the legal system is presently committed to treating similar numbers radically differently. No one can tell, simply by looking at a number that is 100 million digits long, whether that number is subject to patent, copyright, or trade secret protection, or indeed whether it is “owned” by anyone at all

If you look at data in the way that best obscures what it actually means, of course it can't be told apart from other data. Binary is simply a way to encode information that most often has an analogue equivalent. You can of course question the copyright of all works, but looking at them in a hex editor is almost a distraction.

Certainly, all around the world, legal systems have assumed that bits are a medium. But perhaps bits have no color. Perhaps homomorphic encryption implies that color is unmeasurable.

This is getting pretty close to technolibertarianism. Corbin, I like your posts but i can't get behind this

TL; DR: please forgive my ignorance on this topic:

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a “good” leftist in the sense that I don’t do a ton of reading, and didn’t think too hard about copyright at this level. I did try do some reading because the anti-copyright takes as I encountered them in this context initially seemed iffy, but through research I found that my initial ideas weren’t well informed.

The most common form of anti-copyright sentiment I’ve encountered comes from mostly the piracy community. I don’t really participate in the community part of that, so I haven’t spent a lot of time reading any of their theory or philosophy, which has been to my detriment here. That being said, the stuff that I have seen has been mostly from a place of entitlement, so I felt safe in not exploring the literature.

Also, basically all of my recent reading of leftist material has had no focus on copyright. It’s all been economic, geopolitical stuff. That isn’t to say copyright issues aren’t important, it just hasn’t been in focus.

Anyway, this all started on my end because, in a discord server unrelated to this instance, I had expressed consternation over individual artists getting fucked over by AI companies, and celebrating whenever they clawed back whatever amount of justice they could. This was immediately in bad faith equated with full throated support for Disney’s ruthless copyright lawyer army. I didn’t really understand why that was happening, so I did some reading, and thought it was worth sharing about here.

So to specifically answer this:

Were we anti-copyright leftists really so invisible before, or have you been assuming that No True Leftist would be anti-copyright?

More the former than the latter, but only due to my blind ignorance. The latter was not my assumption. I had encountered someone claiming to be a leftist but was not, for reasons unrelated to being anti-copyright.

@corbin

"[Copyright i]s not for you who love to make art and prize it for its cultural impact and expressive power, but for folks who want to trade art for money."

Fatuous romantic bollocks.