• pjwestin@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    No, Copyright exists to protect creators. It’s just been perverted and abused by the wealthy so that they can indefinitely retain IP. Disney holding on to an IP for 70 years after an author dies is messed up, but Disney taking your art and selling it to a mass audience without giving you a dime is worse.

    • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      Copyright cannot protect 99% of creators because enforcing it takes enormous amounts of time and money. This isn’t really a big deal though because 99% of people who create don’t need these supposed protections.

      That’s right, the amount of writing, art, and music that is created for non-commercial purposes dwarfs what is created for profit.

      Your last tidbit is highly accurate. Big business almost exclusively uses copyright to control others work to the detriment of society.

      • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        Right, but as I said to someone else in this thread, the fact thar copyright can’t protect 99% of creators is a problem with capitalism, not copyright. The fact that our courts favor the wealthy isn’t the fault of copyright law itself.

        Also, you’re correct that most art is created for pleasure, not profit, but that doesn’t mean the need to protect artists’ rights to their creations isn’t necessary, even beyond capitalistic reasons. Bill Waterson, the creator of Calvin & Hobbes, refused to merchandise his art simply because he didn’t want to ruin the image of his characters for a licensing deal. Without copyright law, any company could have slapped his characters on t-shirts and coffee mugs to make a quick buck off of his labor. But because of copyright law, he was able to refuse his publisher’s attempts to franchise his characters (reportedly, he even turned down Spielberg and Lucas’ pitch for an animated series based on the strip).

        • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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          9 days ago

          I think you have bought into the lie about copyright that has been fed to us. It is really hard to look at something objectively when you have been propagandized about it your entire life.

          Currently copyright and the bigger category of intellectual property only exist to benefit commercial interests, this is self-evident. It is not a natural right by any means and is a perversion of the way art and science has existed for all of human history.

          We have to face the reality that in a world of billions of people nothing is really unique. If you are anything like me you would have had many great thoughts, ideas, and projects and seen many other people throughout your life with similar or sometimes identical concepts.

          Who should get to rent seek for these? If I create a very similar painting or song without ever seeing or hearing of another similar one who is the first? Well the current system is first come first serve, but is that really right?

          What about teachers. Should not your teacher get a portion of your creation since they inspired you? What about exposure to other art, should you pay a portion of your earnings if you were inspired by other artist?

          Even when looking at case law with derivative works, what is or is not okay is hardly settled and constantly changes based on the whims of ill-informed judges.

          These questions only begin to scratch the complexity of the situation because of the artificial constraints put on us by intellectual property. I don’t pretend to have the answers except to say there really is no need for any of this.

          Even when looking at something you may think is relatively simple like putting a characters likeness on merchandise it is never cut and dry. I have often wondered if Tigger inspired Hobbes. The likeness including even behavior is rather startling.

          Who has the rights is sometimes not even the person that created it originally. This is especially evident in productions that require lots of people like movies. This leads to interesting facts like most major recording artist don’t even own their own songs.

          Commercial interests love to have it both ways as well. Microsoft used piracy to its advantage to spread its OS across the globe and only cracked down on it after becoming a monopoly.

          I am not trying to muddy the waters here but I want to make it clear that intellectual property, including copyright was created by and for monied interests. It was ill-conceived from the start, based on false premises, and has been pushed to the breaking point from years of coordinated legal tactics.

      • nomous@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        Holy fuck I see some stupid takes posted here but this might be the stupidest.

      • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        Literally everyone who’s ever written a book, recorded a song, painted a painting, or created any other artwork.

        • blazera@lemmy.world
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          10 days ago

          Books and song rights go to the publisher. Graphic artists generally dont own their art they make money from, I.E. illustrations or concept art for various things like shows, movies, games.

          • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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            10 days ago

            First of all, no, publishers don’t necessarily own the copyright. Most authors do a licensing deal with a publisher, but they retain the copyright to their work. My understanding is that music industry contracts vary a lot more, since music is usually more collaborative, but lots of artists still own the rights to their songs. But even if that were true, artists being forced to sell their rights to cooperations isn’t an issue with copyright, it’s an issue with capitalism. It’s like blaming America’s shitty healthcare on doctors instead of a for-profit system controlled by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

            • blazera@lemmy.world
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              9 days ago

              A licensing deal for rights to make money off an intellectual property. I.E. a way to use their wealth to profit even more off something they didnt make. Music industry has fun examples of musicians having to rerecord songs because an ex-record label still owned rights to the original. So there’s situations where a musician entirely created and recorded a song and isnt allowed to sell that recording. And authors and musicians are the closest to owning their work they make a living off of. Any kind of industry visual artist has no ownership of anything.

              Copyright is an issue with capitalism. It only exists for wealthy to profit off of.

              • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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                9 days ago

                I’ve run out of ways to tell you that’s not correct. The explicit purpose of the copyright law in the constitution is to allow creators to profit from their work. If you’re arguing that we should live in a pure communist society, where the products of all labor, including intellectual property, belong to community, fine, but we don’t live in a communist utopia. We live in a capitalist hellscape, and you’re looking at one of the only protections artists have, seeing how it’s been exploited by capitalism, and claiming the protection is the problem. It’s like looking at the minimum wage, seeing how cooperations have lobbied Congress to keep it so low it’s now starvation wage, and coming to the conclusion that the minimum wage needs to be abolished.