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You own your labor. It's not unlike any other job where you have to put in time to get something out of it. As a programmer, I don't own any line of code or alg
by norea-armozel 11y ago
You own your labor. It's not unlike any other job where you have to put in time to get something out of it. As a programmer, I don't own any line of code or algorithm which I leverage. I am skilled labor, pure and simple. And you as an artist are also skilled labor.
The question should be how to monetize your labor? That answer isn't easily given but I can guess it would require a whole new method of payment. For example, a musician in the vast majority of cases lives from the money earned in performances as very few are writers of their own songs (that's where the current money is found in terms of the music industry). Thus, musicians would monetize as they always have, through payment for performances. It's when you get into writing lyrics or entire songs (sheet music plus lyrics) is where things may become complex. If the writer and musician are the same person then the person would have to default to performances to ensure some measure of payment. As for the song itself, that would be something left to the creator to figure out.
As for writing books, well that's even more complex at least in terms of reprints. But first runs would still go through publishers like Amazon which means there's some guarantee of revenue (just not to the projected sums you may assume). But today's small time writer isn't working the gravy train any more than the musician is. If anything, both musician and writer are just could/would be profiteers.
It's blind luck either profession finds success. Copyright doesn't offer much in the way of protection. What happens now is that human beings in general value your work. Thus pay you as we do now. Copyright is just the formality to prevent non-payment from other parties such as publishers. Copyright today isn't much of a benefit even there since many publishers write contracts to their advantage. What should happen is that copyright should largely (and in my opinion solely) apply to companies. And it should be by default that the majority of all proceeds be held in trust to the creator of the work even if the company in question offered the means to produce said proceeds. I think this approach would go further to ensure artists and content creators have a better chance at a livable wage. But it shouldn't include lifetime of the creator plus X years in any capacity. It should be up the creator of the work to register for the copyright as before the 1970s. And it should be easy as filling out a form on the web with a copy of the original work in question for verification with the US Copyright office or its analogs in other countries.
- api 11y agoIf you only own your labor, you are a serf.
- norea-armozel 11y agoThat's the only thing anyone can own in reality. The other concepts of property can only exist with the mechanisms of the State. Capitalism in this function is an organ of the State and can only operate within a State since without a monopoly on force (be it a tribal council, a brutal tyrant, a publicly traded company, or a democracy) there's no means to deprive others of their labor or the product of their labor. And that is exactly what copyright does as a side effect. So, within a State we have to ask the question regarding how to best protect both labor and the products of someone's labor. It's not as easy as writing a computer program to be sure. I'm just pointing out that effectively all copyright doesn't effectively pay a proper wage as like all titled property it benefits those who can leverage the legal system to their favor. And historically speaking, copyright law has inevitably favored those who can pay the lawyers the most which is not the vast majority of creators (as labor).
- williamcotton 11y ago90% of copyright is handling registrations and settling transfers, updating the account books at various places... just a shit ton legal and accounting grunt work. We've got skyscrapers filled with said grunts all over the Western world. Enforcement has always been separate, even before copyright and from the very beginnings of the Stationers monopoly. Despite the existence of the High Commission, the reality of censorial control of the press at this time did not primarily lie with the stationers. Certainly, they had a role to play in the politics and practice of sixteenth century censorship,[24] but in fact it was not the stationers but rather "[t]wo long-standing institutions, parliament and the royal prerogative, [that] proved to be Elizabethan England's most useful means for effecting censorship" [Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England, 19] http://www.copyrighthistory.org/cam/tools/request/showRecord?id=commentary_uk_1557 http://www.copyrighthistory.org/cam/tools/request/showRecord... It really could just be as easy as writing a computer program. Spotify is basically a voluntary collection agency that honors IP contracts. If we can make it so the legal and accounting services are computerized, with software both writing and enforcing contracts, we could make copyright registration and transfer settlement incredibly cheap. That's the main reason why copyright law has favored those who can pay the lawyers and accountants the most, they have always been necessary in order to make the entire system function.