> I really like (2) myself, but it might not be everyone's cup of tea.
I think there's potential there, but there would need to be a dramatic cultural shift so it didn't just become a case of anything "good enough" was done, with no meaningful incentive to put the final polish to turn good works into great ones. Take a look at the Open Source software community today: it's full of "good enough" products, which do the basic jobs perfectly well for a lot of people, but which often lack the power, flexibility or usability of commercial software because no-one wanted to write the edge cases or spend the time doing tedious polishing-up work.
> But no matter what, copyright is harder and harder to enforce as copying of information becomes cheaper, and it has the potential to get really messy.
Unfortunately, that isn't really true. It would be relatively easy to enforce copyright on the Internet with modern technology. It's just that I (and, I suspect, most other people here) would prefer not to accept the unfortunate side-effects that come with compulsory mass surveillance and automated charges.
but which often lack the power, flexibility or usability of commercial software because no-one wanted to write the edge cases or spend the time doing tedious polishing-up work.
Yes, the edge cases, the personalization, the polishing. There will always be work in that. Adapting systems to their specific surroundings. Every place, every person is unique, and has specific demands. That's what I meant with the cookie-cutter stuff going away.
it would be relatively easy to enforce copyright on the Internet with modern technology
Sure, but is just as easy to avoid copyright enforcement with the current technology. And for those desperate there is always the analog hole. That kind of summarizes the DRM "war".
compulsory mass surveillance and automated charges
Because that'd effectively be an Orwellian world. So we'd need to go to a total surveillance state, centrally controlled world, just to make sure things keep working as they do now. Just to make some people happy at the expense of the rest. That's not only inhuman, but very unstable as well.
I think there's potential there, but there would need to be a dramatic cultural shift so it didn't just become a case of anything "good enough" was done, with no meaningful incentive to put the final polish to turn good works into great ones. Take a look at the Open Source software community today: it's full of "good enough" products, which do the basic jobs perfectly well for a lot of people, but which often lack the power, flexibility or usability of commercial software because no-one wanted to write the edge cases or spend the time doing tedious polishing-up work.
> But no matter what, copyright is harder and harder to enforce as copying of information becomes cheaper, and it has the potential to get really messy.
Unfortunately, that isn't really true. It would be relatively easy to enforce copyright on the Internet with modern technology. It's just that I (and, I suspect, most other people here) would prefer not to accept the unfortunate side-effects that come with compulsory mass surveillance and automated charges.