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Sustainable-creativity-post-copyright.md (5593B)


  1. ---
  2. title: Sustainable creativity in a world without copyright
  3. date: 2021-12-23
  4. ---
  5. I don't believe in copyright. I argue that we need to get rid of copyright, or
  6. at least dramatically reform it. [The public domain has been stolen from us][0],
  7. and I want it back. Everyone reading this post has grown up in a creative world
  8. defined by capitalism, in which adapting and remixing works — a
  9. fundamental part of the creative process — is illegal. The commons is
  10. dead, and we suffer for it. But, this is all we've ever known. It can be
  11. difficult to imagine a world without copyright.
  12. [0]: /2020/08/24/Alice-in-Wonderland.html
  13. When I present my arguments on the subject, the most frequent argument I hear in
  14. response is something like the following: "artists have to eat, too". The answer
  15. to this argument is so mind-bogglingly obvious that, in the absence of
  16. understanding, it starkly illuminates just how successful capitalism has been in
  17. corrupting a broad human understanding of empathy. So, I will spell the answer
  18. out: why do we have a system which will, for any reason, deny someone access to
  19. food? How unbelievably cruel is a system which will let someone starve because
  20. they cannot be productive within the terms of capitalism?
  21. My argument is built on the more fundamental understanding that the access to
  22. fundamental human rights such as food, shelter, security, and healthcare are not
  23. contingent on their ability to be productive under the terms of capitalism. And
  24. I emphasize the "terms of capitalism" here deliberately: how much creativity is
  25. stifled because it cannot be expressed profitably? The system is not just cruel,
  26. but it also limits the potential of human expression, which is literally the
  27. only thing that creative endeavours are concerned with.
  28. The fact that the "starving artist" is such a common trope suggests to us that
  29. artists aren't putting food on the table under the copyright regime, either.
  30. Like in many industries under capitalism, artists are often not the owners of
  31. the products of their labor. Copyright protects the rights holder, not the
  32. author. The obscene copyright rules in the United States, for example, are not
  33. doing much benefit for the artist when the term ends 70 years after their death.
  34. Modern copyright law was bought, paid for, and written by corporate copyright
  35. owners, not artists. What use is the public domain to anyone when something
  36. published today cannot be legally remixed by even our great-great-grandchildren?
  37. Assume that we address both of these problems: we create an empathetic system
  38. which never denies a human being of their fundamental right to live, and we
  39. eliminate copyright. Creativity will thrive under these conditions. How?
  40. Artists are free to spend their time at their discretion under the new
  41. copyright-free regime. They can devote themselves to their work without concern
  42. for whether or not it will sell, opening up richer and more experimental forms
  43. of expression. Their peers will be working on similar terms, freeing them to
  44. more frequent collaborations of greater depth. They will build upon each other's
  45. work to create a rich commons of works and derivative works.
  46. There's no escaping the fact that derivation and remixing is a fundamental part
  47. of the creative process, and that copyright interferes with this process. Every
  48. artist remixes the works of other artists: this is how art is made. Under the
  49. current copyright regime, this practice ranges from grey-area to illegal, and
  50. because money makes right, rich and powerful artists aggressively defend their
  51. work, extracting rent from derivative works, while shamelessly ripping off works
  52. from less powerful artists who cannot afford to fight them in court. Eliminating
  53. copyright rids us of this mess and acknowledges that remixing is part of the
  54. creative process, freeing artists to build on each other's work.
  55. This is not a scenario in which artists stop making money, or in which the world
  56. grinds to a halt because no one is incentivized to work anymore. The right to
  57. have your fundamental needs met does not imply that we must provide everyone
  58. with a luxurious lifestyle. If you want a nicer house, more expensive food, to
  59. go out to restaurants and buy fancy clothes — you need to work for it. If
  60. you want to commercialize your art, you can sell CDs and books, prints or
  61. originals, tickets to performances, and so on. You can seek donations from
  62. your audience through crowdfunding platforms, court wealthy patrons of the arts,
  63. or take on professional work making artistic works like buildings and art
  64. installations for public and private sector. You could even get a side job
  65. flipping burgers or take on odd jobs to cover the costs of materials like paint
  66. or musical instruments — but not your dinner or apartment. The money you
  67. earn stretches longer, not being eaten away by health insurance or rent or
  68. electricity bills. You invest your earnings into your art, not into your
  69. livelihood.
  70. Copyright is an absurd system. Ideas do not have intrinsic value. Labor has
  71. value, and goods have value. Ideas are not scarce. By making them artificially
  72. so, we sabotage the very process by which ideas are made. Copyright is
  73. illegitimate, and we can, and ought to, get rid of it.
  74. ---
  75. Aside: I came across a couple of videos recently that I thought were pretty
  76. interesting and relevant to this topic. Check them out:
  77. - [Everything is a Remix Part 1 (2021), by Kirby Ferguson](https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=MZ2GuvUWaP8)
  78. - [The Art Market is a Scam (And Rich People Run It)](https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=ZZ3F3zWiEmc)