| > And they would slowly dwindle and die as their revenue streams dried up Presumably they wouldn't just do literally nothing in this new Copyrightless world, I imagine with their trillions of dollars they can come up with new business ideas in this new world devoid of intellectual property rights. > They're already "harming" small creators in these same ways, particularly because extended copyright means we can't have derivative works, thus stifling innovations of smaller creators right now. Okay, but I don't get what type of innovations - other than AI chatbots, and I mention this with a huge asterisk because all people are asking for is for these trillion dollar corporations to pay the people who's work they're benefiting from - are being stifled right now? There's more media than ever before and it's only accelerating despite all the claims of stifled innovations. Genuine question, do you have a list of things that you'd say are being stifled by over-aggressive Copyright laws? Even if we venture out of Copyright and into Patents and Big Pharma, I especially can't imagine many people who have the skills necessary to come up with new medicines doing their work for no compensation. > Reselling what? Something you would be able to download for free on the Internet if copyright didn't exist? But who would create all of this free music for the open source Spotify to gobble up? Sure there'll be a chunk of people out there still creating things because they want to create things, but they also have to put food on the table at the end of the day, how are they gonna do that if everything they ever produce just gets swallowed by the black hole known as the internet? Why would anyone create anything at all, if the moment they do it gets redistributed to everyone else for free? Even open source licenses often come with strings attached, I can't imagine that most people would be happy with all their work being gobbled up without even acknowledgment of where the work comes from, which is already a part of the most commonly encountered OSS licenses. I just don't see how this world you're envisioning can exist in a non-Utopian non-post-scarcity world where the majority of people are living paycheck-to-paycheck and are barely scraping by as is. > An open source Spotify would immediately pop up that would only charge you enough to cover hosting. Who'd wanna pay for that, if you can just download the music yourself? > What commercial enterprise do you think could compete with that long-term? You're literally describing a commercial enterprise here, the only difference being that the OSS version of Spotify just doesn't pay artist's for their music (ignoring that Spotify already barely pays artists anything). Spotify already charges people to cover hosting (+ employees and all the other associated costs), is an OSS version of Spotify that just pirates their catalogue really innovative to you? Cause that's exactly what you've described here. |
Software, music, graphics are all subject to substantial restrictions on new works because of copyright. You don't even notice it because it's become so normalized.
> Sure there'll be a chunk of people out there still creating things because they want to create things, but they also have to put food on the table at the end of the day
95%+ of musicians don't make money from music distribution, they make it from performances when touring. Eliminating copyright would have no impact on this. It's the same reason open source developers can still feed their families.
Graphic artists would still be commissioned for custom works, although AI will now eat into that too somewhat.
Many, many people would continue to write, compose and create art despite no financial incentives. Just look at all of the fanfiction and fan art out there.
> Who'd wanna pay for that, if you can just download the music yourself?
You absolutely could, but people often pay for extra convenience: an easily searchable index, music recommendations, playlists that can sync across devices, and so on.
> You're literally describing a commercial enterprise here,
I'm more describing an almost non-profit that provides a convenient interface. Spotify isn't just charging for hosting, it also has to pay licensing fees for music rights and profit margins for investors. Neither of those factor into this new fictional world we're discussing.
I'm not sure why this OSS version of Spotify has to be "innovative", the innovation is the low cost access to all of humanity's musical creations.
Copyright was intended to advance progress in the arts and sciences, but it's honestly doing the opposite, and has been for quite some time.