They are also absolutely addictive as fuck, BUT I will say because they come in different strengths I found it relatively straight forward to quit them via tapering.
I was using 20 x 10mg per day and then bought strength 9mg, 6mg, 3mg, 1mg quit.
It was much much easier than trying to cold turkey which I also tried.
Which people actively refuse to use because of the association with AI work.
Which is more likely, let's Occam's Razor this. That the AI agents are teaching every individual to "write better" or that the AI agents are crapping out the articles with the emdashes.
I think it's because the people who want the smaller phone don't just want the smaller phone to the exclusion of everything else.
Some want a flagship model, some want a mid range, some entry level... all in small form factors and they won't compromise in order to settle for the one small model that's available.
We live in a world where there is an absolute abundance of art, music, novels. You can find it everywhere, huge amounts of it either free or very cheaply.
In what way is the system as it exists currently failing to encourage the creation of new works?
It encourages creation of new works just fine, but at the expense of creating billions of tiny monopolies that last for generations, which get aggregated into huge monopolies, ultimately making ordinary people into criminals for wanting to preserve or modify the works that make up their culture.
My point is that it doesn't need to do that. Copyright could still encourage creation of new works with a much shorter duration, without the downside of locking our culture up in monopolies for life + 70.
Most of that art is being created irrespective of copyright, though. Much of it uses exceptions to copyright and some is straight up in violation (most "fan art"/fanfiction). It's either not monetised or monetised through things like Patreon.
I wouldn't say we have more "traditional" art that an author spends time creating with the vision of selling copies for years to come, than we did when copyright terms were shorter.
I don't have any numbers on fan art vs original works floating around the web, but even those original works aren't being monetised via copyright. They would be created even if copyright was abolished or significantly weakened.
Copyright is described by its proponents as a "Monopoly held by the creator". Considering how much we take from the Public Domain, I'd argue that Copyright should only last as long as Patents do, up to a maximum of 20 years.
Anything beyond that is not personal property, but a literal monopoly which impedes creativity, seeing the many, many, many sequels which are terrible often made to keep a studio's grasp on an IP. It happens so often those are often called "ashcan copy" or "rights-retention" films, which wouldn't happen if Copyright law expired as naturally as Patents do.
As an example, the entirety of the Disney Catalogue makes multiple references, or retellings of old Folk Tales from Europe, while also defending their "Intellectual Property" so fiercely, that they artificially extended copyright from 56 years to 96 years for corporately owned products, or the author's life and 70 years for a single author.
It used to be roughly on par with Patent expiration, but it's now almost either 100 years to almost 200.
A variant where the copyright would be automatic but very limited (say, 10 years), with a necessity to pay some growing fee for extended protection, would solve most situations.
The vast majority of stories do not make any money ever. Some do, but only briefly so. The true money makers should have no problem paying the fees.
Only very rare cases of authors who get discovered decades later would not be covered by this, and this is less likely to happen with the Internet. There are no publishing gatekeepers anymore.
Authors and artists are not (and souldn't be) making Art for money. It is not a 'job' where effort goes in and product comes out. It's more like a religious calling, they often have no other option. That's true, but it's also the reason people are paid less than their technical peers.
It is difficult in the current climate to prevent industrial actors from cultivating genetic lines instantiated by Artists in Art. In a different future, the seperation between small and large-scale genetic agriculture would be recognised, and the abolition of copyright may proceed.
In a world where money is devalued, genetic lines and mental constituency will become even more powerful.
See: the mental constituency of sci-fi books in E. Musk's brain
Not sure if you really mean it, but you're kind of making the argument that a person that mindlessly shovels dirt from one hole to another in a circle should be paid. People are paid for the result, not for their labor.
Not at all. You're presuming that nobody can be taken off this hypothetical salary once they're on it, and that they would be placed on it indiscriminately.
Simple safeguards are already in practice in today's economy to prevent such circumstances.
I'm using "research" broadly. People can privately research and publish under whatever arrangement they wish. Academics too. For those that sell their copyright, that would be valued based on projections of what the copyright buyer expects to sell. For those whose research was funded by the copyright buyer prior to writing because they didn't want to bear the risk or lacked the funds, that's going to be less, but everything stems from how the books are expected to sell.
Yes they do. As a kid our (admittedly not particularly lavish) family summer holiday was paid for each year by the modest royalties my father, an academic, received from a couple of academic textbooks he had authored.
Right, that was worded too universally, but this is what I mean: royalties here are supplementary to a salary, not a wage in themselves. The research was funded before publication.
The part this analysis misses is that the author's "dream" of doing that full time is almost never realized -- 25% percent of authors identify as "full-time", but only 10% of those authors can actually make ends meet. Only 30% of books ever pay back the advance. The best shot is to be a "romance" author, which earns more than other genres, pretty much because sex sells. Copyright isn't doing a great job at its stated purpose, and yet we endure endless fights over it. The juice isn't worth the squeeze, and writers are mostly supporting themselves with other jobs anyway.
Copyright does not guarantee you an audience. Nothing guarantees you an audience, authors know this, everyone who creates anything ought to know this?
Copyright just says that if you DO manage to create a work that truly connects with an audience, you're in a position to make money off it because it cannot be stolen from you.
Novels aren't the only thing with copyright, and aren't really even the main thing that copyright protects. It also covers engineering reports, technical specs, journalism, blog posts, emails, internal memos, marketing copy, academic papers, user manuals, legal briefs, and a lot more.
Even in the particular case of novels, I would prefer to live in a world where some authors are making money than live in one with no novels at all.
I understand copyright covers lots of things. It doesn't do a good job with any of them, sadly.
> Even in the particular case of novels, I would prefer to live in a world where some authors are making money than live in one with no novels at all.
That's not the choice. Novels will be written regardless, and there are ways to make money that are not copyright-related: Substack and Patreon are doing more to fund small authors than the publishing industry as a whole, and people pay because they want to support the author, and to get early, exclusive access to the author's work. None of those authors are surviving and making money because someone can't copy their work and distribute it. Piracy is a fact, and that people give money to these authors in the presence of piracy shows that copyright is not necessary to support these artists.
> None of those authors are surviving and making money because someone can't copy their work and distribute it.
I tend to agree with your sentiment but this line made me think you’re underestimating the degree to which the law stops the powerful from doing evil. They see the law as a hassle to be calculated against and if there is no legal friction to stealing and using others’ creations they just will.
So it’s not that Amazon would take your novel, short story, etc and redistribute it. It’s that they’d make a whole series of movies or TV series using your creations and give you nothing and have to give you nothing.
Copyright being eliminated is among my more “idealistically anarchistic” wishes I think but so long as we’re in a society as legalistic and with such an imbalance of power generally, copyright protects more than it hurts I think.
Yes, I agree with this. I think your correct to point out that the leverage a legitimate corporation has to push ripped-off works far exceeds what the piracy community's ability to do so when it is infringement.
That said, I increasingly see writers making money directly from their audience not because the audience is not allowed to make a copy of their work, but because they treat the writers writing as a service and they want to get updates every week and so they subscribe. I think copyright was created for a less connected world where it was much more natural to print them in bulk and then sell copies.
> writers are mostly supporting themselves with other jobs anyway.
Skill issue. This is common for low-barrier careers that look like anyone can do them, but only a minority break-even. Others include porn/Onlyfans, social media "influencers",and hordes of aspiring actors who flock to Los Angeles.
What % of new authors today make full-time salary on writing?
And what % of those do by selling, vs giving away their work for free (to get non-negligible attention) then getting their real money through donations, merch, etc.?
The more successful "self published" authors writing web novels make significant money from patreon (>$20k/month); this relies on copyright protection (but interestingly, just a few months would be sufficient for that business model).
My understanding is that most of these web novels are free, and patreon grants early access at best, which is enforced by trust anyways (the creator doesn’t have the time or resources to track and sue someone posting the early access on a pirate site, when it will be public a week or month later, but the people who pay to get something a week or month early mostly aren’t the type who would pirate even if it was easy).
In what way does that business model rely on copyright protection? "Get the next chapter early" requires a source of chapters, so all you need is for paying clients to not be motivated to redistribute the chapters in an organised way, or would-be paying clients to not be motivated to use such organised "slightly more chapters of that webnovel you follow" services instead. Humans aren't amoral ideal rational economic actors.
The authors I'm aware of making >$20k don't do any significant gating. That practice is only really common with people republishing through Amazon (which probably demands it).
> so all you need is for paying clients to not be motivated to redistribute the chapters in an organised way
This is exactly what copyright is.
I agree that you could work around this in a world without copyright (e.g. by watermarking content and blacklisting), but it would be difficult and make the whole profession less viable.
Mass distribution and payment becoming accessible/low overhead was an extremely helpful development for authors in my view, and removing copyright would have the opposite effect (but cutting it down even to several years would change surprisingly little).
Not all motivation is externally compelled: there is such a thing as intrinsic motivation. Humans aren't amoral ideal rational economic actors. I do agree, though, that a few years' copyright provides most of the benefits of copyright, while removing most of the downsides (except stuff like clear abuses of anti-circumvention laws, which will happen for as long as there is a system that enables it).
I don't think anyone has the right to take work I create, for free.
In the same way I have no right to walk into your house and use it for free.
In the same way you cannot expect me to turn up and work at your business for free.
I don't care what half delusional rubbish you come up with to justify your theft.
It's theft, you want to steal something you put zero effort into creating and use it as you see fit. No fuck you. If I want to give it away for free, that's my prerogative not your expectation, if I can monetise via merch or other means, that's my prerogative not your right.
I am not a fan of complete removal of copyright, but I also consider its current duration absurd and extreme - saying this as someone who wrote 10 books so far, so I have actual skin in the game. Some person in 2130 should not be able to profit from something I am writing now, that is just feudalism in a new cloak.
Any creative person whose ego is not overinflated accepts the fact that no art emerges from a vacuum, that they themselves were inspired by others and their work, and that they should pay this forward to the coming generations.
For me, the worst aspect of long copyright is the de-facto ban on derived works. Work derivation is how civilization and culture came to be.
It matters because copyright is widely abused and hurts neutral sites which must constantly check for copyrighted content, and it would’ve hampered AI if it was enforced.
Your analogy doesn’t fit because a house is physical, but “intellectual property” is digital. If we lived in the metaverse and I could just copy your house and live in it without affecting you, why should you care? Theft is bad because the victim no longer has the original.
Today, practically zero new indies make a living from selling digital copies of a thing they created. That income is eclipsed by giving away their main work, then asking for donations, maybe selling merchandise, early access, tailored commissions, or some other token (and sponsorships but those unfortunately hurt quality).
So abolish copyright, and indies still make money from creating digital works - at least almost as much as they do now, but probably more, because it will further normalize the alternate incomes.
Copyright maybe used to help indies, but every copyright case I’ve heard anywhere in the last decade, the plaintiff is a publisher with more than enough revenue. Meanwhile, in many cases the defendant hasn’t actually infringed, but regardless suffers from the DMCA, C&D, or lawsuit. Copyright relies on wishful thinking to provide an illusion of helping small-time creators, in reality far more often it hurts them.
Please go tell those people they should be happy for someone else to steal their work and charge for it even after they've given it away for free.
It doesn't matter whether "few" people make a living from it. Copyright does not guarantee you an audience. Copyright going away would not guarantee you more of an audience.
The only thing it guarantees is that if you manage to write something that resonates with an audience you have the potential to earn a living from it. That is what you want to take away.
These only further my point. Everything published on RoyalRoad is already free; the issue the authors face is trademark, not copyright, violation, because their works are republished under a different name. Also, while OP found resolution, most of the other commenters did not, demonstrating that IP laws don’t reliably protect indies anyways.
IMO the solution to protecting trademark is to ensure anyone who discovers a repackaged work (like those examples) also discovers the original author and their free version, so they know it’s a ripoff. It doesn’t require the finicky legal system.
People arguing against parent are Property Thieves.
see 5th amendment which requires "private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation".
It's your property. Do what you want with it. In a free society, the public isn't compelled to buy your books.
many people commenting have never tried to earn a living from independently created works of authorship. The NAPSTER-fans say "more for me, what is your problem". Other economies (China) do not have commerce law that protects original works of authorship, but the Western tradition has enabled this.
Blinded by corporate abuse, calls for removal of copyright law are often naive or ill-willed IMHO
That is not a given. I have earned a living from created works of authorship.
I think copyright suppresses creation and does very little to support creators in general. It has enabled businesses to choose a few winning creators that reap the benefits of copyright. That kingmaker position allows them to dictate what is created.
For the last few decades the median income from a creative work has been nil.
I would much rather have universal basic income and no copyright.
Just treat copyright as an engineering issue, rather than a religion. Is copyright doing more good than harm when it comes to encouraging creativity? I think everything tilted in favor of abolishing copyright around the turn of the century, and AI isn't improving things.
Your point about making a living off of creative endeavors underscores this point: if copyright were doing its job the way it's supposed to, your first sentence wouldn't be a note alluding to how damn hard it is to make a living on writing. Somehow you're twisting that to be a feature, which I get, because there's no alternative story, but at the same time, let's be honest: copyright doesn't work well, and incurs huge costs for society.
> Does the free ad model just not pay anymore, or is the selling user data model just that much more lucrative that they would rather no user at all if they aren't logged in?
Traffic from google is probably in the process of collapsing, so these sites are trying to capture all the users they can as registered users before it's gone completely.
And yes, the free ad model is probably in the process of dying, the information that was once given away for free in return for looking at ads is now more valuable sold to llm's who will have the eyeballs going forward.
This will presumably make many on this site happy, since for many years an ad supported open web was consistently railed against.
> these sites are trying to capture all the users they can as registered users before it's gone completely
With the shuttering of nitter if this is what twitter wants then the least they could do is let you create an account. You need apple or google for that. It seems like they shut the front door some time ago and now drew the curtains so people couldn't peer in.
They managed to make it enticing enough for me just to see one person's posts to enter my email but said "fuck off and get the app". I'll have to make do with the 5 posts they show without login
> the information that was once given away for free in return for looking at ads is now more valuable sold to llm's who will have the eyeballs going forward.
They want it to go back to how it was circa the late 90's.
In a lot of ways they're going to get their wish. LLM's via endless spam and replacing google search have basically made monetizing legit and useful content impossible, so I imagine nobody will upload it anymore (except for on youtube which is still monetizable in a meaningful way)
Compared to the past there's basically no incentive to put useful info on the web any more, so it's just not going to happen.
I read a lot of amateur litrpg, prog fantasy and cultivation stories on royalroad.com
I would guess I've actually tried to read more AI written stuff while checking out new stories than a lot of people in this thread.
In practice what I discovered is, AI spends a lot of words to say very little, its prose is quite annoying most of the time. It often makes mistakes in terms of continuity as the story continues.
Now both of those might be corrected with skilled enough use, but the real problem is it doesn't actually understand what makes a story (within a particular genre) "good" and I suspect to actually do that you need to seriously think about and practice writing itself. The process of doing it, is what makes you understand what it is you enjoyed about a genre in the first place and how to write your own.
Genres aren't static, often what readers want is an evolved version of what they've loved reading before, to repeat a piece of Thai wisdom, they want "same same but different" where LLM's will basically give you "same same".
This is a great point, one that I think is reinforced by the fact that these models (at least so far) arn't being trained and benchmarked on "good writing". Which in and of itself is going to be, to your point, a moving target.
And to be clear I don't doubt Fable couldn't pump out 13 thousand alternative fan fictions to Game of Thrones and they would follow some distribution curve that you'd see in meat-space, some garbage, some good, and a lot in the middle.
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