Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeD
For the sake of discussion, lets assume you can't enforce copyright on the Internet, are you implying that companies and individuals should allow their works to be freely distributed? Is so, then how do you propose authors make a living?
Do you think Books, Games and Films would continue to be made if there were no copyright laws to provide a financial incentive, outside of enthusiasts?
Maybe I've come to the wrong conclusion on your views to copyright. If so, what is it you're proposing?
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How would authors make a living? They'd make a living as they do now (the vast majority that is) by getting a job; usually teaching creative writing
Only a very few at the top of the publishing pile actually get to write for a living, as with all branches of the creative industries. The mid list is all but dead, advances are drying up, if not in a drought already, editors are leaving in droves, the big houses are buying less and less and the small presses are dropping like flies. Publishing is a dying old man and it won't last much longer in any case.
For all arguable purposes, copyright doesn't mean anything to your average person now anyway. Name a song, any song and I can download it within a minute. Name a book, any popular book and I can probably have that within a minute also. A popular film, 20mins to 3hrs. A video game for PC or XBOX360 or the Wii, maybe 1hr to 2hrs. Copyright doesn't work any more. It can't protect the digital from being copied. It was put in place to guarantee that arists would continue to create, but it has been hijacked and pirated by the Disneycorps of this world for their own greedy ends.
Here's what would happen if all copyright ceased to exist tomorrow:
Nothing.
I would still write my stories, so would Stephen King. Young, hungry film directors would still make their cheap films. Actors would still act. Musicians would still pick up their guitars and compose love songs. The world would continue to spin, and art would still be made.
Somewhere along the line we've been convinced that creativity=job=money. It doesn't. A child is infinitely creative and can provide infinite joy to a parent, a relative, or a similarly atuned adult who sees that child's free drawing upon a page. Nobody expects to pay that child, nor does the child expect payment. Kafka went unpublished and unpaid in his lifetime, but he still HAD to create. Emily Dickinson had less than a dozen of her 800 plus poems published in her lifetime, but she still wrote.
And you use the word 'enthusiast' as somewhat of an insult. I'd take an enthusiast, a passionate so-called amateur any day over the beige sludge most of the corps pump out as entertainment to feed the drooling tv-coma masses. Enthusiasm is to be lauded, applauded, not derided and scorned.
Copyright helps only the corporations who end up controlling the copyright. The artist, like the proverbial prostitute hired to perform a spit-roast, is f**ked whichever way they turn.