Creative works are incompatible with capitalism. We’ve create a thin finicky interface between them with copyright laws, but it hardly works. I’m not saying artists and creators shouldn’t have financial security in this system, quite the opposite. I don’t have a better idea, but I hope we can come up with something that doesn’t conflate ownership with attribution and also protects the livelihood of people who want to share their creations.
You’re both essentially saying the same thing: this copyright dynamic is a vehicle for investment capitalism. And I’m not pointing this out to be glib, just recognizing that this particular line of advocacy is somewhere along the spectrum between “the thing you observe is working as designed” and “that’s good, actually”.
Which is a view you’re welcome to hold, but I’d certainly prefer a system designed for people who engage in creative work to have a greater share of what they create, and for the economics of creative work to not be so deeply entrenched in wealth consolidation for its own sake.
Disclaimer: the sum total I’ve been paid for purely creative work is approximately $11 from my share of ticket sales and a couple of drinks on the house. Which is $11 dollars more than I ever sought out, because I realized making a living as an artist had dim prospects before I even got a chance to try.
Sure, I agree, but isn't that seen as a good thing in the capitalist perspective? Wouldn't you want to have that accumulation of wealth by the few, who can then wield that power, as a proponent of capitalism?
The problem is capitalism and the greed/ability to hoard wealth. The problem isn't that creators are having their work copied; art is going to be copied, that's what art is in the first place - inspiration, modification, creation from something else that already exists.
There ought not to be such capitalism that creates the 'need' for the copyright protections.
Your issue is with capitalism apparently. Like it or not, creators rely on copyright to make a living and have an incentive to create more, and quality, art.
Copyright should not exist, but artists do need support somehow and doing away with copyright without other radical changes to economy/society leaves them high and dry. Copyright not existing should pair with other forms of support such as UBI or worker councilization, instead of ridding it while clutching capitalist pearls and ultimately only accelerating capitalism at their expense
Artists can pay for rent, food, etc. without selling copyright-protected products. We already see this thriving today. Artists are supported by their fans by selling tickets to shows and merchandise. I would argue that you have less trust in free market capitalism if you have to depend on copyright.
Frankly, I'm comfortable with the copyright holder being responsible to pay for the continued ownership of the copyright beyond its registration fees. It would allow them to determine whether or not a work is worth the continued investment to them, and presumably authors who are in a tight spot these days engage in mutual aid to assist each other. [#DisneyMustPay is a truly impressive mass cooperative event against an existential threat!]
I'm merely against the notion that we should do away with the few ways a working-class artist can earn a living and continue making more work with their labor. I'd even be happy to do away with copyright if all creators had a guarantee of income/recompense proportional to the broader cultural dissemination of their work.
"The whole idea around copyright is to encourage the creation of intellectual property. If there is a fundamentally better way to do it that idea should flourish but I have yet to hear a realistic alternative."
How about a basic income so the artists stop starving?
Can someone explain without using "magic happens here" arguments how an author, musician, etc. would build a portfolio of assets from which they could attain any measure of financial security in this world?
No. They can't. But it's important to understand that they can't attain any measure of financial security even with copyright law in place. It just looks like they can. Only the superstars ever get financial security from copyrights.
Writers would have it even worse than musicians, since at least musicians can tour. When was the last time you attended a live reading of a novel?
Crowdfunding is another option. But I think it's useful to give up on the idea that artists will ever make any meaningful amount of money from selling their art after the fact.
I am not arguing that copyright is perfect as is, but so far I see nothing better that allows artists to actually eat.
If we force artists to make art in order to be able to eat, isn't the system already broken?
In a post copyright world, big capital would still own brands, distribution channels, networks, etc. It would actually be great for them: they could now monetize artists work any way they wanted without paying the artist anything. Google, Apple, Amazon, etc. would be big winners.
Maybe. But you'd also see a lot of free distribution through BitTorrent, Popcorn Time etc. In order for Google, Apple, Amazon, etc. to make money, they'd have to be able to add some value on top of content distribution... value that can't easily be replicated for free.
What we call "intellectual property" is really a public good. It's non-rival and non-exclusive in nature.
This stuff is yet another hard right wing labor busting idea masquerading as something liberal and progressive.
Maybe. But that doesn't mean it's wrong.
This kind of thinking about intellectual property is what led me to re-examine the nature of labor in general. Is it reasonable for us to expect the labor market to provide sufficient income to consumers?
Sure, but you're not giving enough attention to the fact that this is all happening against the backdrop of capitalism. It's really NICE when stories can be just freely shared and remixed and built from, and we're all richer for that, culturally, sure.
But artists and authors and comedians have to earn a living! If we want their output to be free, we can't expect them to also have to pay all for their inputs and, you know, keep making art!
If we judge art to have value under capitalism, there NEEDS to be a way of protecting that value for those who create it. Alternatively, we could explore alternatives to this whole capitalism thing, but you can't have your cake and eat it, too.
We can try some kind of libertarian socialism system, either with decentralized planing or with anti-capitalist markets to deal with it.
Consider existence of services like patreon where people support creators they respect before are able to get to know the work of the author - no intellectual property rights are needed here.
This notion that the creators and artists are raking up the wealth generated by people consuming their creations is obviously wrong. Intellectual property in general, but especially copyright, has been a colossal failure -- rent-seeking middlemen have emerged to swallow up the financial dividends of the creative. The idea that someone can sell access to your work without you being rewarded is ALREADY how things work. Copyright as it stands is just a way to give rent-seeking middlemen a moat, not a protection for creatives.
Oh come on. Copyright is a fairly ancient concept that benefits normal people as much as it benefits big corporations. Most book authors, songwriters, and so on aren't fat cats, and they would be harmed if we had zero protections for the duplication of their work. They'd need to depend on state sponsorship or charitable private patronage, both of which are problematic for obvious reasons and limit the range of artistic expression more than the market does.
Instead, we came up with a system where you can actually derive fairly steady revenue by creating new works and sharing them with the world. And critically, I think you misinterpret it as calling dibs on shared culture or on stories. Copyright is usually interpreted fairly narrowly, and doesn't prevent you from creating inspired works, or retelling the same story in your own words.
Generative AI is a problem largely because it destroys these revenue streams for millions of people. Yeah, it will be litigated by wealthy corporations with top-notch lawyers, for self-interested reasons. But if we end up with a framework that maintains financial incentives to artistic expression, it's probably a good thing.
Exactly. My point is that, if this is an ideology, it's not consistent. If people want to live in a world where things that are easy to duplicate (music, movies, etc.) are created by talented people who need to make a living, then there has to be a way to pay for it. We need a replacement for copyright.
Until we have an economy where people don't starve to death from lack of food or die of frostbite from being homeless, we have to figure out ways for people who actually make things to benefit from that work. Copyright is currently protecting people who rely on the product of their labor to make ends meet. Until we have the fairy tale economy you envision where artists can have the work stolen and still live, this is the best we've got.
And yeah, wild to think people feel entitled to own their own work thanks to silly things like the entire body of copyright law.
Whenever anyone discusses this topic, to shut down anyone who is strongly against copyright, they come up with "Oh, I don't see a way the artists get compensated." Maybe that's right. Maybe art needs to lead the way toward a sharing style pay-what-you-want economy.
I do agree that artists are going to create no matter what. I do suspect we'd have less works if nobody could make a living doing it though. Especially things like film and animation which historically required crazy amounts of money up front. People were willing to fund those efforts because they could expect a likely return on their investment which without copyright protections wouldn't be possible.
We've gone way overboard, but I do think some level of protection for creators is for the best even now when it's easier and less expensive than ever to create.
I couldn't disagree more strongly. Artists can create the content you love because they get paid to do so. Without IP, these artists do not get paid, and therefore cannot create the content you love, full stop.
The only reason you're able to pirate in the first place is because you rely on other people not to pirate, so the artist still gets paid. That seems to be working out, which is why I really don't see piracy as a meaningful problem, but if the scales tipped to where most people were obtaining content in violation of IP laws, then you would absolutely see a strong chilling effect on content creation.
It's the underlying premise of capitalism; I focus on making art in exchange for a shared currency I can then use to buy housing and food from people dedicated to those things.
Without the ability to depend on others to provide those services, artists will have to do other things besides create art to convince the people creating food to give them some.
That's the only thing anyone can own in reality. The other concepts of property can only exist with the mechanisms of the State. Capitalism in this function is an organ of the State and can only operate within a State since without a monopoly on force (be it a tribal council, a brutal tyrant, a publicly traded company, or a democracy) there's no means to deprive others of their labor or the product of their labor. And that is exactly what copyright does as a side effect.
So, within a State we have to ask the question regarding how to best protect both labor and the products of someone's labor. It's not as easy as writing a computer program to be sure. I'm just pointing out that effectively all copyright doesn't effectively pay a proper wage as like all titled property it benefits those who can leverage the legal system to their favor. And historically speaking, copyright law has inevitably favored those who can pay the lawyers the most which is not the vast majority of creators (as labor).
There is a vast gap between "able to make a living" and "able to stifle culture, censor citizenship, and lock up works for longer than a lifetime".
TBH, it's probably better to create a post scarcity society where a living isn't dependent on holding something hostage. Some variation of a basic income, that would support artists to create. But we don't have to go that far to say, copyright as it stands now is over-mighty and should have its claws harshly trimmed.
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