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Pluralistic: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing"
(pluralistic.net)
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this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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Especially telling when it's the corporation that owns the copyright, and not the actual artists and other workers that actually created it.
I mean, at the low level, sure. “Bart Simpson”, the concept, was created by a person. Bart Simpson, the character, was developed and built as a collaborative effort of several people spanning the course of decades, and continues to be developed by teams of people.
The copyright shouldn’t belong to an individual. The rights to the intellectual property need to be protected, but so too do the rights of everyone who contributed to building it.
Unfortunately, corporations are really the closest proxy we really have.
Thats what’s really exciting about new media, and small time collaborators, and niche content. HomeStar Runner doesn’t belong to Disney, or Fox, or Viacom. He belongs to the small group of people who created him and his friends. The same could be said for Kurzgesagt, or The Lockpicking Lawyer, or both the Nostalgia and Angry Video Game nerds.
The corporations exist to extract as much ownership as possible from the creative class, it is not a proxy ownership by those doing the collaborative work. See the recent WGA strike as an example. Unions and co-ops are the proxies, not corporations.
[citation needed]
The closest thing we have to "representation proxy to a community of people who helped author a thing" is an author's guild, for example. And things like the Writers' Guild already exist, I'm sure there's a Drawers' Guild too. Not as close, but more solidly defined, would be a union, oh guess what? We have those, too.
In comparison, a "corporation" has a whole lotta fat.
Corporations don't need you to shill for them.
I think my point is getting lost in the one pro-corporate part of it…the corporation is responsible for nearly all of the risk, and that investment is what ultimately creates the content. They absolutely do deserve some stake in its IP, just not necessarily nearly as much as they currently have.
This is why I love new media. Low enough startup costs that small individuals and small groups could easily creat and own their own content and IP. It’s really the big investments that complicate everything.
It used to be necessary to sell your soul to the establishment to get your content in front of a large audience, but it’s not anymore.
And don’t get me wrong, it’s only in this specific context and conversation that I would call Google the good guys, or at least the lesser of two evils. Obviously context matters.
No and no.
The creators take more of a risk by going with a corporation. Corporations have hella money, they can afford to spend some on [checks notes] living wages.
Once again no. The creators do.
I’m not saying the creators don’t. You’re saying the people who bankroll it don’t. I say that’s a bit unfair.
Yeah, the creatives don’t get reimbursed nearly as much as the (top) talent, and them not as much as the owner class. That’s a tale as old as time. I don’t think that copyright is really the demon you’re making out to be here though. It’s also worth noting that only the top talent really gets the good money. Most of the cast is also pretty unequally paid. That goes to the creative side as well…for every Spielberg or Tarentino or Vince Gilligan there are tens of hundreds of very skilled writers not getting their fair shake.
And I think we’re mostly in agreement, I just think that whoever bankrolls should get a fair share of the profits. I think that’s a fair take. The problem isn’t the copyrights, it’s that the bankrollers are getting way more than a fair share.
And again this is the problem new media solves. You don’t need to bend to the studios to get your content in front of a big audience…and even better, you can get your content in front of a niche audience, too, which is something the studios couldn’t really do very well. They used to be the roadblock and you had to play by their rules, and that’s no longer the case.
Accidentally deleted my comment. Spelling...
To separate the worker from owning the means of production?