How would you otherwise protect the people who invest their time and resources into building digital tools and products? Without digital copyright isn't it open season on any digital idea since it can just be stolen?
Are you actually talking about software patents, not digital copyright? Software patents protect ideas (i.e. algorithms), software copyright protects implementations (i.e. source code and binaries).
My primary argument is that however bad it would be if content creators were left unprotected, the sort of platform abuse that we're seeing today is even worse. Happy artists are important, information symmetry (re: markets and re: democracy) is more important.
But yeah, suppose we've made that switch, and now we want a new way to encourage content. I'd propose that we build attribution into our protocols. Many years ago there was controversy over "reaction" videos on youtube. They were being taken down because half of the screen was copyrighted (while the other half included somebody seeing it for the first time).
Rather than having the content exist as a single thing that either is allowed to be public or is not, I'd say that the fight should converge on how much credit was given to the person who put together the reaction video (some), and how much credit goes to the creator of the reacted-to content (more).
When I say "credit" I mean that as you browse your browser would keep track of which content you consume, and which parts of it are attributed to which people (or maybe these are bank accounts or crypto addresses or whatever). Part of paying for internet access would be allocating some fixed amount, $15/mo say... for content. At the end of the month, you'd send the $15 to the creators of your content (split up based on your consumption) and send the ISP proof that you've done so. Otherwise, your ISP collects the $15 and it goes to some nonprofit dedicated to mediating credit disputes and to educating creators on how to ensure that they do in fact get credit for their work.
This way there's no incentive to not pay for the content you're consuming: you the consumer are out the money either way. Also, the browser doesn't have to share the consumption history with the ISP... in order to meet their regulatory burden, the ISP need only see proof that you have done so. Lastly, unallocated money goes towards ensuring that future money is indeed allocated to a content creator, so it's a negative feedback loop which would hopefully converge on a state where most people participate in funding their creators.
If ISP's don't cooperate, we tax the bejeezus out of them and remove their protections re: who gets to use which buried cables such that new ISP's emerge that will cooperate.
I like that you proposed a technical solution like that. The BAT (Basic Attention Token) integration with Brave sort of works that way. I will spend some more time ruminating on it and trying it out as a daily driver approach to see if it is viable anytime soon.
This would work for content, but so far I don't think it would protect developers of digital tools or other works that are more than just content. Like artwork or anything else that can be easily copy-pasted. But I think that you have raised interesting points and I am open-minded about it all and consider this to be an interesting and complex subject without an easy answer. Thanks for your comment!
