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by EvanAnderson 4106 days ago
The situation surrounding "Blurred Lines" gives me a feeling of crushing sadness. It seems, to me, that the legacy of perpetual copyright (and the death of the public domain, as a result) will be a future in which the creation of new art is discouraged for fear of attracting the litigious attention of the zombie estates of dead artists or the corporate "owners" of the rights of prior works.
1 comments

Creation of legitimate new art through the "proper" channels, as opposed to back-alley off-the-radar art where artists get compensated by the goodwill of an audience.

As we've seen with the growth of media content on the web, creators gonna create. Whether compensation for one's creation is something shared among many creators fairly in the light of day or consolidated in the hands of a few (while the rest scrape at charity) is really the question that this sort of legal decision raises.

It's not so much lack of compensation that seems chilling to me, as it is the prospect of the work of my creative expression being snuffed-out. Granted, I've never had any major creative ambitions (certainly nothing I tried to seek compensation from), but these types of verdicts come up in my mind whenever I think about personal creative expression. Were I compelled more strongly to create art perhaps I'd be less concerned, but my thoughts turn first toward personal liability when I think about sharing any of the photos or music that I've created with others.