This is a specious argument. It is impossible for us to gesture at the works of art that do not exist because of draconian copyright. Humans have been remixing each others' works for millions of years, and the artificial restriction on derivative work is actively destroying our collective culture. There should be thousands of professional works (books, movies, etc.) based on Lord Of The Rings by now, many of which would surpass the originals in quality given enough time, and we have been robbed of them. And Lord Of The Rings is an outlier in that it still remains culturally relevant despite its age; most works will remain copyrighted for far longer than their original audience was even alive, meaning that those millions of flowers never get their chance to bloom.
> It is impossible for us to gesture at the works of art that do not exist because of draconian copyright.
We can gesture at the tiniest tip of the iceberg by observing things that are regularly created in violation of copyright but not typically attacked and taken down until they get popular:
- Game modding, romhacks, fangames, remakes, and similar.
- Memes (often based on copyrighted content)
- Stage play adaptations of movies (without authorization
- Unofficial translations
- Machinima
- Speedruns, Let's Play videos, and streams (very often taken down)
- Music remixes and sampling
- Video mashups
- Fan edits/cuts, "Abridged" series
- Archiving and preservation of content that would otherwise be lost
There are several other publishers who regularly go after gameplay footage of people playing their games. It's not as visible, because it's hard to notice the absence of a thing.
This is all true, and in a vacuum I agree with it. There's a pretty core problem with these kinds of assertions, though: people have to make rent. Never have I seen a substantiative, pass-the-sniff-test argument for how to make practical this system when your authors and your artists need to eat in a system of modern capital.
So I'm asking genuinely: what's your plan? What's the A to B if you could pass a law tomorrow?
> What's the A to B if you could pass a law tomorrow?
Top priority: UBI, together with a world in which there's so much surplus productivity that things can survive and thrive without having "how does this make huge amounts of money" as its top priority to optimize for.
Apart from that: Conventions/concerts/festivals (tickets to a unique live event with a crowd of other fans), merchandise (pay for a physical object), patronage (pay for the ongoing creation of a thing), crowdfunding/Kickstarter (pay for a thing to come into existence that doesn't exist yet), brand/quality preference (many people prefer to support the original even if copies can be made), commissions (pay for unique work to be created for you), something akin to "venture funding", and the general premise that if a work spawns ten thousand spinoffs and a couple of them are incredible hits they're likely to direct some portion of their success back towards the work they build upon if that's generally looked upon favorably.
People have an incredible desire both to create and to enjoy the creations of others, and that's not going to stop. It is very likely that the concept of the $1B movie would disappear, and in trade we'd get the creation of far far more works.
> UBI, together with a world in which there's so much surplus productivity that things can survive and thrive without having "how does this make huge amounts of money" as its top priority to optimize for.
The poster didn't posit it as "how does this make huge amounts of money," they asked how copyright authors are supposed to pay their rent in your scenario. Your solution of course, has nothing to do with copyright policy.
Yeah, this is what I was expecting. I have no love for Disney et al but I think that this is dire (aside from UBI, which would be great but is fictional without a large-scale shift in American culture).
"Everybody else gets paid for the work they do; you get paid for things around the work you do, if you're lucky" is a way to expect creatives to live that, to put a point on it, always ends up being "for thee, but not for me". It's bad enough today--I think you described something worse.
The current model is "most people get paid for the work they do, but you get paid for people copying work you've already done", which already seems asymmetric. This would change the model to "people get paid for the work they do, and not paid again for copying work they've already done".
We converged on a system that protects the commercialization of copies because, in practice, "the first copy costs $X0,000" is not a viable way to pay your rent.
If we want art to be the province of the willfully destitute or the idle rich (and I do mean rich, the destruction of a functional middle class has compacted the available free time of huge swaths of society!), this is a good way to do it. I would rather other voices be included.
We converged on a system that makes copying illegal because that system was invented in an era when the only people who could copy were those with specialized equipment (e.g. printing presses). In that world, those who might do the copying were often larger than those whose works were being copied, and copyright had more potential to be "protective".
That system hasn't been updated for a world in which everyone can make perfect-fidelity copies or modifications at the touch of a key; on the contrary, it's been made stricter. And worse, per the story we're commenting on here, the much larger players who are mass-copying works largely by individuals or smaller entities have become effectively exempt from copyright, while copyright continues to restrict individuals and smaller entities, and the systems designed by those large players and trained on all those copied works are crowding individuals out of art and other creative endeavors.
I don't think the current system deserves valorizing, nor can it be credited as being intentionally designed to bring about most of the effects it currently serves.
I'm not suggesting that deleting copyright overnight will produce a perfect system, nor am I suggesting that it has zero positive effects. I'm suggesting that it's doing substantial harm and needs a massive overhaul, not minor tweaks.
Many of the funding models Josh listed are directpayment for creative work being done. If anything, in the current model creative work is often not paid directly (unless done as work for hire where the creative doesn't get to own their creation) but instead is a gamble that you can later on profit from the "intellectual property".
>So I'm asking genuinely: what's your plan? What's the A to B if you could pass a law tomorrow?
Patreon (or liberapay etc). Take a look at youtube: so many creators are actively saying "youtube doesn't pay the bills, if you like us then please support us on Patreon". Patreon works. Some of the time, at least - just like copyright. Also crowdsourcing (e.g. Kickstarter), which worked out well for games like FTL and Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
Although, I personally don't believe copyright should be abolished - it just needs some amendments. It needs a duration amendment - not a flat duration (fast-fashion doesn't need even 5 years of copyright, but aerospace software regularly needs several decades just to break profitable), but either some duration-mechanism or a simple discrimination by industry.
Also, I think any sort of functional copyright (e.g. software copyright) ought to have an incentive or requirement to publish the functional bits - for instance, router firmware ought to require the source code in escrow (to be published once copyright duration expires) for any legal protections against reverse-engineering to be mounted. Unpublished source code is a trade secret, and should be treated as such.
Also, these discussions don't seem to mention fanfiction, which demonstrates plenty of people write good works without being professionally paid and without the protection of copyright.
How many subscribers on patreon are there because the creators provides pay-walled extra content? How many would remain if that pay-walled content would be mirrored directly by youtube or on youtube?
Crowdsourcing might work better, but how many would donate to a game where, instead of getting it cheaper as a kickstarter supporter, they could get free after it is released?
Copyright is not optimized for making sure artists and authors get enough to eat. It's optimized for people with a lot of money to make even more money by exploiting artists and authors.
I doubt there's a simple answer (I certainly don't have one), but the current system is not exactly a creators' utopia.
My own business model is to create Things That Don't Exist Yet. This (typically bespoke work) is actually the majority of work in any era I think. For me, copyright doesn't do much, it mostly gets in the way.
If you pass the law tomorrow -all else being equal- my profits would stay equal or go up somewhat.
