The key problem is that copyright infringement by a private individual is regarded by the court as something so serious that it negates the right to privacy. It’s a sign of the twisted values that copyright has succeeded on imposing on many legal systems. It equates the mere copying of a digital file with serious crimes that merit a prison sentence, an evident absurdity.
This is a good example of how copyright’s continuing obsession with ownership and control of digital material is warping the entire legal system in the EU. What was supposed to be simply a fair way of rewarding creators has resulted in a monstrous system of routine government surveillance carried out on hundreds of millions of innocent people just in case they copy a digital file.
lmao copyright isn’t important
if copyright were abolished worldwide today, we’d be in a happier place. people who buy things generally want to buy from the official source anyway, those official sources might even have to cut prices or (god forbid!) have to make their services better to compete in the market
I don’t want to see a end to copyright. I want it restored to what it was. Where the creator had a copyright for limited amount of time then everyone had a copyright to the work.
Now that time is beyond the amount of time that someone inspired by a copyrighted work could create some derivative of it. Unless you think someone inspired as a child would feel like bringing that inspiration to fulfilment as an elderly adult is going to happen often.
Humanity as we know it existed for ten of thousands of years without copyright. Copyright is the anti-thesis to creation. Everything humans create is iterative. Copyright along with the rest of intellectual property seeks to pervert creation for personal gain.
Art does not need copyright to survive and I would argue that intellectual property is not needed to promote the arts or science. It is designed to do the opposite which is limit creation to the benefit of the individual.
What makes this worse is the individual is now the corporation. Do you know that a lot of successful artists, particularly musicians, don’t even own their own works?
Corporations benefit disproportionally by copyright. They have lobbied for decades to further pervert the flawed intention of copyright and intellectual property to the breaking point. Simply put, going down the road of trying to prove who created what was first is wrong.
Creation does not happen in a vacuum. Pretending that we create is isolation is farcical. We are great because of all those that came before us.
The telephone was invented by multiple people. The Wright brothers had European counterparts. These issues around intellectual copyright are a lot more complex than we are ready to admit.
We have billions of people now. Stop trying to pretend any idea, drawing, tune, or writing is unique. Rude wake up call, it is not.
Thank you, I seldom see my own thoughts laid out so clearly. As a practitioner of the Dark Arts (marketing), this union of commerce and art is a foul bargain. I think it’s time the two had some time apart to work on themselves.
Art 100% needs copyright. There is a reason forgery is a crime. Copyright is meant to protect small creators. Yes it is being abused by corporations but the idea that we don’t need it is absurd. Stealing someone’s work and selling as your own is fraud. Plain and simple.
First, how do you account for all the art made before copyright existed. Second, what about all the art created everyday where the creator does not pursue copyright let alone try to enforce their rights in a court of law. These two scenarios disprove your assertion that art needs copyright.
Perhaps you are under the misconception that artists need to make a living. Art is an expression of our culture and it is not inherently tied to making money. How many people are creating art right now without the intention to sell it. I will clue you in, there is a lot of people, millions who do this everyday.
The amount of art created for personal use dwarfs that of commercial use by a thousand fold. Copyright does not need to protect these artists at all. Read that, the majority of artists do not need or ever use copyright.
All art is iterative. This means every piece of art is built upon the art that came before it. Copying is literally how it is done. You know Led Zeppelin just copied a bunch of old blues songs? Oh you didn’t because you think artists create stuff out of thin air apparently.
Stealing is depriving someone of their property. Copying does not do this at all. You are pushing a false narrative to prop up your flawed argument. Plain and simple.
I don’t see the predictable effects of dropping IP laws as more harmful than the current reality. The idea is to protect small creators but the implementation does the opposite.
The solution, as is with so many societal issues, is UBI.
Authentication of the author is not the same as copyright.
My ideal copyright would be 15 years or death of the creator or the end of sale/support, whichever is earlier. That would mean that Portal 2 has copyright and Portal doesn’t, which sounds about right.
How about an exponentially increasing fee to retain copyright?
Nah. I’d even call 15 years too long.
You don’t pay a plumber every single time you use his work 15 yrs after his death.
To retain copyright:-
$2^n for year n
$1 for year 1
$2 for year 2
$4 for year 3
$1k for year 10
$32k for year 15
$1m for year 20
$1bn for year 30
Why, though? It still pointlessly favors people who already have money. Just get rid of it.
Ok, let’s say the copyright retention fee is only paid when it’s above 1k, I.e. after 10 years.
You are desperate to give rich fucks an avenue to maintain an advantage over everyone else.
I don’t, it’s not the 18th century and the industrial revolution. Copyright had a time and place and that isn’t the here and now. We are worse off for copyright and patients today. Today they enshrine wealth and are a tool to prevent progress and inflate cost.
Copyright died when information became easily accessible. It’s only propped up by those who stand to profit immensely from it. The rest of us not only do not profit from it, it harms us.
Becoming better at technology is the gateway to fucking with copyright. As if they’re going to be able to do shit when I torrent their files over some obscure server in the developing world to over here. Fuck copyright and companies who engage in that. Every game, all kinds of media and intellectual property that these companies own should be stolen from them and distributed freely. This should then be followed by severe cyber attacks on said companies to destroy their infrastructure to the extent that they can never hold creations of artists for themselves. Fuck corporate enslavement of artists and creators. I’d much rather pay $200 a month to be distributed directly to artists than pay a single cent for a game/album provided by Microsoft/Spotify (as an example). Now, some companies are better than others. GOG until recently was something I liked (conceptually anyway, since I don’t play games), and Qobuz and Tidal pay their artists better than most. I am OK with these companies. The likes of Amazon and Spotify and Microsoft should be destroyed so badly that they can no longer function in this space. We should spread the word of piracy and digital freedom away from these bastards.
If copyright was abolished overnight, then the corporations with enough money would control everything. The chance for an individual creator to create and control their unique art would disappear. Works of art and entertainment would forever be controlled by giant corporations.
If copyright were abolished, all FOSS and Creative Commons licenses would be rendered null and void, since they depend on copyright law to work.