The point I was trying to make was that occupying mindspace, providing inspiration, being culturally influencal etc. are idealistic, non-monitary rewards that should be part of the equation when discussing alleged IP-theft, remixing, attribution and so on.
I'm not saying their shouldn't be any rules. All I'm saying is that there should be a discussion of how we want to handle these things going forward. This train ain't stopping.
Maybe your avg DeviantArt painter needs more IP-protection and -rights than Damien Hurst? Maybe an unknown, independent blogger doing important original research should be attributed more prominently than an article by The Times? Idk.
That's an answer we have. To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.
If we have to squint hard to make our justification align with copyright's purpose or have to follow a long logic-chain to get back to it's purpose - that's a strong indicator we have lost our way.
Once they hit the tipping point of broad cultural absorbtion (think Banksy) AND/OR raking in absurd amounts of cash, move their IP into the public domain more aggressively (think Disney, NYT, etc.). How exactly this would work should be debated.
They'd still own the IP and have all the rights to use it commercially, but other's would be able to use it as inspiration, remix and maybe even resell it if attributed (or cheaply licensed).
In other words: "IP-Tax" the unproportionally successful.
This is an unsophisticated view because it looks at a risk/reward scenario and assigns zero value to the risk.
The risk has value - regardless of the success, or reward.
Put another way: you don't get to discount the risk to zero when it results in a large reward.
Entities that took no risks and received enormous rewards (like President George W. Bush involvement in the Texas Rangers[1]) are probably quite pleased that you ignore them and focus on artists that sacrifice traditional life scripts (an enormous risk) and, very rarely, achieve great success.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_life_of_George_W....
Not all my effort turned into dinners tho. And some types of work once paid for dinners but can't any more.
My #4 son is an artist/content creator. He eats based on what his non-art employment will buy. Perhaps one day people will find his art desirable and he could eat from that. It'll be a case where he worked long and hard on a project, was paid once for it and that's it for that.
That's what reality looks like for all artists - excepting a small percentage.
All that said, I really wouldn't want his dinner to come at the expense of everyone else being restrained by massive system of corrupt, draconian law that rigidly controls everyone's behavior for 150 years, primarily benefits wealthy and powerful rent-seeking corporations, is readily applied to censorship and is more likely to knee-cap other artists than to provide them anything like a living wage.
That seems indistinguishable from evil.
You might know some brilliant programmers yourself who do great work while funded by an ad giant like Meta or Google. Sometimes less nice people, like the Saudi Arabian Sovereign fund, funds companies like Uber.
I struggle to think of any evil system that isn’t warped into doing some good by someone in it. That’s the complexity of it all.