Quote:
Originally Posted by carld
In what way? We've already seen that donation buttons don't work. Without copyright we're back to relying on rich patrons supporting artists, and mostly keeping that art for themselves.
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No we're not. Artists have supported themselves for hundreds of years without either patron or copyright. It's an interesting thing that mass producing your work cheaply and competing with rampant copying, actually paved the way for independently successfull authors. It's also interesting that copyright reduced the average income of authors.
I'm not saying that abolishing copyright will be good or bad for the market today, I am not saying that digital medias hasn't made it even easier to duplicate information. But in spite of being really cheap to get a print run up with cheap mass produced pfennig paperbacks, publishers used to be able to survive despite copyist, and allow both themselves and authors to earn a good living.
Saying the patron system is the alternative to Copyright is really bad conjecture.
It's like a false syllogism:
In the past before copyright, authors had to rely on patrons.
Therefore if copyright is abolished, authors will have to rely on patrons.
Conveniently forgetting the big time period inbetween.