Sorry, they wouldn't physically steal the art off the creators harddrive. They would just post the art and sell it for money despite having no involvement in the creation of said art. This was a very important distinction to make
Not op, but I feel like this comment is somewhat disingenuous.
1.You argue against points op is not explictely making. For example, op never actually says they like copyright law or that it is effective in this scenario. However you argue like op explicitly did. All op said is that they "take issue with it," which is actually objectively in line with what you say in the last paragraph of your comment
2.You very much can take something given for free and sell it based on the ignorance of the consumer base, especially if the consumer bases don't interact. If i write a video about the French revolution or something, a company can then just transcribe the video and put it on their website, claim it's there's, and make money off of it. This happens plenty already. Additionally, back when NFTs were a big thing, people would steal art and make them NFTs to sell, and basically tell artists "tough" when they were criticized for the practice.
3.I do want to point out we still have a lot of years of "to each according to their work" to get through once a socialist transformation occurs. How does one get compensation for their work if society has no ability to dictate credit? I'm obviously not saying the creator should be able to prevent ideas from being used in one way or another, but they should still be compensated for the work they do to actually make said concept.
Well I mean, plagiarism is a thing and thats almost quite literally the theft of ideas. So I think we should at least start by pointing out that the concept is an actual thing that I think most people (including us) Accept.
I think there's a mixup being made here in equating Chinese practice to the practice of companies..."aquiring" ideas from people giving it for free.
China is, for lack of a better term, "liberating" the idea, design, etc. If a company has the design for a process of some sort that creates or modifies something, and prevents others from having it, a copying of that design to then be produced is liberating the idea.
If someone produces something for free, which someone then "aquires" and sells, they're restricting the idea. They are taking something previously free and restricting it with those who own currency.
Part of this we should interrogate is what behavior this encourages. Something free then being taken and sold encourages people with ideas to hoard them. Instead of giving away designs for free, people will patent or copyright designs and try to manufacture them themselves, which is less efficient and further restricts the utility.
If something being sold is taken for free then it decreases the value of hoarding and encourages the free sharing of ideas anyway given the lack of value of copyright and such.
Edit: Also, look at a lot of western science and such. Many things supposedly invented by the greeks or by Renaissance mathematicians were actually first invented elsewhere, but the westerners get credit for obvious reasons. The Pythagoras theorem, pascals triangle, etc. There's also a lot of inventions stolen from native/indigenous societies and passed off as western inventions. So i feel any discussion of idea theft not being a thing needs to acknowledge these occurrences.
(Note: Im personally partial to the idea of doing Maoist naming conventions for theorems and theories and such. I.e, calling the pythagorean theorem the squared sides theorem [or something to that effect], or calling Newton's laws the principle laws of force [although to my knowledge Newton did unequivocally formulate those first])
Was sick this week, but helped prepare food [Tamales] for Christmas dinner tomorrow. Also watched Home Alone finally. It was good. In total I'm preparing to try to be productive again after tomorrow, working on that trial report, organizing notes and files and such, and reading more.
Cheng Enfu is a CPC economist and director of the Chinese academy of marxism who translates a lot of his stuff into English [in fact i think he does so himself if i remember right]. I've only read "China's Economic Dialectic: The original aspirations of reform" so far, but he also has a couple textbooks titled "Modern Political Economy; a new coursebook" and "the creation of value by living labor." China's Economic Dialectic is available from international publishers while the course books are available from Canut Press, so luckily you don't have to use Amazon for him.
Edit: Springer also publishes a series of textbooks called "China Insights." I haven't read them yet, but they're written and translated by Chinese authors which is definitely nice compared to what you usually get. Springer gives institutional access, but all [or at least some of the books] are available on sci-hub.
That's fair.
I think probably starting off with an example could help, with people unfamiliar with that type of crowd. It's not like "oh my god i cannot believe the author would do that" thing, but probably would clarify a bit.
In confused how this idea conflicts with what I am saying. Having your work taken and sold while you're trying to give it to people for free is disheartening. I havent advocated for some form of system of redress, I am simply saying it hurts us to have our work be used for other people's gain without our consent. I, like you, am saying it's a "shitty thing to do."