protect or defend. (And yes, fuck copyright too.)

• by RyanShook on 2/2/25, 12:37 AM

  I’m afraid LLMs are making copyrights obsolete and unenforceable. If an author uses DeepSeek to write a book, piece of music, application, or patent did they break copyright? Is the new work protected if this is disclosed?

• by jimmydoe on 2/2/25, 4:05 AM

  > This should be more than enough time for authors of books, papers, music, art, and other creative works, to get fully compensated for their efforts (including longer-term projects such as movie adaptations).

  not sure I agree. a lot of work only get recognized broadly long after published.

• by can16358p on 2/2/25, 12:35 AM

  I honestly don't understand why this is not the case already. Actually copyright should be even less-enforceable.

  Information/access to data/works should be totally free and there should be other ways to support the creators.

  For example I could easily download MP3s of music and MP4s of series/movies but I don't: simply because of two reasons:

  - I want to support the artist (to an extent as possible) - Using Spotify/Apple Music/Netflix is much more convenient with a totally acceptable monthly fee.

  I know the article is not about entertainment but a library, same rules should apply.

  And if one wants to train an LLM, let them: at its essence it's just a person who has read all the books (and access to information should be free), just the person is a machine instead of a biological human being.

• by mettamage on 2/2/25, 12:43 AM

  This site is blocked in the Netherlands. Does anyone have an archive.is or archive.ph of it?

• by foobarbecue on 2/2/25, 1:09 AM

  I tried to repost this on Facebook. It was very upset

• by agnishom on 2/2/25, 4:45 AM

  Cory Doctorow's books "Chokepoint Capitalism" and "The Internet Con" discuss a good number of possible reforms, if anyone is interested

• by qrwafn on 2/2/25, 1:18 AM

  It is interesting that since January 20th all pro-copyright posts are downvoted. Is this the user alignment that the AI broligarchs speak of?

• by farts_mckensy on 2/2/25, 1:01 AM

  This has no chance of passing. Reform is out of the question. This is just navel gazing. Get it through your skulls that reform is impossible at this point, and accept the implications of that.

• by martin-t on 2/1/25, 11:49 PM

  I was hoping the article would propose the opposite: if you train LLMs on copyrighted data, you owe the author a part of your income from it. How big should be determined by courts but probably proportional to the amount of data.

  There's absolutely no reason rich people owning ML companies should be getting richer by stealing ordinary people's work.

  But practicality trumps morality. The west needs to beat China and China doesn't give a fuck about copyright or individual people's (intellectual) property.

  The ML algos demand to be fed so we gotta sink to their level.