• squaresinger@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    though usually stupid and fucky copyright laws have one advantage - if someone bigger than you steals your idea you can take them to court. without copyright laws we’d have giant corporations just taking shit and using their platform to sell stolen ideas without a single cent going to the original creator…

    It’s very difficult for some small independent creator to take a big corporation successfully to court. Imagine going up against The Mouse or someone similar with a lawyer paid for by your legal insurance. You might as well just not do it at all.

    The same thing is even worse with patents. I made a few things that I could patent. But for that I’d have to cough up a few thousands per year, roughly 100k over the life-time of the patent, and in turn I only get the right to sue someone violating my patent. I don’t even get the guarantee that my patent is valid.

    Patents are designed exactly so that big corporations can use them excessively to suppress smaller competitors while they are too expensive and too uncertain for small inventors to use them.

    • shneancy@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      yeah at first i wanted to say “corporation” and “individual” but that’s not an equal playing field at all. So i just switched my woring to “bigger” thinking of idk, a writer in the same field who has a bigger following than you

      i didn’t even get into the patents part because i’d be ranting about Adobe for hours again, and i already spend too much time thinking about them

      edit: but then i said corporation anyway lol, i blame the fact i just woke up when i was writing that comment