Here's an opposing view:
https://medium.com/@jkdegen/5-seriously-dumb-myths-about-cop...
https://medium.com/@jkdegen/5-seriously-dumb-myths-about-cop...
> Myth #5. Artists Feel Restricted by Copyright
Remixing works under copyright means you need the author's permission to do so, usually by paying royalties. This would be fine if copyrights ended at some point. Currently, in the US, they last way past the death of the author.
> Myth #4. Copyright Harms the Public Domain
He mentions The Little Prince as if all works are really popular. There are tons of works that are not popular, their authors don't even care about them anymore or are dead or companies have gone bankrupt, and remain under copyright. This makes it illegal for people to make copies and keep these works alive. Access to such usually also requires payment and what's affordable for some may not be so affordable for others.
> Myth #3. Copyright is an Attack on Artistic Freedom
He only mentions the freedom of the original author. Indeed, their freedom is not touched. Everybody else is hurt, though. Nobody else can express their artistic freedom on works under copyright without permission (which usually means paying royalties, but can also be impossible if the author doesn't approve the derived work).
> Myth #2. Copyright Costs Consumers
Nobody argues that authors need to be compensated for their work. How much is "fair" is a whole different story. Should they keep being compensated 25 years, 50 years, 100 years, 500 years, forever?
> Myth #1. Copyright only helps Corporations
Copyright, in general, is a good thing. Perpetual copyright is not. Copyright that extends beyond the life of the original author is not. After some time, only corporations will benefit, since their heirs will live much beyond the original authors and will profit on someone else's work.
EDIT: Here's a nice video on why eternal copyright is bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4
But the right to refuse derived work is just as essential to justice as the right to royalties on creative work. For example, Kurt Vonnegut had (and his estate has) the moral right to say "no!" to a neo-Nazi that wants to "remix" Harrison Bergeron into a new story promoting racism.
Whether the derived work is bad or good is beyond this conversation as one could argue is original work is not good/bad enough.
I don't think the compensation argument is a good one. First of all its wielded as if work somehow is valuable in it self and thus warrants "compensation". Which cannot be true, there are many things not worth doing, and even some things better not done at all. In reality though not even copyright ensures any work is compensated. Which, even further makes the connection between copyright and creative work incentives weak.
As others in this thread has pointed out, there are other motivations than monetary. So it's not even given that "compensation" is needed at all (whatever we mean by "needed")
But even if we deem compensation required, what is to say that a free market would fail to provide compensation? As a developer most of the code I produce is paid for buy clients with no specific dependency on copyright. What makes other creative industries different?
So not only do I question your #2, even #1 is suspect in my mind. I don't believe copyright in general is a good thing, and in my mind the burden of proof that it is lies on those promoting it.
As a developer, most likely your clients hold the copyright to the code you write, especially if this is not explicit in any other way. And even if you go one step further, the entire free software movement is based on copyright: the existence of copyright is what guarantees software remains free once published. Otherwise, people could just fork the code and close the source again.
To your last point, given that copyright already exists, is in place, and lasts for way too long, I believe it's the other way around: the burden of the proof lies on whoever wants to change it.