Technology

You’re confusing recognizing the function of a system with prescribing how it should be. Pointing out that copyright law has historically served monopolists and gatekeepers is not smuggling in a policy position. It’s describing the power structure as it has played out, repeatedly, across centuries. That you interpret that as prescriptive says more about your own projection than anything I’ve said. I’m not judging you from an ivory tower. I’m just not playing along with the fantasy that this system was ever about authors.

Calling my stance cynical because I won’t pretend progress has been meaningful is lazy. Progress matters when it changes who holds power. Most copyright reforms haven't. If authors had actually gained leverage from the Statute of Anne or the US copy-paste version, we wouldn't live in a world where Disney locks up culture for a century while artists beg for rent.

Your FOSS example doesn’t contradict anything. It proves the point. The GPL uses copyright as a judo move. It flips a hostile system against itself to create openness where the default is enclosure. That’s not a sign that copyright is good. It’s a sign that people had to engineer an escape route inside a broken structure. Just because the court system enforces GPL violations doesn’t make copyright noble. It means there’s no better legal tool right now. The GPL is a hack, not a justification.

And still, despite all of that, FOSS works. Not because of copyright, but because people deliberately built something that rejects the logic of scarcity and control. Linux, the Fediverse, Creative Commons, public domain archives, these thrive because people choose collaboration, transparency, and shared ownership. They build and share because they can, not because a license tells them to. These systems are functional, open, and resilient, and they exist in spite of the legal framework, not because of it.

Copyright needs to die and its apologists have stockholm syndrome.