>> Gosh, I'm pretty much as anti-copyright/pro-freedom of information as anyone you would ever meet.
You aren't even close. Stopping just short of copyright maximalism doesn't make you anti-copyright. It makes you slightly more reasonable, but you're still on the opposite side of this particular debate.
> But like, megaupload? Why should such a business model be allowed to exist? 100% parasitic.
What's so parasitic about a file hosting service? They get paid a premium right now because they're taking on a bunch of legal risk on behalf of their users. You can blame any surplus profits squarely on copyright law itself.
> Patronage? Who if not the people acquiring the material?
The patrons normally would be the ones acquiring the original copies, yes. At that point it would be up to them to decide what to do with those copies. Patrons would normally also receive credit for funding the production of the work. This model works well in situations where there is social capital (or simply a sense of self-worth) linked to being known as a "patron of the arts".
> Crowd funding? Won’t that be in competition with the pirated commodity?
You're thinking of pre-sales. Crowdfunding is more akin to patronage, just with a broader audience. Backers might get some perks, such as public credit or merchandise, but there is no guarantee of exclusivity. The resulting work may or may not be made available directly to the public, though the distributed nature of crowdfunding pretty much guarantees that at least one backer would "defect" and make their copy available shortly after the initial release.
> Sponsorship, like ads in the content?
Product placement is one form of sponsorship. It can be done well, or poorly. Quite a bit of quality content has been produced for free distribution through unobtrusive sponsorship arrangements. Sometimes content that people are interested in for its own sake also incidentally happens to benefit someone, so they're willing to pay for its production even without any direct promotion.
Information should be free to share and copy, but not at a profit if it infringes on the owner of the IP. That’s VERY short of maximalism. That is a radical reform.
Megaupload employees and owners uploaded pirated content, and profited hugely. Not small margins—they made millions.
I’m against YouTubes, Spotifys, and even megauploads screwing content creators. Tech doesn’t have the right to assume ownership of the world via content platforms.
All content production is struggling under the glut of technological wealth extraction via platforms. A good copyright implementation would help avoid this. It’s nothing like what we have, but the concept of copyright is not the same as the abusive system we know.
I feel like you are railing against copyright the way conservatives rail against socialism. Doing so mischaracterizes the sensible arguments that are classified as such.
The goal should be to promote diverse content creation by allowing creators (Not their platforms or corporate ownership) to be compensated, and to simultaneously allow for cultural exchange with concepts like free use and limited copyright durations, and by protecting/promoting library lending. Such things are possible, and I think optimal.
Every single sentence in your post is pro-copyright. I get it, you support a more limited form of copyright than we have right now. Just don't go around calling yourself "as anti-copyright … as anyone you would ever meet". Especially not to someone who is actually anti-copyright. I don't have to look around to find an obvious counter-example. It's me.
> Information should be free to share and copy, but not at a profit if it infringes on the owner of the IP.
That sounds like what the Open Source Definition would classify as discrimination based on field of endeavour. Terms like that are way more trouble than they're worth. If anyone can share and copy the content at cost, the only way to earn a profit is to provide some value-added service. Which means you're not profiting from the content, but rather from the service you've added on top. I'm not sure why you would have an issue with that.
> Megaupload employees and owners uploaded pirated content, and profited hugely. Not small margins—they made millions.
That's only because competition for hosting and indexing services was severely limited by copyright. I don't see the relevance to the scenario you're describing where there are no restrictions on (non-profit) sharing or copying. Their margins would be basically zero under those circumstances, or at least no more than any other hosting service. Any profit they did make would be due entirely to their own efforts.
>> Gosh, I'm pretty much as anti-copyright/pro-freedom of information as anyone you would ever meet.
You aren't even close. Stopping just short of copyright maximalism doesn't make you anti-copyright. It makes you slightly more reasonable, but you're still on the opposite side of this particular debate.
> But like, megaupload? Why should such a business model be allowed to exist? 100% parasitic.
What's so parasitic about a file hosting service? They get paid a premium right now because they're taking on a bunch of legal risk on behalf of their users. You can blame any surplus profits squarely on copyright law itself.
> Patronage? Who if not the people acquiring the material?
The patrons normally would be the ones acquiring the original copies, yes. At that point it would be up to them to decide what to do with those copies. Patrons would normally also receive credit for funding the production of the work. This model works well in situations where there is social capital (or simply a sense of self-worth) linked to being known as a "patron of the arts".
> Crowd funding? Won’t that be in competition with the pirated commodity?
You're thinking of pre-sales. Crowdfunding is more akin to patronage, just with a broader audience. Backers might get some perks, such as public credit or merchandise, but there is no guarantee of exclusivity. The resulting work may or may not be made available directly to the public, though the distributed nature of crowdfunding pretty much guarantees that at least one backer would "defect" and make their copy available shortly after the initial release.
> Sponsorship, like ads in the content?
Product placement is one form of sponsorship. It can be done well, or poorly. Quite a bit of quality content has been produced for free distribution through unobtrusive sponsorship arrangements. Sometimes content that people are interested in for its own sake also incidentally happens to benefit someone, so they're willing to pay for its production even without any direct promotion.