from his PyCon 2012 Keynote video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI&t=33m43s
Questioner:
"In one of your recent things online, you said "The answer for the music industry, for example, is probably to give up insisting on payment for recorded music, and focus on licensing and live shows.
Alright I've been talking to Vint Cerf and some people about this--licensing exactly WHAT when copyrights mean NOTHING? You know the internet and software are on a viable business train only because software enjoys these copyrights. So HOW can you just sort of throw away the music industries product and copyright, and yet tell ALL these people to work on things that must be protected by copyright--trademark, a form of copyright--and process patents?"
Paul Graham:
Well, I don't think you necessarily have to protect your stuff--I don't think if you build technology you have to protect it with copyright. I mean, Amazon Web Services isn't protected with copyright. I think selling copies of stuff--like if you simply do that--like you make a copy of stuff, and you sell lots of it, it's just not practically gonna work.
You know the funny thing is, I was gonna write an essay about this, but maybe I'll just like make it up on the fly. The funny thing is, what is property, is actually, historically has been somewhat defined what is convenient to be property. So like, in the days of hunter-gatherers it was not convenient for land to be property, right? But now it is, so land is property. If you imagined that we lived like on the moon, and everything--you know, we had to get like air in pipes, and paid for the air, right? People could charge for smells. People could charge for good smells, right? And so it would seem reasonable for smells to be property. But now, you walk by restaurant, and you smell this delicious smell, you get this like free boost--for nothing! And like, I think the record labels are like these people who are from the moon, right? And they used to be able to sell these things because the only way you could them was through their channel. But now, files move around like smells. And it's not convenient to charge for them. Ultimately this stuff is pragmatic. I realize that doesn't sound very principled, but historically it seems to be the way things work. You just can't charge for copies of stuff anymore. You know? It just, doesn't practically work anymore.
Questioner:
So you're saying you cannot charge for copies of software! It's the same copyright protection! So you can't just say that's too inconvenient!
Paul Graham:
I don't think it works as well as it used to. I mean, there are SOME people who pay for copies of music. Right? And then, a lot of people don't. And there are some people who pay for copies of software, and a lot of people don't, right? So maybe, you will be able to make some money by making copies of stuff, but you won't be able to PRINT money the way the labels used to back in the 80s.
Questioner (increasingly alarmed):
This is also taking over books and movies!
Paul Graham:
Well, you know, as a writer of books. I feel like writing books, I mean--it never made that much money, people mostly did it out of vanity. So now the ratio of vanity to money is even higher. (Audience laughs, applauds)