Who does IP serve? It seems to me it serves very wealthy people who have the legal means to protect it. With that in mind, I think we should just get rid of it.
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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Asklemmy
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As someone who makes minimum wage from my intellectual property, the IP laws (in the UK) have allowed me to prevent the very wealthy just taking my ideas and profiting from them.
And they have tried repeatedly.
It isn't the law, but the corruption of the law that's at issue. However, without that legal framework there would be no financial incentive for anyone but the wealthy to make IP.
Is that what you want? Entertainment by big corporations only, and art made solely by the upper middle classes?
People already make memes and mods for free. Humans are a social species and will continue to create and share things until the end of time. Making money off of creation is a privilege for only a tiny few.
I see you make art. What if I said to you, I'd like to give you some money for that art, for maybe a print of it. Not just so that I can own some but because I want to support you.
And then someone just copies your art and gives it to me free. You get no money for it.
Are you genuinely OK with that? Are you saying that everything you make is copyright free?
Not the person you're asking, but I'd say yes. Don't bother charging for bits, except for something like the bandcamp model, i.e. "yes, i could pirate this but i want to support the creator and it's really easy to do so".
We have better funding models now that we've solved the problem of copying at zero cost. Patreon is a good and popular one, as well as kickstarters. You can't pirate something that doesn't get made, which is the perfect solution. Other art like music also makes money off of things like live performances that can't be digitized.
Note that the one aspect of copyright that I like is attribution requirements. I think it's perfectly fine to hand out information to anyone, as long as you say "here's this cool thing, this is who created it, and this is how you can give them money".
I'm telling you this as someone that works in the arts, that's just not true.
You can pirate digital material and repackage it. I see illustrators getting their designs ripped off by large scale clothing manufacturers all the time.
Similarly, I know some acts that have heard their music on adverts and films and haven't been paid. It seems like it is being stolen if you ask me.
There needs to be protection or the creation of art becomes a luxury for those that can afford to not make money from it.
I respect that you work in the arts. However, I think too many people worried about copyright think that things would look similar to the way they are today, but the situation would be radically different without copyright. For example, Disney wouldn't exist. You wouldn't have large corporations taking and not giving back, because those large corporations wouldn't exist like they do now in the first place.