One of the supposed justifications for the intellectual monopoly called copyright is that it drives creativity and culture. In the last few weeks alone we have had multiple demonstrations of why the opposite is true: copyright destroys culture, and not by accident, but wilfully. For example, the MTVNews.com site, along with its sister site CMT.com, …
If copyright goes, it’s a free-for-all. Disney wins in that scenario, because they have more resources to spend on getting their media out there.
Yes, disney abuses their leverage in the current system, but they’d abuse their leverage in any system. And them abusing their leverage in a system without copyright is significantly worse for independent artists than them abusing their leverage in a system with it.
No, they would not. If they would win from it, they would fight for it instead of fighting to stop it.
We would win because we have free access and use to all human creative works.
There is a reason these companies attack places like the Internet Archive, and it’s not because it the IA helps them make more profit and control others works.
Why do you think extending copyright past the life of the author helps the author? They’re literally dead.
The only party that could benefit from something like that would be a corporation that can outlast a mortal’s lifespan.
. . . I don’t?
I think it and all copyright benefits corporations. This is literally the argument I’ve been making this whole time.
I think copyright should be scrapped and human creations should not be walled off.
Your argument is that Disney expanding copyright protections proves that copyright benefits them.
But Disney isn’t expanding copyright protections in a way that benefits anybody but themselves. They’re abusing their power in the existing system, just as they would in any system.
If it helps, forget about the literal Disney corporation. There will always be some corporation that exists with deeper pockets than any independent creator, because copyright isn’t the only reason that corporations exist. It doesn’t have to be Disney who steals your work, republishes it, and buries the original. Any corporation with more money than scruples can do it.
And no one can steal your work when it’s not ownable in the first place.
At the same time, everyone can profit from your work and you can’t do anything about it. And big businesses, having more capital than you or I, would abuse that to their benefit like they do the current copyright system. But at least the current system gives small copyright owners some semblance of protection and an avenue to contest abuse. Not having copyright would give a creator no avenue to stop someone else abusing their hard work.
You publish a book. Disney publishes that book the next day, because they can afford to have people on payroll whose job it is to literally just scout out new books so that they can publish them themselves.
Me, a book enjoyer, is going to my local bookshop. I ask what’s new, and I’m told about Disney’s new book. I’m not told about your new book because after all it is the exact same book, and Disney has threatened the store to withdraw all business if they sell anybody’s books but theirs.
I buy Disney’s book. You get no money. You become poor and destitute.
How does a lack of copyright help you in this instance?
Why am I publishing a book? I release my creative works online for free, for anyone and everyone.
Human culture shouldn’t be paywalled off for the benefit of businesses.
Because you invested your time, effort and money to create this piece of art. Why on earth would anybody decide to create art if it was a guarantee that they’d die in a gutter?
In your anarchist utopia, maybe an artist can thrive. But we’d have to get all the way there first.
And in every step from where we are to where you want to get to, the artist is significantly worse off. You’re just letting perfect be the enemy of good.
As… Opposed to now?
If Disney does plagiarize small artists’ work, and becomes known for it, they take a reputation hit, and the artist gets an explosion of exposure, as long as it is provable he made the original story. (Disney making million-dollar budget movies of your OC, isn’t even that bad for you, to be honest, but let’s assume that it doesn’t market the fuck out of your small artist story. In real life, stories are not in competition.)
If Disney doesn’t, then it’s an undeniable positive for worldwide creativity.
The only thing copyright protects, is big companies’ exclusive right to public-consciousness characters.
As opposed to now where the original artist/author at least has some recourse against the big corporation. Versus none.
Why would the artist get an explosion of exposure when Disney’s edition of the book was significantly more widely publicised, so everybody who might be interested in it already bought it from Disney.
The literal best case scenario here is that you have equal marketing, in which case Disney gets 50% of the sales and you get 50% of the sales. In what world is cutting your potential revenue in half a win for creators?
A “truly small” creator, would get , I dunno, let’s say 5% of Disney’s marketed sales, after being stolen from, from being known as the guy Disney stole from. Which would be enormously more than if he only had his “truly small” marketing.
A more successful and known creator, who would market himself more broadly on his own, would not be easy to steal from, since it would be quick enough for the stealing to be found out, to dampen Disney sales.
And all this, ignores the paradigm shift in monetisation (Uniquenameosaurus YouTube video), that could enhance this process immensely, and allow artist creativity to flourish even more, without even leaving the diseased economical rules of capitalism.
and irrelevant little aside
Also about this,
Guns give some recourse to poor people, against the rich, because anyone could use a gun.
Guns allow the rich to equip their personal security teams, with guns.
Guns are not helping the poor, and neither does copyright.
you’re now sitting here justifying paying artists in exposure?
disney doesn’t avoid breaching copyright in our world because of the threat of being found out. they avoid breaching copyright because they’d be sued.