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Opinion: The Copyright Office is making a mistake on AI-generated art
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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Technology
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right, but how often does that actually work out in people's favor, and how often does that benefit corporate interests with massive influence? how many musicians don't have the right to their own work because record companies dominate the music industry? how many artists working for large corporations are denied residuals because a condition of their work is that everything they produce is owned by their employer? writers? animators?
that's not even considering the ways in which corporations patent technologies that are the result of publicly funded research efforts. a great deal of pharmaceuticals would not be possible without massive public research grants, but the companies privatize the results of that research using the framework of intellectual property.
in theory, you're right, it does protect you against corporations using your shit without permission, but in practice it just stops you from using your shit without their permission. there are far better ways of ensuring corporations cannot exploit you than to make your creativity and invention a commodity to be bought and sold.
But not having copyright law doesn't fix that, it makes it worse. Without copyright law if you make music, a big label can grab your music and sell copies without paying you anything. Sure you can try to sell it yourself and try to educate customers that they should buy it from you. But the big label can easily out-advertise you and get into the top spots on streaming services, online and physical stores etc. and get 99% of the sales.
Same for artists, writers, programmers, photographers, or anyone else whose work is protected by copyright.
I fully agree things are not great right now, but that's not copyright laws fault. I think you need other laws and regulations to fix things, like small creators should be able to sue large companies with minimal cost if they infringeme on their copyright. And there should be some sort of provisions so companies can't trap people in horrible contracts. I'd also love to see fair use exceptions broadened in cases where the copyrighted material is just not available anymore, like old games or movies that are not sold anymore. Shorten the length of copyright too. But getting rid of it completely would not work.
this is... really not a good example of copyright stopping this sort of stuff. seriously, look into streaming platforms, they are essentially pulling this exact stunt, down to the part about grabbing artists' music and not paying them anything, and its been extremely profitable for the record companies, who have been found to deliberately manipulate streaming numbers to ensure they get the top spots. most independent artists make very little off of streaming, but are compelled to participate because its captured so much of the market for music. i really can't exaggerate here, the situation you're describing as what would happen without copyright law is happening right now, and is being facilitated directly by copyright law as it currently exists.
Yes I agree with you, but I just don't see how getting rid of copyright laws would fix this. Copyright laws aren't helping artists enough, so instead of fixing copyright laws we should get rid of them? What do we do instead to protect artists?
i'm a radical, so i'd say don't use copyright, use copyleft. make everything free. use open source software. let people listen to your music if they want to, and donate to you if they choose. make it so that the best products on every market are freely available to all people to modify and alter as they wish, and make it so the modifications must also be freely available. allow anybody anywhere to produce any medication they have the means to safely synthesize. make our culture free to use and free to participate in. the open source economy is a great model to look at, and its how we're talking to each other right now. every piece of information can be that way, if we choose it. information scarcity is already a lie, copyright just artificially imposes antiquated notions of scarcity onto a limitless resource. its a gift economy! we freely contribute, and receive support in turn.
If your job stopped paying you, and told you to rely on donations from your clients/customers, then I'm pretty sure you'd find a different job.
its not necessarily common, but its weird to make this kind of point while using a platform that works by the exact principles i'm describing lol. open source projects are very frequently built from community support and public funding alone, and the people building them seem to be fine with their jobs.
They are fine with their jobs because they have other jobs that pay them.
Your idea would mean the end of professional musicians. Music performance would be mainly for people with lots of leisure time, something rich people would do as a hobby. Like playing polo.
i don't know what to tell you man. not everybody who develops open source projects for a living does it in their free time. for a lot of projects, particularly the big ones, there is full time development staff.
but i'm sorry, the thing you're describing, music performance being out of reach for everybody but the rich? uhh... that is how things are right now. lots of musicians are struggling to afford touring, even the very wealthy ones, and tours often don't do much more than break even. its gotten worse in recent years, too, as large corporations monopolize venue spaces and independent artists are pushed further and further into the margins. musicians have been talking about how much the live-music industry is fucked for a long time. its almost like the problems you're imagining would occur under a different system are exactly how it works under this one.