The status quo for artists is pretty dismal. Across industries you have a few ultra-successful artists, a small group who can make a decent living and then a long tail of people who can't pay the rent.
Gaming things out, I don't think copyright is really helping any of those artists or society as a whole. If it didn't exist, you'd still have breakout artists who make money through endorsements, live shows, and selling original copies of their work.
I think it's kind of crazy to handwave away a whole class of creators who do make real money off selling their work (rather than being performers), even if it isn't big money or even enough to live on without supplemental income. And I categorically disagree that copyright isn't helping "any" of them. One counterexample is self-published authors on Amazon and similar services, many of whom do make a lot more money than a layperson might expect, and all of whom would obviously be cut off at the knees by squeaky-clean first-world aggregator-reader services the second the copyright protections of their works were revoked.
Gaming things out, I don't think copyright is really helping any of those artists or society as a whole. If it didn't exist, you'd still have breakout artists who make money through endorsements, live shows, and selling original copies of their work.
reply