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It may surprise you, but artists need to buy things like food, water and pay for their basic necessities like electricity, rent and taxes. Otherwise they die or

It may surprise you, but artists need to buy things like food, water and pay for their basic necessities like electricity, rent and taxes. Otherwise they die or go bankrupt. In our current society, that means they need some sort of means to make money from their work. Copyright, at least in theory, exists to incentivize the creation of art by protecting an artists ability to monetize it. If you abolish copyright today, under our current economic framework, what will happen is that people create less art because it goes from a (semi-)viable career to just being completely worthless to pursue. It's simply not a feasible option unless you fundamentally restructure society (which is a different argument entirely.)

Zambyte 1y ago
Amazing. Have you considered reading the articles I linked? They aren't even that long.
- noirscape 1y ago
  I did and they aren't convincing. The first is an argument of how a popular interpretation of a work still under copyright can subsume the fact the original work is in the public domain, using Alice in Wonderland as an example. (I also happen to think it's a particularly terrible example - if you want to make this argument, The Little Mermaid is by far the stronger version of this argument.) It also misidentifies Disney as the copyright boogeyman, which is a pretty common categorical error. (Disney had very little to do with the length of US copyright. The length of copyright is pretty much entirely the product of geopolitics and international agreements, not Disney.) Its an interesting argument, but not one I find particularly convincing for abolishing copyright, at most shortening the length of it. (Which I do believe is needed.) The second one is the "just solve capitalism and we can abolish copyright entirely" argument which is... a total non-starter. Yes, in an idealized utopia, we don't need capitalism or copyright and people can do things just because they want to and society provides for the artist just because humans all value art just that much. It's a fun utopic ideal, but there's many steps between the current state of the world and "you can abolish the idea of copyright", and we aren't even close to that state yet.

Zambyte 1y ago

Amazing. Have you considered reading the articles I linked? They aren't even that long.

noirscape 1y ago
I did and they aren't convincing. The first is an argument of how a popular interpretation of a work still under copyright can subsume the fact the original work is in the public domain, using Alice in Wonderland as an example. (I also happen to think it's a particularly terrible example - if you want to make this argument, The Little Mermaid is by far the stronger version of this argument.) It also misidentifies Disney as the copyright boogeyman, which is a pretty common categorical error. (Disney had very little to do with the length of US copyright. The length of copyright is pretty much entirely the product of geopolitics and international agreements, not Disney.) Its an interesting argument, but not one I find particularly convincing for abolishing copyright, at most shortening the length of it. (Which I do believe is needed.) The second one is the "just solve capitalism and we can abolish copyright entirely" argument which is... a total non-starter. Yes, in an idealized utopia, we don't need capitalism or copyright and people can do things just because they want to and society provides for the artist just because humans all value art just that much. It's a fun utopic ideal, but there's many steps between the current state of the world and "you can abolish the idea of copyright", and we aren't even close to that state yet.