Should We Abolish Copyright? | Tom Nicholas
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2019
- Copyright and Intellectual Property are issues that have prompted a number of controversies recently. The Dark Horse vs Joyful Noise court case in which Katy Perry was found to have infringed on the intellectual property rights of Christian rap artists Flame, for instance, recently provoked a great deal of astonishment online (and inspired a fantastic video by musicologist Adam Neely on the flaw in copyright law as it currently applies to music). Beyond this, the "fair use" or "fair dealing" doctrines which essentially allow for legal copyright infringement for the purposes of parody, commentary and critique regularly draw the frustrations of UA-cam creators hit with a copyright claim (see, for instance, Nintendo's copyright policy which, until it was recently changed, was seen as somewhat draconian).
In today's video, then, I wanted to ask whether we should abolish copyright and intellectual property altogether?
I begin by giving a bit of a copyright and intellectual property crash course before continuing to look more broadly at forms of property ownership such as the distinction between personal property vs private property, all to inform a slightly more in-depth discussion of the inconsistencies in the law surrounding forms of intellectual property.
If you like what I do here then please do consider checking subscribing and/or checking out my Patreon page at / tomnicholas
Further Reading
Intellectual Property: A Very Short Introduction by Siva Vaidhyanathan
US: amzn.to/2mWYp3G
UK: amzn.to/2nAOEsi
Theft! A History of Music by James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins
US: amzn.to/2mNBAiC
UK: amzn.to/2nJsWSQ
Capital: Volume One: A Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx
US: amzn.to/2phGlSB
UK: amzn.to/2piL06V
[The above are affiliate links. I receive a small kickback from anything you buy which, in turn, helps to support the channel.]
Thanks for watching!
Twitter: @Tom_Nicholas
Website: www.tomnicholas.com
Thanks for watching! If you've enjoyed this then please do considering subscribing and/or sharing the video with a friend. And, of course, if you want to support what I do here, then I'd love it if you'd consider supporting me on Patreon at patreon.com/tomnicholas
Mmmhh you got a little bit conservative in your conclusion, didn't expect that :p
Just remember that property is theft :)
This lecture by Richard Stallman is HIGHLY interesting. You should really dig into FOSS, free software and also the copyleft movement, it may change some of your ideas on copyright and intellectual property. Cheers!
ua-cam.com/video/eginMQBWII4/v-deo.html
"Every new invention is a synthesis, the resultant of innumerable inventions which have preceded it in the vast field of mechanics and industry.
Science and industry, knowledge and application, discovery and practical realization leading to new discoveries, cunning of brain and of hand, toil of mind and muscle - all work together. Each discovery, each advance, each increase in the sum of human riches, owes its being to the physical and mental travail of the past and the present.
By what right then can anyone whatever appropriate the least morsel of this immense whole and say - This is mine, not yours?”
Some bearded man....no, not that one.
I think it's entirely possible to both advocate for large structural change whilst also making the case for smaller changes along the way. If one only makes the case for the latter then that's a different question...
I did almost go into some of the stuff about copyleft but it's always a bit of a trade off between covering everything and making the videos not too long and full of deviations!
Should be abolished strictly on youtube within reason.
A pro capitalist libertarian answer to the problem. Just to promote a new economical model based around the plateform effect, wich cultural cocnetration and therefore a greater control over culture.
I am disapointed by the answer you bring.
I really really like your videos, they are amazing and thought provoking. However, economists always seem to be made to cartoon villains and ultra-libertarian strawmen. This is simply not true, and you yourself come back to the central problem of information goods, that creators struggle to get paid if there is no copyright. That’s precisely what economists are grappling with, and most of them, including many Nobel laureates are very aware of all the issues you point out. I would really appreciate a bit more nuance here
Well, it seems to me that the people who most benefit are the companies that simply control copyrights. The artists mostly don't...
I almost went into this aspect of things a bit deeper but time, as ever, was an issue. I do find it interesting though how anti-piracy campaigns often focus on "think of the artists" when, as you say, most of the revenue gets pocketed by people who had little to do with the creative process...
@@Tom_Nicholas it's downright deception is what it is. Often the same companies who fund these companies will turn around and screw over artist!
it's ironic, really. all the empirical evidence that consumers _will_ pay their favorite creators and support them is there. the fact that platforms like patreon and twitch even exist is proof of that.
with the concept of copyright (and patents) creators are held hostage to big corporations raking in all the profit.
@@BattousaiHBr True to a degree, and then class enters in. One can monetise better when one is pandering to power, or to the crass. That's why clickbait trivial garbage is so attractive to "creators". The system pushes them that way.
Bandcamp is another good example of paying artists directly
Used to be really involved with the SCP community and everything there is creative commons so anyone can write about anyone elses works or even add to another's. It really is an amazing thing to see people create art together and build upon each other.
Well, and also open source game and Linux communities.
Also, that's why many Linux distribution requires game content's (especially open source game) to be inclusive so anyone can use contents freely.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_video_game
Too bad a greedy man in Russia is exploiting copyright in his country to gain profits
And it leads to a shit ton of terrible references and alleged properties of certain SCPs that original authors didn't intend them to have.
How many of those people made any money? Getting rid of copywrite completely gets rid of monetization of artists’ works.
In case anyone is interested, Ms. Perry won an appeal over "Dark Horse".
Ooh, I hadn't kept tabs on this case actually, really interesting to know!
Phew
that sucks. katy stay stealing and getting away with it
@@terrancehall9762 stealing what?
@@lcg3092 music, culture etc. look at the outfit she is wearing in the thumbnail. a real culture vulture
As an econ student: your analogy to land is stronger than you realize.
Neither private landownership nor copyright increase the productive or distributional efficiency of these resources, both of these merely create monopolies that lead to increased economic rents, and in the terms of economics, intellectual property is a type of land.
It's particularly interesting I suppose once you start to draw in monopoly rents in certain locations in certain cities which, I guess, could be analogous to a really successful franchise/IP. I'm certainly not an economist though so I may be stretching my knowledge here!
I believe that is more-or-less Adam Smith's argument against the existence of landlords. They aren't really contributing much of anything, they are just making a profit by inducing an artificial scarcity and happening to own the scarce good.
@@thrale You assume that a market is the only way to distribute housing. I am inclined to believe that a market is among the worst possible ways to distribute housing, since it will lock some people out of the housing they need due to the fact that it is not profitable to house them.
I am of the opinion that housing should be declared a human right, and a public housing option be made available. I am not opposed to the idea of a market providing larger and more luxurious homes to people who can afford them, but leaving housing purely to the market is not a good idea.
@@thrale It also incentivises artists because they get paid. They'll do another song.
@Franklin Ratliff Good job - calling someone shithead really helps to illustrate that you have a cogent point worth considering.
Oh wait, no, that's ass-backwards like you.
Disney can keep the mouse indefinitely if they shut up about everything else 😒
Disney can still have the trademarked Mickey Because He, as a mascot, is himself a highly integral part of the company. But the pre-1967 works which he appeared in will definitely become public domain in 2037 for most countries except the US, Mexico and other exceptions.
@@SlapstickGenius23 "decades" :/
"doesn't deplete the reserve of Darth Maul" should be an argument brought in court agaisnt Disney for their abuse of copyright, if only to hear a middle aged lawyer say it to an elderly judge.
Disney really knows that given they keep shoving him into everything
One could argue that Disney depletes the Star Wars property with the horrendous Disney Sequels.
@@TomCruz54321 LK2 Ride or die IMO, but it's not unfair to say they have damaged the value of SW with the new trilogy (The Disney sequel of SW one might say)
An excellent example of the bounty allowed by free domain is the Cthulhu Mythos. H P Lovecraft whilst alive shared and encouraged fellow writers to write on and expand his own thematic universe, and as he never copyrighted anything it has continued to permeate popular culture in thousands of ways up to present day.
I was waiting for that "how will creators pay the rent" to come in. Small content creators are already treated as a grazing ground by larger entities, relying on their financial inability to fight back to get away with theft (see how fast fashion lifts from individual designers and then blames it on an intern). We are in heavily unequal system, where creative work is already devalued. The "creative commons" concept works if there is a framework for creators to get paid, and we don't have that. Even Patreon is now making several moves to ratchet up profit instead of insuring creators gets paid.
Yeah, I think that's the real sticking point at the moment; how do you ensure it's not just an excuse for large companies to rip off unknown creators. In truth, however, I would posit that copyright law works far more in favour of large companies than it does those creators. At present, it is usually by invoking some kind of moral outrage on Twitter or the like that I've mostly seen those who have had their stuff stolen receive some recompense for a company having done so. As copyright infringement tends to be a civil rather than criminal offence, many simply can't afford the court fees anyway.
@@Tom_Nicholas true, but I don't know how much of that can be laid directly at the feet of copyright law and how much comes from our late stage capitalist societies. "And then they got away with it, because they're rich" is the final sentence to MANY scenarios, from crimes great and small to social organization. Public shaming has become the (extremely unreliable) last resort of victims everywhere. Very little usually comes of it. I don't think there is a single elegant solution, we have many entrenched bias, power structures, and traditions to get past. We have to reduce the stratified power of wealth, change all kinds of laws, and we have to never tell artists to give up and "get a real job."
One possible answer is for people to register their copyrights via a cooperative or similar for a small registration fee, which is applied to the maintenance of a legal staff which aggressively pursues infringement.
@Daniel von Strangle yep, a good artist makes good things constantly, it is not so easy to keep stealing without people noticing you are not the one creating the things
@@Tom_Nicholas The shape of copyright law needs to be changed, rather than abolishing it outright. It's gotten bloated and has not been adapted to the modern world.
OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING
Welcome to our open source field where you are free to graze your cows... Maybe has a bit of a start-up "apply words that normally apply to tech to literally anything" vibes?
Nono, FREE EVERYTHING :p
www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.en.html
The future we need
Lets make the constitution open source
@@OjoRojo40 you might want to read the first paragraph of that article.
27:50
Access to media being held hostage by copyright holders who deem it uneconomical to rerelease their intellectual property is actually a talking point in video game conservation.
Since the consoles each game is made for get replaced by better hardware and are harder to source, the games on that console remain stuck on outdated consoles (unless the company sees it as profitable to release it for modern consoles or remake the game from scratch altogether.)
One way to preserve games is to emulate them on computers, extending their lifespan. But since this doesn't get people to buy their consoles, games publishers don't tend to do this. When fans emulate games they love to conserve them, publishers have been known to legally take down the emulator. (Nintendo is one of the most well known for doing this.)
Another such instance is video game soundtracks. If you aren't selling a CD or digital album, then all people who upload the music are doing is making it possible by _any_ reasonable means to listen to the music in question outside the context of the game. If you ask me, your exclusive right to distribution, if it should exist at all, should be entirely dependent on you making a substantial effort to do so as within your means. That means as a large corporation you either make albums digitally or physically available (ideally both), or people can distribute your music online for free as they please. Copyright should be use it or lose it. Furthermore, this control should require that such things be distributed _reasonably affordably._ in accordance with common market rates. If it looks like you're releasing the album only as a formality to enforce your copyright, you again lose your copyright until you make it reasonably affordable.
And this is like, the most reasonable capitalist take that could exist. This is the _far right_ version of it. As in anything further is unacceptable and stupid.
@@FlameUser64Props to you mate, that is a very credible and interesting proposal.
OMG, the moment when you realize that before copyrights existed, all people were writing was fanfiction of other people's work. *mindblown*
"This is my longest video to date. I will aim to come back with snappier content."
not even joking, the next recommended video is Media bias with 55 minutes...
"Every new invention is a synthesis, the resultant of innumerable inventions which have preceded it in the vast field of mechanics and industry.
Science and industry, knowledge and application, discovery and practical realization leading to new discoveries, cunning of brain and of hand, toil of mind and muscle - all work together. Each discovery, each advance, each increase in the sum of human riches, owes its being to the physical and mental travail of the past and the present.
By what right then can anyone whatever appropriate the least morsel of this immense whole and say - This is mine, not yours?”
Some bearded man....no, not that one.
Actually, I hadn't thought to bring the discussion back to physical/mechanical inventions. That could've been useful actually as I think we are slightly more open to viewing those creations as building on previous creations than we are to viewing artistic creations as such.
Tom Nicholas don’t patents fall under intellectual property
Yes, and patents as a system are wholey broken in their own way.
Ledabot Capitalism as whole is broken and cannot be fixed
Which bearded man?
This topic is one I'm really passionate about myself (though that doesn't translate into writing about it well XD). In Japan there's a huge industry of fan works that doesn't cause any issue whatsoever, it's really fascinating
Interesting. I'm not that knowledgable about Japan at all but I did get the sense that fan-made stuff is considered less of a "problem" there and more of a recognition that people like the thing that's been made. It's interesting how these subtle cultural differences can have such a large structural impact.
@@Tom_Nicholas Ain't it tho?
Do you think it's fair to the creator of those works to have others making money from their creative time and money to develop said work? To simply allow people to cherry pick and create their own stories based on characters and worlds you have created?
Imagine if you were in the same situation. One can make the argument, how much money do you need to make off a creative work before it becomes ridiculous...cept that money then allows that creative of literally their own brain to perhaps invest in other works or flesh out more.
Inevitably imagine if 50 people started making lots of simpsons shows based on the creative of others and making money from it.In so taking money away from those that would have to pay the actual creator to see new works, and in the way they decide for that creative to be shown.
If you want to benefit from something 'creative' then put in the effort to make it yours rather than literally stealing others ideas. Being inspired is one thing...fan fiction is ultimately theft. Accepted because it develops the community that will invest hopefully in the original works. Not every creative is a big company that can afford for their work to be 'used' (stolen).
@@lf1980 see Reese Walton's comment on the failure of copyright
@@HxH2011DRA I'll try and find it thanks. Hard enough finding my own comments on. here lol
Knowledge and creativity are the public commons and copyright is a crime against humanity.
I think copyright should be limited to avoid unauthorized uses for commercial purposes/possible heavy damages to the authors.
Creativity and arts should be free to uses,but not for that way.
"the rational herdsmen concludes that the only
sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another.... But this is the conclusion reached for each and every rational herdsmen sharing a commons." Don't believe this misdirection. Only a selfish, and shortsighted, herdsman thinks like that. A rational person can see the sense in a self imposed limit.
Yep and, in practice, most forms of common throughout history have had some kind of collectively-agreed rule structure. Being owned in common doesn’t mean something’s a free-for-all.
@@Tom_Nicholas Kind of challenged their beliefs when they ran into tribal communities where, say, one family was charged by the community with stewarding the commons and making sure everyone got a turn with grazing their herds but not so much as to damage the grazing lands. This tradition had lasted untold generations, the stewards hadn't been bribed to allow one grazing herd to dominate, and so on.
@@Waywardpaladin Their belief should have been challenged by the mere existence of the very commons they were referencing, right there in England, which had existed for years and years, without running often into this sort of problem. But they don't tend to learn from examples that contradict their assumptions. People aren't rational, and that isn't limited to herdsman sharing a commons.
The tragedy of the commons seems to assume that all the herdsmen live in some sort of vacuum where they never, ever communicate with the other herdsmen
Alternatively a capitalist who sees a reduction in growth as a loss
No we shouldnt abolish it, but it needs reform. We still need to protect intellectual property from abuse...
I doubt it, new technology should be for all of us to use, a good system might be getting money if you get to patent something, but it shouldn't be for exclusive use
Hell yes we should abolish it. There is more costs than benefits when keeping it. People have always created art and music before copyright law was ever common
The idea that intellectual property should submit to capitalist property rights despite there being no such thing as _scarcity_ of ideas/information/etc can only be backed up by one (capitalist) defense:
That it is not about ownership of the idea _itself_ so much as it is about entitlement to any and all economic reapings that could _potentially_ be produced as a result of that idea - within a capitalist market. Implicit then in the conception of intellectual property rights is an entitlement to an uncompeted market share - a monopoly.
The only thing then that is supposedly being _stolen_ by infringing on one's intellectual property right is the _opportunity cost_ that one _might conceivably_ suffer as a result of having to share the market with someone else.
Note that this all builds on the _potentiality_ that sharing an idea is economicly _detrimental to the individual_ rather than _benefitial to the community_ or for that matter the _individual_ . Just consider for example how often in the Internet age small content creators _benefit_ from exposure alone when having their ideas copied and repurposed though memes, fan content, remakes, etc.
These are some fairly ironic contradictions considering that the same ones who will defend intellectual property for capitalist reasons will also praise the need for free markets and ease of access.
Regarding intellectual property rights for small artists and content creators I certainly get that it is in their economic interest, and that in the current economic order it may even be necessary in order to be materially secure in one's artistic pursuit and to get anything off the ground in the first place.
My policy preference in that regard would probably be some type of minimalist intellectual property legislation. A property right that 1) leaves much space for fair use and that 2) completely expires after like 10 years max.
Regarding technological things however, industrial patents for example, I think i am radically opposed to any form of intellectual property, especially considering the immeasurable harm that is done to humanity by withholding these things from the public domain. Ask yourself for example how much unnecessary suffering has been bestowed upon the world by the existence of privately held medical patents.
I think your point that there is a contradiction between "free market" rhetoric and intellectual property rights is interesting here. However I think it points to a broader contradiction in neoliberal capitalism whereby, though many supporters of neoliberalism say that they favour markets over state control, state power is often required to create markets where they would be unlikely to otherwise emerge. We thus end up with "free markets" that are, in some sense, fictitious.
@Daniel von Strangle Well, you and your "true" free-market capitalist friends might be against intellectual property - but not any _actual_ private business in the _actual_ free-market who owns some IP and who thinks it has something to lose by giving it away, no matter if it is big or small. You already said it, it is all about profits, nothing else.
Presumably though, you have nothing against private businesses seeking profit, no? In fact that is an essential ideological aspect, the idea that the profit motive is overwhelmingly good and gracious bc it is supposed to aim at innovation, meeting people's needs, rising living standards, etc.
Intellectual property is just one of many cases where there is a _practical_ contradiction with the profit motive though. _Any_ capitalist society, no matter how ideally you imagine it, is inevitably going to trend towards the establishment of intellectual property - bc it is _profitable_ , especially to the richest and most powerful capital interests.
More generally there is a practical contradiction within the concept of a free-market itself: The competitors in a given free market, who are a currently on top in terms of capital and market share, ofc almost _never_ actually want a free market. They would much rather have a market which tilts in their favour and against their competitors. Their ideal goal is the very opposite of a free market: a monopoly.
And remember, there is _always_ someone on top, as a matter statistical necessity. And it does not matter, which particular corporation it is. It has nothing to do with their inherent ruthlessness. Every other corporation in their place would behave the same. The profit motive demands it of them and if they were not ruthless they would have never reached their top position in the first place.
Expecting a free market to subsist long-term in a capitalist economy is like having a competitive game and expecting nobody to ever win in it.
This is exactly why leftists reject capitalism as a whole, not just certain aspects of current capitalism that we do not like: It is riddled with contradictions on a _material_ level.
It is easy to hold two ideal concepts in your head - for example private property, profit motive, capital accumulation on one side and free markets on the other - but placed in a real world and played out in the long-term they _necessarily_ run into conflict. And in this case monopoly capital inevitably prevails.
Yes, and of course in IT, many popular things, be they word processing programs like _Word_, or architectures like the IBM, succeeded because they were widely pirated with little comeback. If not for the IBM clone, some other architecture might be dominant. And Word was so pirated, people urged their employers to buy it, pretty much shutting down Wordstar or WordPerfect.
The ideas, once created, are not scarce (well some aspects are, but still). Despite this, the number of ideas which are being created at any point is finite and so compared to our infinite desire for more and better ideas, these are scarce resources to create. Remember, scarce = finite.
@@AnyVideo999 Sure, there may be a finitude of unique, original ideas (to the extent we can say those even exist) but there is no conceivable finitude of copied ideas, or even just slightly transformed ones I'd argue. It is the copying of ideas that I was moreso focussing on.
I'm not sure that _scare_ strictly means _finite_ rather than "visibly finite" if you will. When we talk about a _post-scarcity_ economy for example, we do not mean literally infinite ressource abundance. Rather we mean a situation in which the prospect of ever running out of unconditional _access_ to resources, to even be realisticly confronted with any limitation in our consumption, would be so unlikely as to be a totally insignificant concern.
Well, the thing that bothers me the most about copyright is the idea that you can make other person, or ogranization as a whole owning something.
This isn't protecting creator at all. This serves only to ensure someone would have monopoly.
Copyright shouldn't be transeferable. And it shouldn't belong to organizations. It should belong to specific people who were involved in creation ONLY.
Also copyright in modern incearnation completly ignores how culture works. EVERYTHING is at least partially based on something else. Some well known works of culture were created only becouse of copyright wasn't a thing (like Arthurian stories as a whole).
I agree that plagiarism is a bad thing and artist should be able to make money from creation, but copyright in modern incarnation clearly isn't an answear.
And idea that it should even exist after creator is dead should be scrapped completly.
Um, Mexico has it worse than the EU and Australia combined.
This is the thing though: authors are not entitled to any form of getting rich. Copyright is a purely consequentialist scheme to give the public more works of which they can freely peruse. See www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html.
@@NateROCKS112 maybe they're not entitled, but shouldn't they be able to earn returns from their creation??? I'm very much on the Left, but not everyone can afford to create for free. People certainly have the right to profit fairly from what they created. Key word being fairly, of course.
@@SlapstickGenius23 how so?
@@YourCapybaraAmigo_17yrsago the copyright term of Mexico was once like parts of the European Union’s in the 1990s. Said term of life plus fifty years after death, was fine, until got replaced somehow by the copyright term of life plus seventy five years after death.
In turn, life plus seventy five years after death got replaced, very unceremoniously, by life plus a century after death, just 13 years ago.
The current copyright term of life plus a century after death was pretty much made possible primarily by the excessively corrupt Mexican publishers.
Going way back to the 1950s; the copyright term in Mexico was much, much shorter than it is now.
One thing you didn't bring up here is the different power imbalances with art owned by large companies and small artists - there's so many examples of big clothing etc companies nicking designs off small creators, who basically can't do anything about it because they don't have the money for lawyers. Even though the law is supposed to protect them in practice it only really protects big businesses
Wonderful as always.
The concept of 'cultural commons' is incredibly fascinating.
I'm sure you're aware but if not o highly recommend Patricia Taxxon's 2 videos on Abolishing Copyright.
Thanks! I'm sure it's been used elsewhere before. David Harvey discussed the "urban commons" a fair bit which I think is where I was primarily drawing the idea from but I'd be surprised if no one else has used in with regards to culture. Indeed, I'd imagine CC licences take their name from a very similar notion.
I haven't seen those actually but will definitely go and check them out!
Uniquenameosaurus also made some great videos on this topic culminating in "Creators shouldn't own their creations, and heres why". He also goes into sharing ideas on how creators can still be paid for their work via a patreon-like model. (Its not perfect, but it will likely be better).
the original idea of Copywrite was to promote creation and innovation of culture/sciences/ect... by creating a short term financial incentive but the systematic increase in the length has in effect done the opposite by making it 95-120 years that creator no longer has an incentive to keep creating and no one else can generally create or innovate on the original work for at the minimum a lifetime
Yeah, the Public Domain right?
"The Tragedy of the Commons" sounds more like a description of the free market...
A parallel issue are patents. I had my frustration with the patent process in the USA. Unless your invention is extremely unique, and you can keep it a secret even after patenting it until you sell, or license it, you are going to lose. The American patent system is geared to the large corporation that can hire expensive lawyers to protect themselves from infringement.
yes
I’m told you have a great couple of videos on this topic which I’m planning to check out shortly!
*The Tragedy of the Commons*
My understanding is that this was basically made up and that the original paper sites no real-world examples of such a thing happening, where it wasn't done on purpose so someone of means could maneuver to enclose it for themselves. It also assumes that people act like large corporations and can't communicate with each other.
Yes, the original paper is basically a thought experiment which jumps to a whole bunch of conclusions yet was taken up by those who wanted to use it to advocate for private property rights.
I think it's a good thought experiment on how maximizing profit affects a finite resource. Especially when you concider that even if a pasture is private property, the earth as a whole is public property. And thus prone to exploitation by competition
@@redlorax5380 maybe, one of the biggest criticisms is that the people in the thought experiment act more like corporations who are only driven by maximizing the profits of their shareholders and not actual people.
@@Disthron exactly. It's a good thought experiment in showing how corporation are not durable with the earth's resources. It shows exactly the opposite they advocate
@@redlorax5380 I think the problem comes in where people think that it's more than just a thought experiment. Like when people argue that all common property will fall to 'the tragedy of the commons.' When in reality, common land remained stable for thousands of years until it was enclosed by rich aristocrats at the beginning of the first industrial revolution.
A lot of the artists I follow would release their songs for free download, while at the same time offering to buy it. And I think it makes sense, since those that are willing to pay, will pay. Those that aren't willing to pay, well, there is no point in limiting them.
In my opinion, the only function for copyright should be ensuring that when those willing to pay for a piece of art do so, the money goes to the creator rather than some random dude. Unfortunately, the current copyright system is often doing the opposite.
I think a fair compromise would be to retain a copyright system, but drastically lower the length of time it takes for something to enter the public domain. And close the loopholes that allow companies like Disney and Nintendo to keep things out of the public domain that, under the current system, absolutely belong there by now.
Just discovered the channel and have been bingeing in reverse order. Funny how many times I have heard "this must be my longest video so far, sorry, and I'll try not to make a habit of it". I'm very happy these early promises were not kept!
I'm a street artist who has struggled with the subject of originality and copyright within entertainment, and have taken alot from this thank you
Seems like the problem with the tragedy of the common is assuming everyone has to act as an individual actor, not that it could managed collaboratively in a sustainable way whilst preserving the freedom of use for all.
As someone with many friends who are composers and artists it seems to me that, as you discussed, it is not enough merely to abolish copyright. What we need to do is abolish copyright AND create a society in which people's basic needs are met. In the short term, this could be as simple as a universal basic income, universal healthcare, and heavily subsidized (if not free) education. In the long term, I'd love to see us build the organizations and institutions needed for an anarcho-communist society.
I recommend RiP!: A Remix Manifesto, a nice documentary about exactly this.
Ooh, I hadn't come across that before but will check it out. Thanks!
As an artist myself, I am ambivalent about copyright law. It's undeniably true that big corporations have been abusing it to empower and enrich themselves, but there's also a pervasive trend of businesses and people profiting off art they have appropriated without compensating or seeking permission from the original artists. I have been the victim of such art theft at least once, and I've seen it happen to other artists multiple times. If we don't have copyright laws at all, what will protect artists from this sort of predatory exploitation?
I'm watching the video atm, not finished, but one thing IP laws can retain imo is right to being attributed. That IMO is reasonable thing to have in a civilized society.
The greater problem is that this whole IP law comes from capitalism and all its problems, namely, under capitalism, money comes from owning things, not from doing work. For art industry, it's crucial you can own the art, otherwise it would be like service industry, low-paid lower class of workers.
I think the problem here is about this more fundamental issue of ownership being valued so much higher than doing work, that the idea of losing IP would be so devastating to artists.
the thing is that copyright doesn't protect small artists from this kind of exploitation already. you need to have the resources to get your case in front of a judge before it can be determined that your copyright was actually infringed.
Thank you Tom for introducing me to the historical fact of IP being fairly recent ! As a a fan of classical music, I've always wondered how pre-classical composers often copy, re-arrange each other's work as one of their own much more so compare to classical era. Now I've learned there's actually a transition in the ideas of intellectual property duing that era !
The software industry IMO is a prime example of where abolishment of IP increase total benefit to society. The Linux kernel - the most successful software project in human is by nature free and open to everyone to use, modify, and make copy of.
If some loser thought there was any money in it they would have hindered Linux with patent infringement lawsuits. There are near infinity vague troll patents of the sort "a software mechanism for reordering messages in a queue based on priority by means of a Central Processing Unit (CPU)"
Within the first minute i realized I've adding this to my watch later was a big mistake i should have watched this way earlier
Ahh, thanks Edward! Really glad you enjoyed the video!
the tragedy of the commons assumes that people are stupid animals that cant communicate with one another.
"hey, lets agree on a limit on how many cattle we can each have" - problem fucking solved
The main problem with the "tragedy of the commons" nonsense is the assumption that people sharing a commons don't talk to each other and act as atomized individuals. It's projecting the worst kind of human being created by the capitalist system onto non-capitalist modes of ownership and production and then proclaiming those modes are impossible.
@@Tb0n3 That is exactly what the rulers want you to believe.
Great video, definitely an area that is interesting to question. The book Bad Samaritans by Ha-Joon Chang talks, in part, about how many powerful interests and countries have used copyright to further their own interests. Copyright is often used not to further the interests of creators or boost innovation, but laws are created and altered to benefit corporate interests in particular. Not 100% sure where I fall on this, but I can at least say the systems in place have to be drastically altered and focused on actual creators, particularly while they're living.
These arguments also apply very well to another industry: software development. Copyright in the context of software restricts both its distribution, and its quality. Software is a very collaborative type of work, drawing heavily on previous work like your musical composition example. Copyright, then, inhibits the creation of new software by locking existing work behind proprietary licenses; they can't be improved or used without the author's (often a large corporation) permission.
There are many, including myself, who voluntarily give up some of these rights and publish the source code we write (called open source software). Anyone can copy, redistribute, use, or modify it for free without permission. It's much more like "grazing on an intellectual commons", you draw on others' work and others draw on yours, it's freely encouraged. Copyright isn't abolished, people can still create proprietary software like Windows or the Adobe suite, but copyright is often voluntarily waved (albeit partially) because it's mutually beneficial.
It often leads to a far superior product too. Linux is better in many respects than Windows, OBS is better than XSplit, Vulkan is better than DirectX, etc.
Very happy I found this video, I'm writing my law masters dissertation on the effectiveness of IP today, and this is a great help! Thank you! Hopefully, I write my paper well!
It seems like, in multiple areas of our society, the laws are just getting flat-out ignored by the courts in favour of defending special interests. AFAIK basslines are not copyrightable, much like song titles and chord sequences.
This is ultimately why so many of us are turning against copyright. As it was originally formulated, copyright was great. It balanced the needs of creators against those of the culture and populace with regards to culture. As in many other areas, though, people are increasingly uninterested in the distinction between a good thing that's become terminally corrupt and an inherently bad thing.
If we abolish copyright altogether, the day will soon come when abuses become rampant and we have to think again. The real solution is to roll back copyright to its pre-Disney state.
So if we have central planned economy, we can supply content creators without copyright.
I did have a bit where I discussed how we might approach creating a system of funding the creation of films, books etc (which, to be honest, most countries already to to a significant extent) but with the caveat that any works created through that system would be in the public domain. Even when governments (or whoever else) subsidise the costs of creating films etc in the present, they have a habit of privatising the profits... The video was already 30 minutes long though so I thought I'd leave that for another time!!
We don't even need a centrally planned economy.
Central planning of the whole of society certainly has benefits over the chaotic dog eat dog system of free market capitalism, but at the end of the day it doesn't solve many more problems than it causes, like the exploitation of the creatives themselves or the fact that centralization means granting a small group power over what even gets financed. After all, as much as the Soviet Union allowed for the funding of arts, even Dziga Vertov and Lev Kuleshov were making propaganda.
Central planning doesn't ensure that everyone will be cared for, only that a central authority exists with a responsibility to do that caring, but no real responsibility to do so. Decentralized and collective structures on the other hand allow for individuals to take care of each other while also allowing them to escape oppressive communities or having to go through bureaucratic systems.
I hope for the introduction of a universal basic income (paid in great part by the rich) to alleviate at least part of the existential fear of artists and provide basic security. On top of that I think there should be a communaly organized platform where people will be able to vote for artists/creations/educators/journalists and according to those votes the state pays money to the creators from its culture/education-budget. There should be a certain formula which ensures that not too much and not too little money is paid to the artists ( so that niche-creations also get paid while mainstream/pop-creators don't swim in millions of cash).
That way we could ideally also get rid of advertisement as a means of financing almost everything on the internet and even journalism.
Thats why i love the underground hardcore punk scene. People homage people and steal ideas from each other. Its looked at a community not a market.
Almost as if the punk scene grew from an anti-consumerist ideology and has heavy ties with anarcho communists
"As a musician, I don't feel particularly protected under copyright law. I feel rather threatened, in fact."
- Adam Neely
20:22 - I had an English professor once say something along the lines of “the term ‘original’ is often mistaken as a synonym for ‘unique,’ but it actually means something a bit different. Originality alway has an origin-a preexisting work that the new work draws from.”
I’m surprised you didn’t talk about memes as art. As of now at least, they exist in this weird spot of being both art and common property because (to my knowledge) nobody has been sued for stealing a meme and I believe the only reason for this is because no one has really figured out how to commodify them.
Wait didn’t you post this after the whole article 13 controversy
A potential counterargument to the argument that any move toward copyright abolition could leave artists unpaid/uncompensated, imo, is that we could rethink the dynamic between art and pay. Artistic communal property could perhaps be crowdfunded and individual content creators or prosumers could be receptive to donations, and this could all be boosted with UBI. Or alternatively, there’s also the option of federal funding of art, like what was done with the Federal Art Program established by FDR.
Yes, most countries fund the "high arts" and actually fund a lot of film and the like too. Obviously there's the problem of who gets to make the decisions over what gets made or not but, paired with a properly accountable and democratic system for doing so, that could be a start.
what this would mean is that only artists with the social capital to successfully crowdfund would have any incentive to create anything for public consumption. somebody else who is better known than you could simply take your work, present it as theirs, and "crowdfund" for it with no recourse or compensation for you. you'd have no rights to enforce if somebody stole your work and monetized it.
@@krjeff What you describe seems like consumer fraud, not because of its lack of compensation to that artist for presented work, but because it is deceptive crowdfunding; those funders are scammed into paying for what was never intended to be delivered, specifically in your described case, I assume, not only for more content by whoever actually created the content being presented, but also to that content creator. This is true regardless of social capital. This could be handled by merely the enforcement of consumer rights, if copyright was abolished.
IP is not property, it is Government violence on peaceful people.
Copyright law should be prioritized to protect creativity of individuals, and to criminalize all corporate abuse and abuse attempts.
Lawyer should loose his lisence to practice law, once he gets caught of trying to profit from other peoples creative work.
Corporations should be double taxed if they get caught of trying to abuse individuals creativity.
This seems first and foremost an issue in the field of political economy. If we recall, the last major shift in copy right laws took place during the late 1970s, 1980s ,finally culminating in TRIPS. This was no coincidence as it essentially marked the shift of the US industry from industrial production towards design. The length the US administration went to to product US designs is quite remarkable, and consequently, as long as advanced economies are earning their money through design, laws aren't going to change
Vangelis : Beaubourg Baudrillard: "Hold my cigarette"
Wonderful work. You past the 30 minutes mark and for bloody good reasons! Raising a lot of questions and self-reflection.
Nintendo case is especially interesting. Although their old machines can be perfectly cloned and even upgraded, you still cannot use the RoM even from their very first NES games because of something like a 95 years copyright.
Plus it's funny to consider that Nintendo was basically shooting itself in the foot by going crazy on their games streaming and videos, completely missing or at least misinterpreting the Internet spaceship until quite recently.
Thank you, glad I earned the lengthy video rather than it just seeming like I was just waffling on! Actually, old Nintendo (or similar) games would have been a great example of stuff that might not get rereleased and thus be unplayable as no one else can release it due to copyright law. Dammit, wish I'd thought of that!
@@Tom_Nicholas Japanese companies and copyright claims are quite a topic on their own, you cannot blame yourself for not specifically pointing at this matter especially since exploring EVERY country/Region politics on the issue would take days. You did a great job at questioning things and raising self-reflection in my humble opinion. So what about your Lego Falcon Millennium? Sorry I could not resist- SW France humour I guess!- Take care sir and many thanks for your work!
As you mention at the end, the drawback of not having a way to ensure creators are properly rewarded for their work is quite clearly the biggest issue. I think it really deserved more than a two minute discussion right at the end- maybe half the video tbh
Copyright is the cancer of 21st century. It's no coincidence there is massive growth and innovation in industries where copyright is hard to enforce or alternative forms of licensing are common. Case in point - software. With thousands of projects distributed under permissive licenses like MIT License and difficulty in proving that particular software is stolen and ease of rewritting code to get around copyright we enjoyed immense increase in quality of living. This is one of the factors which made 4th industrial revolution possible
Hehe, "Christian Rapper". That term pleases me.
I find it ironic. So much for greed being a sin.
@@governm3nt697 Rap doesn't have to be all about getting dat pea
He gets all the hi didely hoes
@@governm3nt697 have you heard the origins of Rap? It was mostly protest/street music against capitalism (eg. Public enemy). Of course through Gangsta Rap and Trap the mainstream has shifted more and more towards ‘flexing’ and selfish ends, but there is still some great rap artists using the medium to critique/attack the oppression of capitalism (Jpegmafia, Kendrick Lamar, Run the Jewels, and Kanye West being some of my favourites)
This is a question I've had for a while now, but never really knew how to approach it. Thank you!
Well, I'm sure this is only one way it could be approached but I hope it threw up some interesting questions!
I'm *really* amused by the idea of copyright being made non-transferable from the artists who did most of the work (aside from transfer to the public domain). Probably short-sighted, but it is amusing.
It's an idea with potential, though group creators would make things messy.
Also thanks for reminding me how deeply flawed The Tragedy of the Commons was
Yes.
Excellent video, Tom. I am really digging your content lately. What always struck me as interesting was how Kropotkin's argument against making profits on scientific discovery also rings true for copyright laws. He claimed that every inventor needs tools and ideas that were invented by others, and they, on their part, had to use the inventions of others too, etc. Therefore the inventor, though important, must also be seen as a node in an interlinked chain. According to Kropotkin, by then claiming an invention as your own is not only a betrayal to your community, but to history itself - because it devalues those that came before and staggers those that will come after. I always thought his argumentation made alot of sense.
Ownership is best understood as certainty of access and control. Understood in that light, the problems and solutions are clear.
Intellectual property is a major problem, even outside the arts. As James Bunch says, the means of production for creative works is generally the record company, the publishing company, the film producers, not the artists. Signing over copyright or associated rights is often a condition of publication.
But this is even more extreme in industry, where most innovators work for a corporation that will own the IP. Increasingly, this includes universities, as the corporatise. It stops some corporate theft, but ultimately alienates the innovator from their work, and undermines the principle of Free Scientific Information (FSI).
I really hate the ways copyright works. I really believe copyright inherently hinders creativity and predict will get continually worse over time.
'Tis true. You gotta wonder: what happens when every basic melody has been copywriten? When the only way to write an original melody is by composing something so complex, no one can relate to it. This is a real issue, and it's already starting to have serious consequences. There are only so many combinations of notes.
And this same concept can be virtually applied to anything within art. It's absolutely going to get worse over time. That is a guarantee.
Really great video. I recently did a paper for college on the ethics of sampling in house music with regards to race and a lot of these questions surrounding copyright and IP cropped up. It seems more relevant than ever to look at how we view IP and ownership today not only with digital tech allowing us to distribute music/art for almost no cost but also how sampling, reiteration and repetition are mainstream modes of expressing ourselves creativity. Super relevant to new music but also even thinking of how important memes have become in our culture and how copyright laws are starting to affect peoples ability to do a bit of simple meming. So many problems and no easy solution unfortunately
The book Theft! A History of Music (which is actually an academic book in the form of a graphic novel which I thought was kinda cool) has a lot to say about sampling and particularly the Public Enemy court cases. That’s all made far more complicated by the fact that there’s two copyrights over a sample, that over the music itself and that over the sound recording.
It is easy to call for copyright and intellectual property to be abolished when you assume it will be mega corporations that lose, but what about the smaller creatives and artists. Having your work stolen by a company which can churn out the work and losing all the money that comes with your product would not benefit artists.
Copyright absolutely needs to be reformed. My only concern, and my greatest hesitation, is that it has always gone in the direction benefitting the large corporations (because we gotta make these monopolies legal by giving them a legal monopoly on an idea!) and doesn’t actually benefit the population as a whole. Perhaps this has changed as copyright has become one of the most important pieces of legislation that controls the internet, thus raising its importance and awareness in the general public, but it is still a struggle to make it work for the artist.
awesome video! i’ve never seen one of your videos before but you managed to say literally everything i’ve been thinking about copyright law!
artists are already shafted by copyright law. in your example of Robin Hood, i doubt that anybody who actually worked on that movie creatively still benefits from Disney’s copyright stranglehold on it. and if they do, their benefit is infinitely more minuscule than Disney’s profit. so copyright law isn’t even helping independent artists at this point.
i always have to laugh when people mention super-small independent artists, as well. for copyright law to be upheld, it has to be pursued. if i were to blatantly steal your video and use it for commercial gain, you would have to come at me in a court of law to get justice. who says that individual artists even have the money, time, or know-how to do this? it’s all a bit ridiculous.
Thank you, I really appreciate you saying so.
Yes, the fact that it relies on the courts is really problematic as, like you say, if someone steals one of my (or another smallish artists') videos, I'm very unlikely to have the funds to go after them in the courts or any of the knowledge of really knowing where to start with that. So, although technically it protects everyone, in practice it doesn't really.
Although I'm not very well versed in this subject, yet; to my current understanding, ourcurrent US copyright and IP law is literally only in existence to benefit sociopath-level corrupt lawyers and of course, the big corporations.... Like everything else specifically legislated for in this country. I find it impossible to believe that any IP law written in the last 45 years was done to promote greater opportunity for the little guy. Who owns this govt??? Who do they bend over and get the kneepads for??? Yeah well you get the idea.
Can't even get crumbs after a worldwide pandemic and 10 months after Biden took office.
So I may not know the ins and outs of who IP law helps, but I know who the fuck it DOESN'T help, because I know the scandalous good-for-nothings who hold office here. Know the tree, know the fruit.... If you know one, you certainly know the other.
Any IP law which protects ordinary creators but limits corporate monopoly and control is one I want to get all up close and personal with. Maybe swap as bodily fluids.... Etc. I don't think the specifics matter as much (altho they matter) as the broad strokes and goals of the law. Is this going to empower and protect the regular guy, or be yet another tool of wrongful accumulation by a business that's already far too large???
when you work for a company in creating a work you consent by contract to surrendering your intellectual property rights in the aspects you work on in exchange for money up front which is independent of the commercial success of the work.
nobody is preventing anybody from refusing to work on those terms and just creating their own intellectual property that nobody else has rights over, marketing it themselves and taking responsibility for the risk of commercial unviability.
my good man Tom, I could virtually kiss you on the head for this video! this is mainly me saying thank you for putting this topic of copyright and intellectual property in video-essay form.
my undergrad thesis was nearly EXACTLY on this topic, under the umbrella of rhetoric, which I titled "Author as Owner Redefined by New Media," in which I mainly used Barthes' "Death of the Author" and Bakhtin's theory of dialogism to discuss the present problem (and by no means offer up a solution, as you at least partially tried to do) of copyright related to creative / intellectual property. I also referenced Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons, which you reference in your title but I'm guessing ran out of time to talk about.
my professors told me I was barely scratching the surface, which is why I looked forward to graduate school very much. having only watched a few of your videos so far, I am absolutely more than motivated to continue on to a PhD program in the near future! this video reminded me so much of my passion for this topic, and gave me so many more ideas and references for future papers. I'm sorry i don't have a quippy short comment, but I'm honestly just so happy to have watched this video, it really reignited my passion for learning and writing. it's also a fresh reminder that these things are very much NOW in their evolution, with harder questions and undeniable impacts on society, economies, and creativity world-wide.
so thank you!! i would also love to have more discussion on this topic with you in the future if you would ever be interested! i'm doing my best to make my way down your "What the Theory?" playlist, and it's been a wonderful refresher course so far.
Haha, no problems at all. That sounds really interesting, what kind of conclusions did you come to?
The biggest effect of copyright is to protect the interests of large rights holders. Small creators simply don't have the resources to actually take advantage of those legal protections that exist. Which also means large rights holders can steal from and otherwise abuse small creators essentially without consequence.
Smaller creators do have some protections in practice however. Namely, the ability to leverage social outrage against anyone who offends our collective sense of fairness. There may not be legal weight, but solidarity, boycotting, and loss of reputation can be quite effective tools relative to the resources needed to mobilize them. The current situation with the D&D OGL and VTT licenses is a good example of this in action.
Shows like Final Space should be in public domain. Kinda like a donation, not deleted from existence.
Yeah, it should have being public domain if it wasn't for this shitty copyright law. Hope someday it gets changed for the better or who knows what type of shit happen.
@@j.e.s.m.4686 I just feel that if you get a tax reduction it shouldn't be for failures but the value you give to the public, so shows like Final Space would not get you a big tax reduction, but something you could sell to a company who can afford content with a smaller audience.
I think it is part of a far larger problem, this is just one little symptom.
You hit on it when you described how everything must be rationalized and calculated for economic gain. I think that has completely dominated our culture in every aspect for over a century now.
Your worth as a human is determined by your economic status, everything else is secondary. Our core values are a big salary, big house and a big car. How you do it is not of great concern, even if you got those things through illegal/immoral means society will still value you more than somebody who lives a “poor” life.
The same applies for musicians, it doesn’t matter how you do it as long as you don’t fall for the sin of being poor and thus “unsuccessful”.
And the listeners value the same things. Almost everybody, even musicians and self proclaimed music lovers, only listen to music that is commercially popular. Popularity is directly associated with value, we can say a song is terrible but must have done something good because it made lots of money.
Outside of that music barely exists anymore. Even something as innocent and nice as family/friends singing a birthday song is often seen as cringe. Art programs are often seen as a waste of money because if it doesn’t make money then it is worthless. A musician who doesn’t play in stadiums filled with people acting as if they are enjoying themselves but can “only” teach others has “failed”, he is as bad and dangerous as Adolf.
Instead of art being a mirror, as you called it, it now serves to enforce the systems of society, life is about how you can make the most money the most efficient way, that is what art instructs us to believe these days, from top to bottom. Best pop artist = who makes most money. Best classical musician/artist same. Best “high” art = the stuff that gets auctioned for hundreds of millions.
And like I said this is just a tiny slice, this is true for almost every part of society.
Here is my take: intellectual property should be owned by individuals, not corporations.
Corporations aren't entities capable of creative production, humans beings are. If we study the history of the copy-right law, it is pretty clear that its only intention was to benefit the corporations who lobbied for it.
Explaining:
The very idea that corporations are allowed to buy ownership over the intellectual property from the original creator and profit over unpaid and uncredited artists is really absurd to me, it is the epitome of the surplus-value. It's baffling to know that no writer, artist, musician, etc have ever made one cent over the copyright claims these corporations orchestrate, and there is basically no way to break into the market without agreeing to hand over the value of our work to a faceless businessman who will raise his fortune over something he never intellectually participated in. Most of the artists working in the entertainment industry are overworked and poorly paid, their jobs aren't secure and they can get fired at any minute because some billionaire isn't capable of paying their employees their fair share.
Conclusion: If you are an individual creator or an artist/small businessman working on an indie company, then yes, you should have the rights of your intellectual property secured for you will need to be protected against plagiarism and the uneven competition of the marketplace. Once you have raised to a corporation level, then you shouldn't own the right over something you never produced - although it may not be reasonable to lend ownership rights for all the workers in a big company, it's a fact that those workers SHOULD be paid more and that can be made through a fee charged by the creators referring to their intellectual ownership claim (in the same way some individual professional artists often do when working for a client). Moreover, the whole state of the copy-right law is pretty abusive and works against the free market, the freedom of speech, and the cultural production in our society, so it needs to be rethought.
The right to repair makes physical personal property more like intellectual property, and ownership more like licensure.
Also, closed source and non-free software is also something you have restricted ownership over. But, there are free, open source options out there, where you can own them in all relevant senses of the word.
This is super snappy content for most of your audience, I sense!
It's adorable what you're doing with this channel, and quality.
Really thorough and well served! Thank you!
Thank you!
I'm definitely more on the "abolish copyright" side of things, but I think its a hard sell at the moment. But i have a proposal that i think is less controversial than abolish copyright.
The current international standards for copyright terms are hilariously long. The long terms do not incentivize new works, all they ensure is that if you create something truly successful, then you never have to make anything else ever. If the copyright term was short, at some point you have to make something else to pay your rent. The opposite force is maximizing your monopoly: a really short term gives you no chance to reap the benefits while your work is culturally relevant. This is the part people are worried about.
But these days things stop being culturally relevant very quickly. Avengers Endgame is no longer in the zeitgeist, yet it will be stuck in copyright until after everyone old enough to watch it in theaters is dead.
I propose reducing copyright to 8 years, applied retroactively. Thats plenty of time to monetize a specific work and produce the next thing, and it ensures that anything that was popular when you were growing up will (on average) be public domain once you are old enough to actually make your own art
I would recommend 20 years(10 years and another 10 years of extension,optional)but with more freedom in using:
-Most non commercial uses/modifications are fair use(except those that can seriously damaged the author in finances)
-Only a few uses may require prior permission
-Some commercial uses may not required authorization but you have to commission the author
-In any case you have to attribute/crediting the author
-All rights are non transferable(but those that are used to are still shareable)
-The extendable 10 years will requiring extension fee every year
Yeah, I totally agree with you. While I'm also on the side of abolishing copyright but also wanting to be changed for the better. This copyright law is broke as fuck and for some reason; nobody seems to be talking about it despite being a very serious issue for me. Like, it caused nothing but chaos and arguments over "who should own this or not", People getting constantly sued for no reason other than using copyrighted characters claiming to steal it (which wasn't anybody's intentions because nobody wasn't stealing anything) and leaving/spreading fear among artists without giving them freedom. This is why I personally like public domain so much because it gives filmmakers, animators, game developers and artists the liberties/freedom to create something new with the IP and show much/some passion on the IP that they or we grow up with. I've seeing many people online how creative they are, wanting to create comics, books, games, shows or movies on the IP we love growing up, coming up with cool pitches and premises that could change entertainment and having many folks who have cool ideas with their own set of vision, Before anyone says something, yes, I'm aware that they're some scumbags out there who might take advantage of this and make an idiotic cash grab so they gain money, I know it's annoying but NOT everyone are like that; they're people out there who wants to make something that they love and I support that. But for some reason, people don't seem to appreciate creativity and brush things off like they meant nothing, which leaves me frustrated as hell. But what angers me the most is that we can have the good stuff because of DISNEY! They extended the timeframe because they were scared of LOSING the rights of Mickey Mouse. Okay, I get Mickey is iconic but he's not THAT iconic and yet, they decided to do something stupid without thinking on how it might affect on other IPs, which is very selfish. People cannot keep something that they created FOREVER! We need to change and abolish Copyright so people can have the freedom and liberties they deserve.
If I could change the time frame, personally; I would shorten it down to 4 or 6 years. I know it's very short but at least it seems very much fair to me. But hopefully someday it will change for the better and hopefully people can find a way to do it. I know it will be hard but sometimes I feel tired of seeing shit happen to people. Hope you folks understand what I feel about it.
I swear this might be one of the best videos on youtube right now
Just coming here from the future to say that Tom does indeed make a habit of longer videos, and it is glorious.
I would love if you did a video on how we could accelerate the vaccination process and potentially save so so many more lives and shorten the pandemic if not for companies keeping the vaccine patents for themselves to maximize profits. While vaccines could be produced by manufacturers all around the world if not for that.
The tragedy of the commons is what started my interest in politics. When I had no idea about politics, an anarcho-capitalist asked me where would people be more likely to throw trash around: a public space or a private space? To which I answered (much to his surprise): the private space. Because if you litter a public place, you will be fined and receive the disapproval of others, whereas a private place is the the kingdom of the owner and they can turn it into a trash pile if they so wish. He still managed to convice me to read Atlas Shrugged, which amazed me of how much a terrible piece of philosophy, economics and literature it was, that it made me want to learn economics starting with Adam Smith and all through Karl Marx.
The flaw in the "Tragedy of the Commons" argument is that it assumes an unregulated commons. The commons of the middle ages and early modern period was never unregulated. There were traditional and customary limits to the use of the commons that were firmly enforced. The commons were sustainably maintained for hundreds of years before enclosure deprived the common people of their use.
I just discovered your channel and love your content. The only complain I have is that most videos are a little too long for my attention. I think 20 min videos would be perfect. Keep up the good work!
Hey! I too love Adam Neely
I hadn't actually come across his stuff prior to a few months back when he put out this video. I used to do quite a lot of music (less so now) but really enjoy his stuff and his way of making technical aspects of music theory really engaging!
hello, intellectual property attorney here. all my clients are small artists and content creators. we should not abolish copyright, but we should make it illegal to transfer a copyright. most of the problems my clients face come from larger publications using their leverage to muscle them into selling their copyright, which is always a terrible idea for the artist. copyrights should only be able to be licensed, with ongoing royalties, never sold. we also need to really revamp how we deal with music sampling but i primarily work with visual artists so i don't have much perspective there.
sampling is theft. Out and out. It's equivelant to ripping out paragraphs of many books and copying them into a new book. 'sampling' is exactly that of music. If you want to use something pre-existing, pay for it...otherwise use it as inspiration and come up with your own.
Probably comes down to intent doesn't it? Like anything. To prove someone maliciously copied something is difficult.
I wonder how copyright works in the culinary world. Dishes. Food products etc
@@lf1980 actually, "ripping paragraphs out of a book and using them in your own" is pretty normal in both the publishing world (writers cite and reference other writers all the time) and the art world (there are artists whose entire body of work is all appropriated pieces of writing from other writers, repurposed and remixed), and the jurisprudence on fair use goes into alot of depth about when appropriation is legal. Intent is a major factor, yes, but more important is recognizability: would a customer mistake the sample for the original, or choose to purchase the sample instead of the original? Proper attribution is key, as is the size of the sample.
And there is no copyright for food, or clothing. You can copyright a recipe, but not the implementation of the recipe. This is mostly because copyright does not cover any functional item; that's the purpose of patents. And patents provide a much stronger, but much, much narrower scope of intellectual property protection.
sampling is not theft, you do not own ip, IP is illegitmate, it is not property.
@@voluntarism335 I actually think IP (medical patents aside) is the only ethical kind of property
As an aspiring animator, my worry and desire for copyright protection isn’t to stop individuals from watching or using my work. It’s to prevent major corporations from stealing my creations.
Who gives a fuck if some people watch my cartoons on UA-cam. It’s Disney deciding they like the general gist to practically copy my idea, but not enough to hire me, that scares me.
With Disney’s level of power and money, what’s to stop them from doing that now and drowning you in legal fees?
As if you have the money to sue Disney regardless
Amazing video! In a small work I made for college a couple of decades ago I looked at this issue from the marxist categorization of technological abilities / economic relations / superstructure. Technical abilities like "reproducible products" (products that can be copied from another finished product without the skills or resources of the original creator) are a challenge to the existing economical relation: selling each finished product to pay for the initial investment of creation. This type of products have a very steep initial cost (99.9%) and a minimal copy cost (copying a disc, offering a streaming connection). Copyright from the point of view of protecting creation was a law included in that superstructure to protect the economical relations of the time. But the advent of new technological abilities (books, music, video, software... and more recently mechanical design via 3d printers) will challenge more and more the business model. And that's the issue you explain at the end that is difficult to solve short term.
Very exciting to wake up to a half hour+ video from you.
Additionally, down with the mouse!
Ah, that's very nice to hear! I'm still at a point where I can't quite imagine anyone actually looking forward to me putting out a video so that means a bunch!
And yes, down with mouse indeed (although I did almost include a pic from my recent trip to Disneyland where I got to meet the mouse and actually got a bit excited about the whole thing...).
You just won this MLs heart , your video is very informative Tom :D
Thank you, really appreciate you saying so!
Even if we don't abolish it we could limit it. a lifetime is absurdly long. Even 30 years would be really long, but also 30 years is considerably less than the current length and it's also very unlikely to harm anyone. I don't think any inventors, creators, or company are sitting in suspense for their work in the 80s to finally turn a profit. They've either moved on or the project has already been profitable.
A difficult question to resolve for me because my sister is an artist and I believe she should be recognized in her life time at least for her work and as Tom Petty put it, everyone deserves a fair wage. Vr much part of the debate which is harder for me than usual; tx to all for comments which am still following! Tom you started something!!
I think it's a question of when, not if.
You fantastically explained it, but copyright does come down to restricting ideas once you sort through the complex wording. Before capitalism took hold, human civilization as it was had taken shape almost solely because ideas could spread and be replicated easily and freely. There were no copyrights or patents on the wheel, or on shelter from the weather, or on canals or farming or textiles. And no copyrights on folklore.
Modern "culture" is stifled by copyright, allowing culture to be controlled and dictated by the owner-class, the capitalists who own everything. And society strains against it. Because it's unnatural.
We should have an eye toward moving away from copyright, toward individuals not needing to greedily guard their creations and demand money in exchange for a story or a tune. We need to aim for a post-capitalist world, because one way or another we're headed there. Either we can prepare and have some pretty good systems in place (I think some form of socialism) or we can collectively drag our feet and deny that capitalism is falling apart and wind up in chaos.
I think you're right on the first part. I think technological advances have simply made reforming copyright unavoidable (or, at worst, that the laws all stay on the books but are basically unenforceable in practice). Either way, artists are moving away from being able to rely on their exclusive property rights as a sole source of income and I think we'll see alternative cultural economies spring up no matter what happens in terms of the law.
The latter part is obviously a much broader question but I'm not particularly in disagreement with you there either.
Individual rights are fundamental rights. It is my responsibility to succeed or fail, not the collective's.
Should We Abolish Copyright? Yes, yes we should
especially since the only way to enforce it at this point is increasingly malicious/authoritarian measures to prevent/criminalize ALL acts of copying. copyright made [some] sense when it was somewhat difficult and risky to make/distribute copies. it's just not now. but corporations enjoy that power imbalance they've created, including between them and the artists which actually made all the stuff they "own" and lock behind NDAs so even the artists can't use/share/discuss it.
I hate copyright because i play a certain train simulator called Trainz simulator 12, and the DLC creators for that game are (mostly) a bunch of assholes who think it's ok to send an entire law-enforcement SWAT team to arrest a 15 year who posted 'pirated' DLC. (real story btw but the 15 year old was reprimanded on their forums)
I saw a debate in comments when in artist was extremely angry at the idea that a post capitalist/socialist society would do away with copyright. Other artists argued that without competition and the need to capitalize, it would be silly to just steal somebody else’s work, and there would be no money to be made anyways. So either somebody would just be enjoying the art and attempting to recreate it or learn from it, or, I’d somebody did create a better version that was more beloved, they as artists would be flattered that somebody was so inspired by their work that they created something so amazing that everyone loved, and surely that alone would be credit as ppl would have to still understand the orginal to understand the newer better version and would respect and praise the orginal artist for coming up with the concept. The first artist was very firm and argued that it would still hurt them and make them feel horrible to have their art copied. I’m an artist and art therapist and I’m more in the camp of money poisoning things- if a child was learning to draw and traced my art, I wouldn’t be mad and I would be flattered that they were so inspired to create my work. If somebody just stole my lyrics for recognition I have faith in morality that people would eventually figure out that it was not their own work and they wouldn’t want to support somebody pretending to have done something they didn’t, and if they simply built off of it- like fan art or fanfiction or parody, again, I would be happy to see my art was so useful and a point of origin for other great works. I do understand where the other was coming from and find it to be an interesting consideration
The idea that copywrite is useless in a communist society is founded on the assumption that financial capital is the only thing to be gained from owning IP. There is also a matter of recognition and reputation, social capital if you will. If I were to write a book and release it, and you took a copy of that book, changed the name on the cover and releases it as your own, it would hurt my standing within the community and diminish any recognition I receive for my work. This doesn't just apply to direct copies either, but also derivative works. If I were to release a novel with well foreshadowed events and clearly established plot points leading to a sequel, and you were to read that novel and think "I know where this is heading" and write a release your own version of that sequel before I have finished my own, that would also impact on the recognition of my own work, and depending on the quality of you work, could be detrimental to my reputation.
In short, copywrite isn't just about money, but also attribution.
@@matthewparker9276 Authorship is not the same as copyright, and Authorship would still exist.
I was always interested in the structuralist writings of Gerard Genette, Palimpsests and Intertexuality in particular which classify the ways in which the artistic 'commons' is appropriated by succeeding creators. Thought it was germane to this topic. Brilliant video as always Tom! Vexed question indeed.
Creative Commons reinforces the idea of copyright in your mind.
Potentially. I think it's an interesting remedy to some of the problems of copyright as it exists in the present though and potentially an interesting transitional stage. And the manner in which it allows someone to protect their right to attribution for that particular expression of a work is in some regards useful.
Why don't we part with all kinds of property (except personal)?
That’s the broader question but was keen to focus in during this video.
Glad I found another comrade to subscribe to
29:15 As an artist, myself, you might as well toss Copyright Law anyway. Copyright doesn't protect individual/small-time artists, only corporations.
In some cases, corporations have even stolen an artist's work, copyrighted it, and then sued the artist for infringement. **Cough Disney**
I stopped producing art because too many people online were stealing and merchandising my work and there was nothing I could do about it.
Intellectual property is one of the few means by which a person of low financial status can transcend their class. If we're operating inside Capitalism we need intellectual property, PERIOD. To abolish IP would leave all the power and earning potential in corporate hands and remove the individuals ability to gain ground.
Yeah it’s not like corporations strong arm people out of there copyright or anything or just steal it while the artist is unable to get it back without an army of lawyers yeah that doesn’t happen
@@jmurray1110 Not really relevant to what I said. Also not the norm. Evidence of my position is all around us.
Copyright is brainrot as exemplified by some comments in this very comment section