cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/21474519
Not sure if a local gov could get away with this. Is it sensible to ask the local gov take formal actions to declare copyright as unenforcable on things like service manuals and wiring diagrams, which product makers protect almost like trade secrets? It’s not likely enforced anyway, but a formal step would be needed before leaked service manuals could be distributed by public libraries.
In the EU, manufacturers must share repair docs with third-party /insured/ repair professionals (not consumers) for some specific products like washing machines.
Using a stick
Would it be sensible for a local law to require those professionals who have privileged access to repair docs to share whatever they obtain in the course of their work with a public library?
using a carrot
Would it be sensible for a policy to compensate professionals who have privileged access to repair docs for sharing whatever they obtain in the course of their work with a public library? It could be abused. E.g. an appliance repair shop could submit multiple wiring diagrams for the same product as separate submissions if they are (e.g.) paid $/€ 50 per submission.
If the carrot and stick are both used, repair pros could get 50 for the first submitted doc for each model, but then have a mandate to supply any additional docs they receive for that model without further compensation. Maybe that’s too detailed for a petition.
We need to completely do away with intellectual property laws.
If it’s not a physical object, it shouldn’t be protected by copyright.
That would basically require ending capitalism at this point. Maybe at the birth of the digital era we could have had a balance between them. But capitalist fought tooth and nail to ensure that existing systems based on scarcity and demand would be artificially enforced in digital form.
Instead of restructuring our economic systems by benefiting society as a whole we sadly forced the existing economic systems onto a digital world that it didn’t work on.
Those contradictions are still coming full circle though. I do not think these current systems can be maintained. It may take another generation or ten to see this digital oligarchy collapse.
Copyright is not there to protect the “mom and pop developer” like some might try to argue. It is there to ensure capitalist structures are enforced in the digital world. A world that is in complete contradiction to them. (Not unlike the material world but just more extreme)
Stop, my penis can only get so erect! 😂