[Moxie Mezcal]

I'm late coming to this discussion, but Moejoe made a few points that I really liked and wanted to comment on.

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.

I know a ton of brilliant local artists, musicians, writers, and film makers who create realizing all too well that they probably won't ever make a living solely off of their art. They do things like teaching, graphic design, editing, work-for-hire, or holding down day jobs to pay the bills; they make art out of passion. And I'm not talking about college dropouts or starry-eyed neophytes, I'm talking about people who have been doing this for decades.

Every year we have a indie film festival that draws literally hundreds of movies from around the world. It's not Sundance or Cannes, 99.9% won't make it into theaters or even a wide DVD release. And every year I go and talk to the film makers, some of the most crazy, brilliant, adventurous people I've ever met, and they all say the same thing - it's not about money, it's about doing what you love and sharing it with people, making human connections.

And I live in freakin' San Jose, we barely even count as a real city. Go to any bigger metropolitan area in the world and you'd find an even stronger argument for what I'm talking about - probably in a lot of smaller ones, too.

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 Kafka went unpublished and unpaid in his lifetime, but he still HAD to create.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.

There are a lot more examples of classic artists who continued to create despite going unrecognized in their lifetime, Van Gogh being another of the most oft-cited that springs to mind.

The reactionary, sky-is-falling "without financial incentive, all art would disappear" arguments always strike me as funny because they seem to assume that creativity came into existence with the advent of capitalism.

An artist being able to make a living solely from creating the art that they wanted is actually a relatively new phenomenon as far as human history goes. Go to any non-modern art museum in the world and count the number of commissioned portraits of royalty and aristocrats if you think otherwise. Or hop on wikipedia and see how many famous authors relied on teaching, journalism, or criticism to make ends meet.

This doesn't address the moral issues involved in piracy of course. This is just to dispel the myth that the end of copyright-as-we-know-it would mean the end of art. It would only be the end of the current corporate paradigm of commoditizing art. But if you are really that concerned about the corporations' well-being, I wouldn't worry too much. I have enough faith in capitalism that I'm confident someone would be able to dream up a new scheme for financially exploiting both artist and audience soon enough.

The moral question isn't something I think you'll get far debating, it's just about personal values. I personally take free art to try something new and regularly pay for art from creators that I know I like. Everyone's entitled to their own beliefs though, even though suggesting filesharing is a capital offense and akin to eating babies is I think going a little far in anyone's book, but if that's how you really feel then more power to you.

I personally take more moral issue with an author who believes it's more important to have money in his pocket than to have a copy of his book in the reader's hands. I'd also consider morally-suspect any artists who say they'd stop creating if they couldn't make a living off it. But that's just me.

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 fucked whichever way they turn.

God bless you, Moejoe.