Indeed. No-one is arguing that abolishing copyright today wouldn't be good for everyone but the rightsholders tomorrow. It's whether it's still good for everyone next week or next year or ten years from now that is in question.

Your point about the best amateur work today competing with good professional work from a decade or two ago is well made, and it's a sign of how far and how fast technology has evolved in recent years. However, it's also a sign that amateurs now have access to tools and techniques originally developed for professionals a few years ago. You're ignoring that in a world where no-one has any incentive to make big budget productions like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, there is also no budget to develop those professional-grade tools in the first place and nothing to start the trickle down effect.

I think you're also overstating the case dramatically. While today's dedicated and skilled amateurs can make work rivalling professional quality from yesteryear, few amateurs have the time and skill to actually do it. The rest of the time, you get music recordings that are good, but not as good as they would have been if someone had hired a professional recording studio with the right acoustics and equipment. You get the occasional brilliant piece of writing, but you have to filter out a thousand uninspired works of fan fiction to find it. You get a fun film project, but it looks like someone's friend held the camcorder and they ran through a couple of After Effects tutorials afterwards, because that really is what happened. And of course they used After Effects, probably downloaded from a pirate site, to do that, because for the most part the community-built alternatives to professionally created software don't cut it.

As a final point, the growth in capabilities and scale for modern creative projects is astounding. Twenty years ago, a single developer could create a state-of-the-art game, maybe with a little help from specialists on the graphics and audio fronts. Today, a single good developer can still create a fun game, but it won't look like the state-of-the-art, or anything close to it. I'm all for games with interesting gameplay and films with interesting storylines, and I'll be the first to agree that those are more important than the latest big budget effects and a full soundtrack. But professional quality work today can produce all of the above, and no small group of amateurs will ever compete with that, no matter how enthusiastic or skilled they might be or how long you wait.

So I don't think it's self-evident from your valid point about what some today's amateurs can do today that amateurs in a few years would match today's best professional work if we abolished the incentives for big budget productions tomorrow. Star Wars was released in 1977, nearly four decades ago, and today's hobbyists on YouTube are still doing light saber effects. At that rate, most of us will be dead before anyone is keeping up with what today's commercial industry can do.

Right, but it's that scarcity that matters in this case, because that is the part that takes serious time and money to do. Copyright is just a way of amortizing those costs over a large user base who are only willing to contribute a small amount individually, such that expensive-to-create works are still viable. I would argue that having some economic model that allows this distribution of costs, whether copyright or something else, is clearly a good thing if we value the creation and distribution of high quality work.

Yes there are, and there are some interesting ideas there that might offer better alternative models in time. Moreover, as you say, there is a question of how much distributors artificially distort the markets using copyright; one of the more infamous examples is Disney's strategy of releasing a movie on disc for only a very limited time and then locking it back in the vault for years.

Even so, right now, today, alternative funding models have yet to reach within about two orders of magnitude of funding what copyright does. Therefore, while copyright obviously has some undesirable properties, as an economic tool I claim it is currently the least bad model we have found.

Of course you are, and I have no problem with that. Copyright wasn't supposed to be a mechanism for locking up culture indefinitely. As long as enough people still want things soon enough to pay for them at reasonable prices, creators can still make a decent return and will still create and share stuff, and that is what it's all about.

Well, I was talking about Cygwin at that point. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it. ;-)

That's actually a really good reply.

In the immortal words of Tim Minchin:

You confuse politics with culture and society. Let's ignore the 50,000 smartphone games that are so simple you would have to stretch a lot of things far beyond breaking to find any culture in them, to the point where Pong was some kind of social statement. But even with all those games ignored and restricting ourselves to PC games, yes they very often reflect parts of our culture and society. Some intentionally, some not. It's not a surprise, given that culture influences on us as members of society, and thus leaves a mark in our creative pursuits, just like greek culture influenced greek art and literature and any famous american book of your choosing would've been very different had it been written by a chinese author in China, for example.

Politics, however, is not the same as culture.

Merriam-Webster says:

Basically, politics is an activity. Writing a novel or creating a computer game is not a politicial act unless you intentionally make it so. There is no such thing as "unconscious politics".

Second:

This worrying about reflection of culture in our creations is vastly overrated. It's the same nonsense as the claim that violent games turn people into killers. I can play a game set not in todays culture, but in a culture where women have almost no rights, a medieval or fantasy setting, and I won't come out of the game wishing to take any rights away from women in the real world. On the contrary, it may make me more sensitive to gender issues.

When I look at female characters in video games, I see them as characters. I laugh about their ridiculous fantasy armor. I look at their boobs and think "yeah, suuure". Just like I look at the men and think the same.

You make too many assumptions about people you don't know. I'm not for turning all women into sex objects. I do, however, understand that sex and viewing a member of the opposite sex in a sexual way is normal human behaviour. Also, you can have your Chipendales, if you want. Why would I scream anything, let alone murder? You can look at me as a sex object, if it makes you feel good. I'm sure enough of myself to not be bothered. Heck, I've been hit on by gay men. Yes, it's a bit uncomfortable, but not a big deal. Yes, I wouldn't like having that as a constant part of my life which is why I feel for attractive women in clubs and understand why they prefer to go with a small group.

But all of these are a small selection of social imperfections, and there are thousands more of them, some related to gender and some not, some to the disadvantage of women and some to the disadvantage of men.

True to some extent. But you ignore that this "male ideal" is not better or more comfortable. Many men do not enjoy the role that society puts them in, and they don't want to be strong and powerful and in control. Worse, other than women they can't complain about it, because the role doesn't allow it. Stereotypes and forced roles affect both genders, that's my point. And just because you may think that the male role is preferable doesn't mean that all men agree with you.
Also, some of the smartest and most successful women I know are very much ladies at the same time. Because they understand how real power works and that it has nothing to do with the size of your bizeps.

Learn to read. I made it very clear that if a woman can't get birth control or jobs or voting rights or other such basic human rights, I'll be on her side, no question.

But there's a point where justified demands turn into ridiculous bullshit. In my country, feminists have successfully crippled parts of our language, because language was "male dominated". So instead of "student" and "professor", we now have to stay "StudentInnen" and "ProfessorInnen" or some such abominations (there are worse, like "Student*innen" - which is not a spelling error).

Texts written in accordance to gender study rules are utterly unreadable. I'm not joking.

Now where exactly are we with women in video games? Somewhere inbetween. We've not reached "you're a psycho" nonsense-land, but we're not in the "you can't vote and always obey your husband" territory, either. It's rare that a game doesn't offer female characters, or puts them at a disadvantage. We're fighting over visuals here. Maybe this generation has forgotten that giving women equal rights was a real fight once, and put in relation to that, being worried about sexist visuals is kind of not really that big a deal.

Am I for less sexism? Yeah.
Do I think the boob size and ridiculous fantasy armor in games is worth fighting over? Nope. There are much more important fights to pick, still.

In this particular case, I don't know all the details, so I don't pass judgement.

But in more general terms, I've seen this "women in video games" topic for some years now. Here's what is having very, very little positive effect on women in video games: Feminist activists yelling for equality. Here's what does have a visible positive effect: Men and women quietly working on changing things and people complaining about specific problems to the responsible people, with suggestions on what to change.

Politics rarely actually improve anything. We realized that when it comes to Washington D.C. politics, why don't we realize it when it comes to office politics, genderism and other relatives?

Yes, I can. But in this, they are the in-your-face aggressors. I can't remember the last time some anti-feminist pushed his agenda on me.

No, I actually listen to people I disagree with. I've listend to right-wing extremists, left-wing extremists, even to christian and islamic fundamentalists (though it's really difficult to do that for more than a few minutes).

I've listened to feminists. There are moderate ones and extreme ones. The more extreme ones are quite open in what they want, and it's not equality. They cover it thinly, but basically they say women were oppressed for centuries, now it's time to turn the tables. I have citations, but they're in my native language (german). Google "Alice Schwarzer", the by far most well-known german feminist (though according to her, it should probably be feministIn).

In which games? All the games I've played in recent years make all classes available to both genders.

Because that's the fucked-up stereotypes in our society. I don't like it, either. But claiming it's only unfair to women is even more fucked-up.

If you had tried to understand what I wrote, you'd have realized I am all for equal rights. I am not, by the way, for equal treatment - gender differences are real facts of the real world and require consideration. We need slightly different clothes, for example (where would you put your dick in a woman's panty?). Sports are segregated by gender for real biology reasons. There are psychological difference where science is not sure how much is education and how much is biology. The list goes on.

Frankly speaking, I don't care because it's not my problem. I want to relax, remember?

Yes, I can understand that as a father of a daughter (which the original story on this was about) I would be upset. And yes, I think it's stupid to include only male characters unless your story calls for it (Leisure Suit Larry games, for example). But again, it's not my problem. If you want to change it, I'll not stand in your way, but I see no reason to spend my time and energy supporting a cause that's not my problem.
You fail to see the difference between normal people with normal views and political activists who have an agenda behind everything they do. No, if one of my female friends brought that up, I'd relate to her and tell her to write the company an angry letter. Why should I tell her the bullshit nonsense that you bring up? But also, why should I campaign against problems that don't affect me?

Here's what really bothers me: It's a well known psychological fact that if you have people who are mostly on your side, but just not as engaged as you are, and you bother them too much, they will more likely oppose you then join your fight. Because nobody likes to be forced, not even into something they think is a good cause.
That is my problem with aggressive feminism and why I say keep your politics out of my entertainment. I'm all for equal rights, but I would like to punch feminazis in the face, except that I was taught not to hit women. Now I'm probably a chauvinistic swine because - omg - I don't treat men (which I would hit) and women (which I won't) not equal.

That is a fair point, but I think it's orthogonal to the main issue. There are already laws about accessibility and discrimination for various other commercial activities, and I see no reason similar rules could not be extended to cover provision of creative content within the kind of scheme I described.

As a curious aside, technically there is already a provision for raising problems caused by DRM with the government in the UK. However, it's so obscure and awkward that I've never heard of anyone actually trying to use it.

I can relate, in parts. To the anti-feminists, that is.

I'm sick and tired of getting feminism shoved down my throat absolutely everywhere. There's new laws, most companies have policies, our language is being policed for misunderstood "gender-equality" and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I'm in full support of women fighting actual oppression. If you can't vote just because you're female, I'm with you on that. If you can't drive a car because you're a female, I'm with you on that. If your boss tells you that short skirt is the appropriate dresscode, while he insists on long trousers for your male colleagues, I'm with you on that.
But the feminazis who insist that absolutely everything has to be exactly 50/50 male/female, then for all I care you can fuck off and die.
Also, let's be honest, many of the most vocal feminists quite publicly state that their goal is not 50/50, but female dominance.

Women in video games is one of the "soft topics". Yeah, it's ridiculous what armor female characters wear sometimes. But you're blind, deaf and stupid if you think it's a gender thing. Look at the male characters - they are all Schwarzeneggers, too. According to my female friends, I'm quite handsome, but most video game characters beat me hands down in both beauty and body shape. It's the same as in movies and magazines - we get idealized, unnaturally enhanced versions of humans.

Could video games improve their representation of women? Sure, they could. But the subject is by far not as simple and clear-cut as voting rights or such.

And frankly speaking, I play video games to relax and shut down. You could keep your politics out of my entertainment and work on improvements in the real world. You know, the one that matters.

Which basically means that Microsoft is selling a car without mirrors, brakes and seatbelts, but you have plenty of options buying one from a 3rd party. Provided you remember to do it...

Well, you can call it a "double standard", but that's how science works. Interpretations of data that contradict the established theory face higher burdens of proof than interpretations that support it.

It's frustrating to climate denialists and perpetual motion inventors that their ideas aren't given equal dignity with the scientific consensus, but that's because by in large they're ignorant of the effort that went into forging that consensus. It took fifty hard fought years for AGW to become the scientific consensus, and as a result it enjoys a privileged position: it gets to play the null hypothesis. To do otherwise isn't fair to the people who fought that fight for decades, and won. You can overturn the scientific consensus, but it's an uphill battle, as it should be.

Think about the content that is created today through the work of skilled, creative people. We're talking thousands of person-years for blockbuster movies, AAA games, top TV shows. Just presenting TV news and weather bulletins takes a not-so-small army of people working 24/7. For smaller scale works like, say, academic textbooks, we're still looking at a whole team of people working over several years.

The question is, is that kind of content naturally abundant? If society truly would continue to benefit from the same quantity and quality of such work even if those skilled, creative people didn't get paid, then you're right and the scarcity is artificial. Otherwise, we're not talking about artificial scarcity, we're just talking about economics.

Really, this was modded up and mine was modded down? Have you never actually read anything about the history of the eruption? Everyone who was with him at the time was fine, he was the only one who was having trouble, because of his lousy health. Pliny the Younger blamed it on his "weak innards".