Copyright is a tool that gives creators the ability to commercialize their work. That its spirit, nothing more. The abolishment of copyright would be in no way productive imo. At least in the US, we have a lifetime for exclusive rights, at which point the material moves into the public domain. It really seems like a good system to me. If anyone could sell the thing you just spent time and money creating for free, there would be little incentive to create the thing. And its existence doesn’t at all prevent people from offering their creations for free use, by placing directly into the public domain.
You misunderstand me. Artists want to be able to dedicate themselves to the development and creation of their art. Unfortunately that requires money. For most people (poor people) the only way to both be making art non-stop, and be able to live at a somewhat normal standard, is to get paid while doing it.
I know many artists. I art majored. Everyone is trying to find a way to make it viable, by figuring out what they are able to sell. Sure, yeah, its for the love of art. It can only be so when you have someone paying your way, or you’re already retired. If your making art as a hobby and a hobby alone, you probably care little about conversations of IP. For one, because your original work is protected immediately upon creation, and for two, IP is about protecting commercial interests. You made the thing for no reason than to satisfy your own interest. You don’t really care if anyone paid you or not, you would have done it anyways, therefore IP doesn’t really concern your hobby. As soon as you take the thing to gallery, and put a price tag on it, you’re no different than anyone else trying to see what they can make a buck off of.
I’ve been on both sides of it, giving one form of art away, while seeing if I could make a living off of an another. Commercial art was not for me. But I respect what IP protection provides to those who do choose to commercialize.
In one sentence, you’ve already demonstrated that you don’t understand how artists subsist at all. You’ve also confused the word “incentive” with “motivation”.
Look, I understand that money isn’t the primary incentive for (hopefully all) artists. But I don’t think a system where you effectively cannot make a living as a full-time artist is beneficial for society either. Since you’re an artist, can I ask how you subsist without an alternative source of income?
Commissions don’t give a damn about copyright. The end product is made specifically to please one person and reproductions are already worthless, since only Jimbo wants an impressionist picture of Blue Eyes White Dragon wearing a tutu. Jimbo ends up happy, since he got his picture, I end up happy, as Jimbo pays me for the time it took to paint it, and anyone else that manages to copy it can be happy as well.
I’m happy that you’re able to work on commission, but with all due respect, your logic is somewhat specific to your chosen medium. Various other forms of art—novels come to mind—would not be so unaffected.
Not only would they, they already are - that’s what crowd funding like Patreon is for, and it’s also how it gets used. There are hundreds of thousands of sites sharing “copyrighted” material produced for supporters, and yet no artist bothers going after them, because it’s irrelevant. The people who want that content enough to pay for it do so, anyone else is just tagging along for the ride.
that’s what crowd funding like Patreon is for, and it’s also how it gets used.
The vast majority of books are not crowdfunded lmao
There are hundreds of thousands of sites sharing “copyrighted” material produced for supporters, and yet no artist bothers going after them, because it’s irrelevant.
The real advantage of copyright to authors is not to prevent any and all unauthorized reproduction of their works, but rather to distinguish genuine reproductions in the marketplace. Authors don’t give a fuck about free online “libraries”, but you best believe shit goes down the second bootleg copies appear on shelves at B&N or on the Kindle Store. Consumers expect purchases made in legal markets to benefit the owner (ideally the creator) of the work.
For the record, I don’t particularly like the concept of copyright, and I really don’t like current copyright laws. My only concern regarding the complete destruction of copyright is the immense difficulty in determining the creator of the work that it would obviously create. There is absolutely no obligation to provide attribution for public domain works. You can even claim to be the creator yourself, if you wish.
At least in the US, we have a lifetime for exclusive rights, at which point the material moves into the public domain. It really seems like a good system to me.
It’s not a good system to have it be 50 years past the death of the creator. Having access to content in public domain has historically caused art to flourish by serving as a base for creators to build off of. But for the past few decades companies have been plundering from public domain while not contributing anything back.
Our original copyright system in the US gave a baseline 17 years of copyright, with an additional 17 years extension that you could apply to. 34 years is a perfectly fair span of time to get value out of your creation because nobody is going to wait that long to get access to art they want. But it also ensured that the public domain continually had new content added that wasn’t completely antiquated. This is the system we should be pushing to return to.
My quote is aligned with your statement. I didn’t say anything specific about what the lifetime should be. Just that I believe its good that there is one. Maybe 50 years is too long. Maybe 34 year is too long too. That number is the compromise line for two competing interests. People will always be pulling in the direction that serves their own.
Copyright is a tool that gives creators the ability to commercialize their work. That its spirit, nothing more.
That’s what we are told is the purpose because otherwise we wouldn’t accept its existence. In practice it doesn’t work that way. The persistent story is that artists get very little compensation whilst whichever large entity is acting as the middleman for their copyright - often owning it outright despite doing nothing to make it - takes the vast majority of the profit.
It is a tool of corporate control, nothing more. Without copyright there would be no way a middleman could insert themselves and ripoff artists, take their money, and compromise their work with financially-driven studio meddling.
And the idea that the “spirit” of copyright is for artists, that completely falls apart when you understand that modern copyright terms exist almost entirely to profit one company’s IP - Disney is just delaying the transfer of Mickey Mouse into the public domain. That’s why copyright is now lifetime +75 years, or something ridiculous like that. That is not for artists to be compensated. Mickey Mouse isn’t going to be unmade when that happens. If Disney can’t operate as a business with all the time and market share they’ve built then they should just go under. There’s no justification for it beyond corporate greed.
Also without copyright there couldn’t be monopolies like Disney buying Fox, Marvel and Star Wars. That is an absurd situation and should be an indication that antitrust is effectively gone.
And as for artists getting paid, we’re transitioning more and more to a patron model, where people are paid just to create, and release most of their work for free with some token level of patron interaction. You don’t need copyright for that.
Artists enter into contracts with publishers willingly. Their work is not stolen. If it was they could easily win a court case for infringement. They bargain their rights because they’re eager for a shot at money. It is very hard breakout without one, if that’s your goal. Consolidation of the networks is a completely different debate, and I agree its egregious and they need to be broken up. But no one is preventing anyone from creating a new super hero, or sci-fi universe. It happens every day, you just have to search a little harder because big networks aren’t paying millions of dollars to put some unknown indie author’s work in your social feed.
They bargain their rights because they’re eager for a shot at money. It is very hard breakout without one, if that’s your goal.
It’s incredible that you can say this and not understand that this is exactly why the relationship is coercive and gets abused.
Plenty of horrible things are legal; that is not the measure of what is good. Our entire economic system exists to benefit those with money. It’s always been that way. Can you guess who it was that decided we should have a political system that gives power to people based on how much money they have? It wasn’t poor people. Capitalism inherently drives towards monopolies.
It wouldn’t be a problem if you didn’t need to sell the things you make and could just give them away.
So copyright is only useful to protect your profits. There are many people who put effort into many things not because they expect to make money but because of the act of doing it.
Just something to think about, not really sure what point im trying to make
Copyright is a tool that gives creators the ability to commercialize their work. That its spirit, nothing more. The abolishment of copyright would be in no way productive imo. At least in the US, we have a lifetime for exclusive rights, at which point the material moves into the public domain. It really seems like a good system to me. If anyone could sell the thing you just spent time and money creating for free, there would be little incentive to create the thing. And its existence doesn’t at all prevent people from offering their creations for free use, by placing directly into the public domain.
In one sentence, you’ve already demonstrated that you don’t understand artists at all.
No, he understands just fine
Artists might create out of love, but they’re not going to share it for free so someone else can make a profit
We literally do it all the time…
Not all artists do
I’m glad your line of work allows you to make a living, but the same model doesn’t work for everyone.
You misunderstand me. Artists want to be able to dedicate themselves to the development and creation of their art. Unfortunately that requires money. For most people (poor people) the only way to both be making art non-stop, and be able to live at a somewhat normal standard, is to get paid while doing it.
I know many artists. I art majored. Everyone is trying to find a way to make it viable, by figuring out what they are able to sell. Sure, yeah, its for the love of art. It can only be so when you have someone paying your way, or you’re already retired. If your making art as a hobby and a hobby alone, you probably care little about conversations of IP. For one, because your original work is protected immediately upon creation, and for two, IP is about protecting commercial interests. You made the thing for no reason than to satisfy your own interest. You don’t really care if anyone paid you or not, you would have done it anyways, therefore IP doesn’t really concern your hobby. As soon as you take the thing to gallery, and put a price tag on it, you’re no different than anyone else trying to see what they can make a buck off of.
I’ve been on both sides of it, giving one form of art away, while seeing if I could make a living off of an another. Commercial art was not for me. But I respect what IP protection provides to those who do choose to commercialize.
In one sentence, you’ve already demonstrated that you don’t understand how artists subsist at all. You’ve also confused the word “incentive” with “motivation”.
Guess what I do for a living. You have 1 guess.
Look, I understand that money isn’t the primary incentive for (hopefully all) artists. But I don’t think a system where you effectively cannot make a living as a full-time artist is beneficial for society either. Since you’re an artist, can I ask how you subsist without an alternative source of income?
Commissions don’t give a damn about copyright. The end product is made specifically to please one person and reproductions are already worthless, since only Jimbo wants an impressionist picture of Blue Eyes White Dragon wearing a tutu. Jimbo ends up happy, since he got his picture, I end up happy, as Jimbo pays me for the time it took to paint it, and anyone else that manages to copy it can be happy as well.
I’m happy that you’re able to work on commission, but with all due respect, your logic is somewhat specific to your chosen medium. Various other forms of art—novels come to mind—would not be so unaffected.
Not only would they, they already are - that’s what crowd funding like Patreon is for, and it’s also how it gets used. There are hundreds of thousands of sites sharing “copyrighted” material produced for supporters, and yet no artist bothers going after them, because it’s irrelevant. The people who want that content enough to pay for it do so, anyone else is just tagging along for the ride.
The vast majority of books are not crowdfunded lmao
The real advantage of copyright to authors is not to prevent any and all unauthorized reproduction of their works, but rather to distinguish genuine reproductions in the marketplace. Authors don’t give a fuck about free online “libraries”, but you best believe shit goes down the second bootleg copies appear on shelves at B&N or on the Kindle Store. Consumers expect purchases made in legal markets to benefit the owner (ideally the creator) of the work.
For the record, I don’t particularly like the concept of copyright, and I really don’t like current copyright laws. My only concern regarding the complete destruction of copyright is the immense difficulty in determining the creator of the work that it would obviously create. There is absolutely no obligation to provide attribution for public domain works. You can even claim to be the creator yourself, if you wish.
It’s not a good system to have it be 50 years past the death of the creator. Having access to content in public domain has historically caused art to flourish by serving as a base for creators to build off of. But for the past few decades companies have been plundering from public domain while not contributing anything back.
Our original copyright system in the US gave a baseline 17 years of copyright, with an additional 17 years extension that you could apply to. 34 years is a perfectly fair span of time to get value out of your creation because nobody is going to wait that long to get access to art they want. But it also ensured that the public domain continually had new content added that wasn’t completely antiquated. This is the system we should be pushing to return to.
My quote is aligned with your statement. I didn’t say anything specific about what the lifetime should be. Just that I believe its good that there is one. Maybe 50 years is too long. Maybe 34 year is too long too. That number is the compromise line for two competing interests. People will always be pulling in the direction that serves their own.
That’s what we are told is the purpose because otherwise we wouldn’t accept its existence. In practice it doesn’t work that way. The persistent story is that artists get very little compensation whilst whichever large entity is acting as the middleman for their copyright - often owning it outright despite doing nothing to make it - takes the vast majority of the profit.
It is a tool of corporate control, nothing more. Without copyright there would be no way a middleman could insert themselves and ripoff artists, take their money, and compromise their work with financially-driven studio meddling.
And the idea that the “spirit” of copyright is for artists, that completely falls apart when you understand that modern copyright terms exist almost entirely to profit one company’s IP - Disney is just delaying the transfer of Mickey Mouse into the public domain. That’s why copyright is now lifetime +75 years, or something ridiculous like that. That is not for artists to be compensated. Mickey Mouse isn’t going to be unmade when that happens. If Disney can’t operate as a business with all the time and market share they’ve built then they should just go under. There’s no justification for it beyond corporate greed.
Also without copyright there couldn’t be monopolies like Disney buying Fox, Marvel and Star Wars. That is an absurd situation and should be an indication that antitrust is effectively gone.
And as for artists getting paid, we’re transitioning more and more to a patron model, where people are paid just to create, and release most of their work for free with some token level of patron interaction. You don’t need copyright for that.
Artists enter into contracts with publishers willingly. Their work is not stolen. If it was they could easily win a court case for infringement. They bargain their rights because they’re eager for a shot at money. It is very hard breakout without one, if that’s your goal. Consolidation of the networks is a completely different debate, and I agree its egregious and they need to be broken up. But no one is preventing anyone from creating a new super hero, or sci-fi universe. It happens every day, you just have to search a little harder because big networks aren’t paying millions of dollars to put some unknown indie author’s work in your social feed.
It’s incredible that you can say this and not understand that this is exactly why the relationship is coercive and gets abused.
Plenty of horrible things are legal; that is not the measure of what is good. Our entire economic system exists to benefit those with money. It’s always been that way. Can you guess who it was that decided we should have a political system that gives power to people based on how much money they have? It wasn’t poor people. Capitalism inherently drives towards monopolies.
It wouldn’t be a problem if you didn’t need to sell the things you make and could just give them away.
So copyright is only useful to protect your profits. There are many people who put effort into many things not because they expect to make money but because of the act of doing it.
Just something to think about, not really sure what point im trying to make