You can't blame Warner, they're obviously just protecting artists rights to be creative and innovate.
The premise of copyright is not causing but promoting creation of works. Subtle but important distinction. Nobody said there would be no creation without copyright, just that there would be more with it.
Before imposing a system of copyright to "promote" them, you'd want to be EXTREMELY fucking sure that a) the quality/quantity will go up b) you're fine with massive new amounts of money being siphoned into rent-seeking industries (legal, rights holding companies, etc) c) you don't create side-effects that actually decrease output and/or lower quality
Definitely agree that Stewart Lee's bit on this is genius, though!
For instance - medical research into new drugs isn't something that you sit down and think "I guess I'll do a few hours on the side" right? It is a multi year, multi people job. Either that is state funded, sponsor funded, or you can make money on the end product to pay for costs.
http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/sometimes-its-ok-to...
For example, people are willing to pay for Spotify which with moderate average daily use (3 hours) is about 45 songs a day which comes out to $0.007 a song. Very few artists would be willing to admit that's how much their songs are really worth unless the listener is already a die-hard fan.
Nearly every popular game on Steam can be pirated with enough effort and yet Steam sales are practically a national holiday.
Piracy, like everything else has a cost, which can be beaten by good business rather than government control.
In my case "I get paid to write that which does not exist yet", and in theory that wouldn't change much whether copyright continued to exist or not.
(Abolishment immediately without warning would lead to some messy issues that don't fit in the margin of this post. The reason is simply that everyone is used to the current situation. But it'd sort itself out after a year or two. )
There are studies on these kinds of things. The picture is quite complex for patent systems, where economists struggle to prove whether we're better off with them or we'd be better off without them. There is no such question about the need for a copyright system though -- most studies are more about how much copyright protection is enough.
Ask a random author, musician, or artist how easy it is to make a living, and how much copyright law helps them. And if you do get a positive response, ask how having it apply for more than 10 years helps them.
They did say, "most studies are more about how much copyright protection is enough", to be accurate. :/
With the advent of the printing press, publishers lost their monopoly over the once labor intensive reproduction of texts, so they pleaded that authors should be granted license over the products of their effort to protect and inspire creation of future works, so that they didn't meet the same fate as the publishers. Instead, publishers, still in control of their distribution monopolies, began requiring exclusive use of those licenses, and by using the printing press themselves, saved all of the effort and expense while preventing artists from profiting beyond the transfer of licenses to them.
There's more than one industry in existence today whose business is being middlemen, and with the increasing ubiquity of internet, online marketplaces, and digital appliances, it's become difficult to justify that these rules not change except by that same old argument- but we won't be needed if you do!
For example, if a photographer takes a picture of something and posts it to their online website, without copyright anyone could just up and steal it and claim it as their own, and there'd be nothing the artist could do about it.
Same thing for writers. And video directors. And musicians. Etc.
Yes, it's misused and could use a lot of improvements; however, it's here for a good reason.
Bottom Line: You can improve something without completely getting rid of it. Creative Commons (CC) is a great example of this; it allows for open sharing yet maintains attribution. This protects the artists whilst dismantling any motivation for publishers/distributors/other_companies to be copyright sharks about it.
I suspect a world without copyright would look a lot more like the sistine chapel than it's defenders want to admit.
PS: I would accept Movies as a good counter argument except even 10 years of protection is overkill in most cases due to both the diminishing income streams and time value of money.
The internet has certainly made it easier to get content out there. But it has also made it very evident how rare good talent actually is. The good ones deserve to be able to be rewarded for their work so they can continue to produce more, and unless someone comes up with a better system, copyright is what we have.
Minimally biased raiting systems seem like an effective way to seperate the dreck. Yet, paid content has huge incentives to game the system, but with unpaid content that's far less of an issue.
It's simply special, and nothing can replace it.
Ideally, works should be public domain long before they're traditional to that extent. It's just creepy for a company to assert ownership rights on some piece of culture that's been passed down through your family for generations.
That seems... incredibly reasonable and helpful.
(no sarcasm)
"The speech was drafted with the assistance of Stanley Levison and Clarence Benjamin Jones[17] in Riverdale, New York City. Jones has said that "the logistical preparations for the march were so burdensome that the speech was not a priority for us" and that, "on the evening of Tuesday, Aug. 27, [12 hours before the March] Martin still didn't know what he was going to say"."
I'm not so sure these people would appreciate the fact that you think they should work without being compensated for it, or that somehow, compensation and/or ownership isn't a good reason to do something.
Doesn't matter if it's churches or playing in jazz clubs, writing and making music for a living is a tough business. I've worked some churches that paid quite well - at least industry standard - and I could go online now on CraigsList and find 5+ requests per day asking for music volunteers because religion. In my experience, churches are simply another ill-informed group that frequently want all the benefits of live music without compensating for it. Same goes for well-meaning volunteer organizations.
This happens to physical products too, I don't see how specific individuals not wanting to pay for something has any bearing on the existence / effectiveness of copyright.
Secondly, they're not the beneficiaries of the copyright: it belongs to the King estate.
Are you stating that without copyright no one would write speeches? Would people have just abandoned the Civil Rights movement because of a lack of copyright? That seems like an extreme view.
> To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, < by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors > the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
The whole point of the system is to encourage products that are successful enough to make some royalties and then become public domain.
A new version would never catch on, because it would be under valid copyright.
I'd probably try said product just because they did something I agree with...
The traditional lyrics just seem a bit bland compared with all that sweetness.