Comment by palmotea
2 days ago
> if copyright was abolished, people (even rich) still want art, so studios would still end up paying artists, from patronage or some other system.
Yes, it would be exclusively the domain of the rich and powerful. If you're a little guy, they'll just shamelessly take what you make, because abolishing copyright abolishes the legal protections a small-time creator depends on.
Let's say you put a ton of effort into making an awesome YouTube channel people love. Copyright is what means a bunch of randos can't just copy all your work and take all the revenue from it. They can even undercut you, because they don't actually have the costs of creating anything. Copyright give you recourse.
> If you're a little guy, they'll just shamelessly take what you make
Like LLM scrapers?
> Copyright is what means a bunch of randos can't just copy all your work and take all the revenue from it. They can even undercut you
If copyright is abolished, nobody's getting revenue from views. They can resell your work for $0, or can try charging, but word spreads and everyone will seek the free alternative (yours).
Attribution is different, but covered by trademark. Or may be covered by trusted sources like internet archives which prove who was first.
> If copyright is abolished, nobody's getting revenue from views. They can resell your work for $0, or can try charging, but word spreads and everyone will seek the free alternative (yours).
Exactly. Abolish copyright, and no little guy can do it for a living if he's good at it and people want it. He'll have to spend his time working a day job to pay the bills, and may not even have the energy for creative work afterwards. Creative work becomes the domain of large corporations and nepo babies.
Copyright was created to solve real problems that were once common. Abolishing it is foolish, the reasonable path is some solution that solve both the original problems and whatever new ones you've identified.
> Abolish copyright, and no little guy can do it for a living if he's good at it and people want it. He'll have to spend his time working a day job to pay the bills, and may not even have the energy for creative work afterwards. Creative work becomes the domain of large corporations and nepo babies.
For the niche artists (and musicians and writers) I’m aware of, this is already true. Few people pay for niche art, because there are so many decent quality old works (and modern ad-filled slop) for free (and most people would rather not pay for things even for worse quality). Those who still pay are the same who’d donate if the artist offered their work for free, which would get them more attention thus more money overall. And with few people paying, COL is way too high for a niche artist to not get a second job, large donor, family inheritance, or other source of income.
And I’m sure non-niche artists would have no problem getting enough patrons (evidenced by those who do via merch and Twitch donations).
Abolishing copyright entirely would make patronage more common, benefiting these artists: specifically, the ones who already sell barely anything relative to COL, or already make their work free to get enough attention, who comprise most of the artists I know.
YouTube has just so much garbage that drags on. It would be a good thing to have less of it.
Also, just because randos will copy content doesn't mean that users will go to other channels to view it if they subscribe to your channel.