> How have our democracies not abolished copyright law yet? These laws only serve the 1%
Yeah, fuck those billionaire authors and artists in coffee shops not wanting people to rip off the books and art they create without compensation.
Yeah, fuck those billionaire authors and artists in coffee shops not wanting people to rip off the books and art they create without compensation.
https://archive.bookstr.com/article/royalty-wars-over-star-w...
Copyright doesn't protect small-time authors - because small-time authors don't have the means to harness the legal system to their advantage the way that big corpos that take advantage of them do.
But still, if someone posts a copy of your book or painting online, you can pretty cheaply file a DMCA request that it be taken down, and most large players will comply. If you throw out copyright law altogether, you get rid of that too.
Good, get rid of copyright law! It has only lead to pure rent seeking.
What would be controversial is the current form of copyright that had been extended and expanded multiple times even during lifetime of many of us alive, often said semi-jokingly said to have been forced by Disney to keep Mickey Mouse covered under it until it had finally expired 70 years after the first publication and long after the death of its creator.
The censorship system was abolished but the publishers wanted to keep the licensing system, so they came up with a new idea: licensed monopolies to publish specific books.
Copyright is a sham. It does not protect the small guy, only the rich corporations.
I am back to piracy, now on a moral imperative. I can pay for stuff, but I think the morally superior thing to do is to pirate away.
Of course, one thing needed for this is the political will as well as getting rid of the idea of defending exploitation by the billionaire class by conflating their needs with the needs of starving artists because one can technically argue that copyright helps both, despite everyone knowing that one party is benefiting a lot more from it than the other.
The small artist copyright is a red herring. I think the number of small artists who make money from their work is frightfully small. For example, my partner makes some rather nice jewelry that is different from anything out there. We're doing the craft fair circuit to see if she can sell any and if it's worth continuing to make them.
She sells a relatively small number of pieces at each fair. Occasionally it's even enough to cover expenses.
Would copyright help her? No, because we wouldn't have the money to sue. Small copyright violations might be worth a cease and desist. Large copyright violations would have more money than us for the lawsuit. We would need that Goldilocks-sized violation. They are small enough to be responsive to the threat of a lawsuit but big enough that they have enough money that would be worthwhile suing them, i.e. enough to pay our lawyer.
That is the fault of the way the legal system works, not anything to do with copyright law. It is true that we need a system in which you can't just get away with breaking the law if you have deeper pockets than your victim, but that will be true whether or not we have laws protecting copyright.