Re: <nettime> Schijndel & Smiers: IMAGINING A WORLD WITHOUT COPYRIGHT (Modified by Geert Lovink)

[Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@yahoo.com>]

The main problem here is the assumption that copyright has much to do with
author, performer or artist. It is nominally attached to one, but its purpose
is to enable cashing in on the work, and there is a large number of people and
entities involved in that cashing in. The initial author gets just a minority
stake.

Without copyright protection all these entities will not get involved (same as
VC would not touch a technology startup without patents) and author (or
startup) would remain well known among friends and family.

If someone thinks that investing money in selection, ad nauseam promotion and
bandwidth to the eyeballs is parasitic phenomenon - why don't authors do
without it? Great works or even average works will find their way to the
public. Yeah, right. Even giving them away for free will not make difference.

Removing copyright is trivial - any author can do it today. In any legal
framework. Just give it away. It's legal. Any author can also limit copyright
to any desired level. See open/free software stuff.

Why does anti-copyright industry treat authors as infantile retards? All actual
cases are based on publishers enforcing copyrights on works by authors who have
CHOSEN to use the fullest copyright protection that they can get. Have they
been tortured to sign those forms? No. They wanted fame and money. I am sure
many tried giving it away or without copyright protection (in which case no
publisher would touch the work.) Didn't work. Friends and family already like
it.

So what does it mean that there are no widely known current works given away
for free or no copyright (same thing) ? I am sure that not *all* quality
authors go to big labels.

It means that what masses perceive as quality is mostly manufactured by cash
investments. So now, anti-copyright folks would like to get both brainwashed
into liking something AND to get it for free. That's not how it works. You have
to brainwashing yourself for that.

But let's do a small leap of imagination ... say in few years androids become
available that can perfectly emulate humans. It's just a technology problem,
issues are the same. How would Lessig feel if his clandestine copy starts to
give paid lectures (or even picks his Stanford paycheck)? Lessig's investment
is in his credibility, and today only the technology barrier prevents him from
being copied - as much as there were no copyright problems in early book or
phonograph days. Too hard to copy.

It's easy to be freedom fighter when they come for others, whose art is easy to
copy. But soon they will come for you.


end
(of original message)

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