| We live in a society with certain ideas of copyright floating around since we were kids. Copyright is a very nice thing for artists to have and I understand why people get defensive about arguments for taking copyright away from them. However, the presumption that you can have copyright on a story is a very modern take. > Why shouldn't I have protection for works I created? It's hard to argue about negatives. In my opinion, the real question is: why should copyright exist in the first place? Copyright in its modern form has existed for what, 400 years? It's not exactly a requirement for a culture to develop. Obviously, you want protection; many people do. There are answers to this question. For one, big companies wouldn't be spending billions on movies, tv, and music, if piracy was legal. The internet allowing instant copies of any work has also changed the situation significantly. On the other hand, piracy is easier than ever, there is way too much free online content to compete with to warrant the prices of a lot of media, and piracy is already effectively legal enough that typing "<Movie name> 2023 free stream" into Google will give you a variety of piracy websites to choose from. On the other hand, most of the internet is very copyright-hostile. From meme templates to fanfiction and embedding foreign site content, most online communities have a very relaxed take on what copyright means. Imagine what would happen if the person who drew the original trollface were to go around demanding copyright fees and starting lawsuits for violating the rights to his property! > What gives someone else the right to just take my story, add tidbits, sell it and make profit? What gives you the right to prevent them from improving your work? If I don't like one of your character and consider the story better if I put in a character of my own, who are you to decide what I do with this idea or not? I'm not anti-copyright (although I think the current form is absolutely ridiculous with its "70 years after the death of the author" terms) and I do enjoy the feeling of having control over my works, but I can't come up with a good rational reason why I have the right to tell someone else what they can or cannot do with the works I create. We probably need some way to protect small creators (Patreon and friends are an excellent development!) but I would prefer to live in a world where https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GFW-eEWXlc can exist without the ever-present threat of lawyers. |
If this were the case I'd just not publish, and keep my story with me, limited to a few people I trust. This is what you'll get if copyright wasn't there.
>On the other hand, most of the internet is very copyright-hostile. From meme templates to fanfiction and embedding foreign site content, most online communities have a very relaxed take on what copyright means. Imagine what would happen if the person who drew the original trollface were to go around demanding copyright fees and starting lawsuits for violating the rights to his property!
Most of the artistic internet doesn't contain works (outside of certain OSS communities) that may have taken someone years to complete and consists of hundreds of thousands of words. I'm amused that you should be somehow okay with the idea of taking a 300,000 words story, adding 10k words, modifying some bits, and selling it as "yours" and profiting off my work.
>Copyright in its modern form has existed for what, 400 years? It's not exactly a requirement for a culture to develop.
>In my opinion, the real question is: why should copyright exist in the first place?
I mean, you can just say that about modern forms of democracies and civil rights. Then why have them in the first place. We can have monarchies, autocracies, theocratic/thalassocratic republics just fine.