"Royalties are not how most writers or musicians make their living. Musicians by and large make a living with a relationship with an audience that is economically harnessed through performance and ticket sales."
leaves a lot to be desired. OK, so how do writers make their living? By giving live readings? I think not.
There are about 10,000 books that make any measurable money at all, at any given time, and only a small fraction of those earn the authors enough to live on. Even famous authors of widely read books often have a "day job."
Books I have co-authored are "pirated," mainly in markets where wages are lower than would support a local edition at local pricing. My publisher does not use DRM on e-books, and e-books still rapidly outpaced paper books.
If you do the thought experiment, lack of copyright protection or a significantly shorter term of copyright, or some other variant, like a publishers' agreement not to trespass on other publishers' author relationships for some term, would not change my direct income from book writing very much.
Publishing would adapt: Books might be serialized so that subscribers get first access on a continuing basis. Or frequent editions (which you might see anyway, with e-books) might become the norm.
Apart from the handful of authors of "blockbusters" the book publishing economy would not change that much. We have made, and are protecting at great expense a novel result: A small number of authors, musicians, motion-picture makers, etc. can make big money through mass-reproduction of their works.
Is that an advancement of civilization worth subverting all the potential for free expression the Internet provides, or not?
The glib answer is "most don't", and indeed you will find a lot of writers who have other jobs. Journalists are writers, and the relationship there is fairly clear. PR and marketing materials need writing too.
In short, you make your living by a company renting or commissioning your talents. Musicians had only one other option before recorded music - performing - and even then that wasn't always feasible. Think of classical music and its performance demands.
You joke about live readings, but the ancient poets did just that. They also complained of poverty. People really do suffer for their art.
Ug.. it's pointless to state how things currently work in a meta discussion about whether the current method makes sense.
I'm asking you to justify copyright, not explain it. I repeat, why do you think you should get to control what other people do with information?
> I don't think I get to control what other people do with information, but you should have the right to control what others do with your work.
And I say you shouldn't, so justify your belief. You should be able to control yourself, that's it; not the products of your labor when copied. Information is not property, you don't have less of it if I copy it and you should have no say over me copying it regardless of who produced it.
The interesting thing is that the same argument can in fact be made for property. How can you claim to own something at all? It's related to labor, having spent x amount of time working to buy something.
You're still assuming a world where copyright exists. Are you unable to think outside of those bounds? Do you not see that perhaps you wouldn't even attempt to do this in a world without copyright because you'd know up front you can't make money selling it?
> The interesting thing is that the same argument can in fact be made for property.
No it can't. Property is physical, if I steal your car, you no longer have it. If I copy your novel, you don't even know it happened. Physical property and intellectual property aren't at all the same.
> It's related to labor, having spent x amount of time working to buy something.
No, it really isn't.
Physical property is not different, your argument is: "it is" (in italic). But just to show you that a similar argument can be made that includes physical property I leave this Rousseau quote here.
"The first man who had fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody"
OK, if you're just going to be ignorant, goodbye.
Right now, it's a right, yes (what exactly does 'basic' mean?). The question is whether it should be.
>Same with software, a GPL license would be worthless without copyright.
The GPL is just an hack, using copyright to achieve a goal. If you were rewriting IP law, you could very well institute copyleft without copyright.
>Lastly, a GPL license wouldn't be possible to enforce without copyright, or the concept of a copyright owner.
Yes for the GPL, no for copyleft. The GPL was simply a mechanism that Stallman et all found to enable copyleft without having the power to rewrite the law.
If you did have the power to rewrite the law - and if you were to eliminate copyright, you would - it'd be perfectly possible to add a 'copyleft right' without relying on copyright.
The problem is that in Common law all those rights are based to the Copyright concept, and that blinds people to assume that must be. Here in Europe, we have 'authorship rights' - such as attribution - and they are not based on copyright; copyright is just one of them. You could take it out without affecting other authorship rights.
Few writers make a living from writing, not because they are denied the opportunity, but because not enough people are willing to pay for it, or even interested in it! The same is true with other artists.