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by marckrn 905 days ago
I might be a bit idealistic, but I've always believed that the core purpose of art and publishing should be to influence culture and society, not just to make a heap of money. That's why I feel original work needs its protection, but it should enter the public domain much sooner to fuel creativity and inspiration. We should be thinking in terms of a few years for this transition, not decades.
3 comments

The claim that art’s core purpose is societal impact seems to be a common refrain in today’s media, and I completely disagree. Its principal purpose is provoking emotion in the individual. This idea of art teaching you a lesson is likely why there’s so much ham-fisted “activist” fiction anowadays.
I agree, but by extension of provoking emotion it CAN change society, but it doesn't have to - wether on purpose or not.

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.

These things kind of rub up against the core question: What is the purpose of granting exclusivity to a creator (thru copyright)?

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.

So what do you suggest artists have for dinner.
The same thing I eat for dinner. I eat based on I get from work, that people are willing to pay for.

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.

Sometimes people use evil systems for good.
True! Although I can't think of any at the moment. You?
Sure. Most artists I know live doing advertising, film art, game art. Sometimes the film / movie sucks, is actually a bad thing, or the advertising is intrusive or for a terrible product. They keep doing it.

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.

don't worry ,when the singularity hits next year everything will be free.
Let's advocate for robust protections and support systems for artists, ensuring they can secure a sustainable and comfortable livelihood from their creative work.

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.

wow and incredible amount of things need to go right for artists to do well in your world ?
I too would love to earn a living by pursuing my hobbies. Too bad, I'm not in the 0,001-0,1%
"I too would love to earn a living by pursuing my hobbies. Too bad, I'm not in the 0,001-0,1%"

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....

Thank you
You don’t seem to have any idea what artists do to make a living
Why should art be subject to these rules and not everything else?
OP said art and publishing, which would include anything from software, music, books and so on.
So you interpret it as including everything? If so why emphasize art at all?
Probably because the article focuses a lot on copyrighted art?