Let’s say an app came out that allowed pirating without consequences; that it connected every user to a fast, anonymous network, and users could donate anonymously to content creators and/or uploaders.
Piracy were so normal that even your grandma could just search “ahoy movie name”, be directed to a third party store, download and install the “Ahoy App” and start watching movies and TV shows like on Popcorn Time or listen to music like on Napster and Spotify. It reached mainstream popularity and had download numbers like WhatsApp or TikTok.
Is this something we would want? Would the entertainment industry survive?
Forget your ideas of utopia for the time being. First let’s reduce the copyright term to something reasonable like 14 years or less, and abolish legal protections for DRM such as the DMCA. It’s a big enough change to start with, and might lead to more people respecting the law. The absurdity of works being locked up by the heirs and successors of authors who’ve been dead for three generations is unjustifiable.
Abolish all intellectual property as part of abolishing all private property and enshrine the four fundamental software freedoms as universal human rights.
Given that there’s no hope for my scenario happening, I suppose that one will do.
No more half measures, Walter