Everything is a Remix Part 3 (Original Series, 2011)

You're right. You do sound like a copyright hawk. Now. Why is the first point about the size of the industry relevant? Unless you're talking about their ability to bribe...I'm sorry..."lobby" Congress to pass the laws they like? That shouldn't happen anyway, regardless of their size. Laws should be passed on common sense and what's good for the people at large, not based on how big is your bank account. What is dubious about his argument about copyright? First off, copyright is not "property", and shouldn't be treated as property. It's more like a permit. The government allows you to use a certain idea for a "limited time period" as it says in the Constitution. Unfortunately, because of the bribing..sorry, again, I meant lobbying...the "limited time period" turned from 14 years to almost 10x more. That doesn't sound limited at all to me. Copyright was meant as an "incentive" system - not as a welfare system. Ideas can and should be reused. Whoever gets something copyright, most definitely got "inspired" or copied parts of someone else' ideas. That's why there isn't really something like "intellectual property", because nobody owns an idea 100%. And since you used someone else' ideas, you have to get paid for whatever you added only for a limited period of time, and then allow others to benefit from it, too, and expand the public knowledge. The whole point of the copyright system was to benefit the "public". It doesn't say "the creators" in the Constitution. The fact that you dismiss DJing and remixing so easily shows that you have zero understanding about why fair use even exists in the first place. I suggest going through these, and hopefully it will change your mind: link link link link link ▶ this video And here's a law professor discussing some of my points above such as why copyright is not real property: link

No, everyone is accused of copying Apple, and Apple gets a pass when they come out with something that other companies already did. But the least similarity to anything Apple does is often labeled a copy, sometimes even requiring time-travel as the supposed copy was released first. Take for example the idea that other companies copied Apple's thin bezels. The predecessors for that were the Sharp Aquous, Xiaomi Mix, Samsung Galaxy S8, and Essential Phone. Samsung even had "True Tone" long before Apple started marketing it, but were accused of copying it. I favor Kirby Ferguson's take on this (▶ this video), and we are better served by companies taking designs from others and improving on them, and open publishing and sharing, and the incessant cry of "Redmond Start Your Copiers" is really wearing thin.

People live in a fantasy world if they think you can build something and you won't be copied - regardless if laws exist against it or not. It's just the nature of the business, and it has always been like that. The only solution is to be the one that truly understands his customers, leads the market, and is always one step ahead of his competition, and you will be rewarded for it. Every single competitor in every single industry is more or less a clone of the "originator" (which probably based his product on something else, too) and then they "copy" each other's features. ▶ this video

I think the current copyright laws are already too overreaching and need to be overhauled. They are basically owning a work forever now, and that's not how copyright was supposed to work. Copyright was supposed to protect the creator for a while, and then release it in the public domain, so other creators can make variations of it, and further enrich the culture, which was actually the ultimate goal of copyright. Protecting the creator was just a means to an end, not the very end itself, which is how MPAA and RIAA are acting right now - like they own everything and forever (with the perpetual 20 year extensions), and are entitled to laws that further protect it, no matter what other rights they abuse to do that (case in point: SOPA, Internet disconnections, ISP monitoring for piracy, etc). And no, "intellectual property" is not just like real property. Why? Because you can't just take someone's property and make variations of it, but you can do it with creative works, and it has been done since the beginning of time. And again, this was the ultimate goal of copyright, to allow other people later on to use those works, for the betterment of the whole society: link ▶ this video So don't assume that just because they named it Intellectual Property now, it's exactly the same as real property. It's actually more unlike real property than it is like it. IP is more of a misnomer in this case. It's the same thing with patents. It's probably safe to assume that they changed it to that name exactly because people would think of it as real property, and give them more control over it than they ever should've had.