Time to join a book club or something maybe?

If you're gen x or millennial, odds are you have known some people online for *decades*. Across multiple now-dead forums, across vast gulfs of time in internet years. You've probably got a friend group that outlived multiple sites.

Some folks just wanna chat to friends, clout chasers wouldn't understand. 😎

nyaa.si

Artists who argue that corporations should have the blanket ability to censor the internet have no idea what they'd be giving up just to be even further under the thumb of said corporations and no better off at all. 🙃

I don't know what the solution is, but I feel sure there is one, and I feel equally sure part of the solution is disallowing people getting filthy rich off running mediums of digital exchange.

But the problems with the corporate services are many. Most of them, I don't own what I buy. I buy a book on Amazon, they can take it off my kindle anytime. More and more for video games, I can't buy disks that ensure that I can keep playing the game even if the parent company doesn't want me to.

Copyright term reforms would be a good start. That way stuff can be archived and disseminated once creators have had a fair chance to make money off it.

But how do we pay people? Can we, to use blunt shitty words "monetize piracy"

To some extent that has been done. Napster beget iTunes...

Conversations I've had with artists lately make it clear to me - we're set against each other by the market. How do we make large scale free dissemination of creative work a GOOD THING for artists without spying on people?

Global automated copyright enforcement means losing all of that. Raw deal, if you ask me.

I just don't want it to cost us the internet - which lets anyone buy a cheap PC and set up a web server on their home internet connection and start publishing books, art, zines, videos, opinions, news - to everyone, for almost no money. It lets women plan abortions their home states made illegal.

Anyway, no more threads from me! For real this time. You've heard the perspective - if you disagree, that's fine, I'll keep your perspective in mind and maybe someday someone will think of a way we can both get what we want. To be clear, I want very much for you to get paid, and well.

So what's the solution? I don't know. I don't have one. But I know getting the cops involved or legally mandating technological solutions that don't work ain't it. At least, not from my perspective, which, I appreciate is a lot different from yours. I don't sell books, I keep networks running.

Anyway, point being, unless you want to hand over the thing that makes all kinds of activism, speaking truth to power, and getting art to a worldwide audience for essentially no money over to the corporate overlords, a world where your books can't be traded online cannot exist.

Basically it's impossible for huge platforms to enforce copyright without harming folks who are engaging in fair use or folks who are posting original stuff that get unfairly flagged. This might be an argument that big platforms are a bad idea! I'm willing to argue against FB or YT existing at all.

A world where Google and Facebook are the ultimate and final arbiters of what is allowed to be posted online is not one that favours artists getting paid. Not unless you're in good with the bigwigs already.