The recent worrying thread about images on the blog has reminded me of one of my more leftfield ideas. I’m sure this will get careful consideration from you open minded people… And if not, then I’ll feel solidarity with that moon landings guy.
Why don’t we just give up the idea of copyright? It seems to me that the whole idea was conceived when people were actually able to control the copying and distribution of their work. In a world of instant copies of everything everywhere it makes less and less sense each day.
All the arguments for copyright seem to be about artists preserving their revenue. But whoever said art needs to create revenue? If you need to be paid to give your art any meaning, maybe you should be doing something else instead. I think a world of amateur artists (writers, musicians, etc….) would be a potentially more interesting place.
We’re clinging to an outdated concept and failing to think outside the box. Let’s end ‘copyright’ tomorrow. Who’s with me?!
Not me. I’m a designer and illustrator, and all of my work is copyright, whether for various publishers or myself. They and I rely on people buying copies of the things to make money. No money coming in = me not making any more things.
Copyright and intellectual property doesn’t just underpin art. It’s the critical structure around which great swathes of industry are built.
The critical question is; if you abolish IP rights (because these arguments never stop at copyright) how do you encourage innovation? Why is anyone going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing new medicine if everyone else can just reverse engineer it and sell it cheap, with no dev costs to recoup? Who is going to make Avengers Assemble, or The Wire, or Pokemon Go, or any of the other stuff we all (!) enjoy that cost a few bob to bring into creation?
I’ve read a few books by the leading lights of the “copyleft” movement (Lawrence Lessig, Aaron Schwarz, et al) and they all seem to exist in a state of pure fantasy – what we lose along the lines discussed above, all the innovation, taxes and jobs, will be somehow offset by regular people collaborating on the Internet. I just don’t see how that works. We’d get some hilarious new YouTube videos, but does that really offset a scenario where authors are asked to spend months or years slaving over their work, only to find that once it’s public they have no more ability to control its distribution or monetisation than anyone else who lays hands on it?
I’d also note that copyright isn’t strictly mandatory. If you want to create cool stuff and let other people use it there are a plethora of open source and Creative Commons licenses out there for just that purpose. Creators are free to choose, and – overwhelmingly – they choose copyright. None of which is to say that copyright is perfect (plenty of room for reform, in my view), just that I’m uber-cautious of those who want to throw the baby out with the bath water – I sense an ideology at play that is impervious to reason. I recently attended series of legal seminars in which a visiting US professor smugly informed his audience that intellectual property is “sexist, racist and imperialist”. A quick look on Amazon the next morning confirmed a prominent copyright notice on page one of said Professor’s most recent book. This guy is one of the smartest thinkers the copyleft movement has. Just about sums up the prevailing level of maturity and critical thought.
I don’t wish to appear rude, but your highly romanticised view of art as being some kind of spiritual need is the concept that’s ‘outdated’. For many people being creative is their livelihood, and each creation involves hours of work. Would you or anyone do their line of work without remuneration? And also, as we have seen increasingly in the music world, when things can be accessed for free and are not valued, the cumulative effect is that they become perceived as being literally worthless.
The writer Barney Hoskyns has a particularly vituperative perspective on this issue; it’s worth looking at his Facebook posts passim.
Sorry Arthur, as a professional writer, I’m not with you either!
A slight tangential leap: years back I went for a job and took along my radio showreel. The producer listened to it, and then asked me if I’d actually made a particular trail on it. I confirmed that I did, and asked why? Turned out the previous candidate had handed him a showreel with *my* trail on it, and claimed that he had written it. (I got the job)
Blimey! (not that you got the job – the blighter who was trying to rip you off…)
I’m not. Copyright does more than establish a right to earn money. It also protects against plagiarism, protects people from poor quality and dangerous fake products and allows someone the right to stop their output being misused or misrepresented.
This is quite apart from the thorny question of what is art and what is commerce. It has to be consistent. Its perfectly achievable for an artist to issue their work free of copyright – they don’t have to have it.
I claim copyright to “That moon landings guy”………..
(Chuckles out loud).
No. Some sort of legal protection should be in place for those who rely on their creativity to earn a living. See comments above for good explanations why.
On the other hand, there is a creeping trend to extend copyright to what I feel are ridiculous time frames. I don’t believe copyright on anything should go beyond the lifetime of the work’s creator, unless the creator dies within 50 years. That seems reasonable and fair to me.
I don’t see why somebody’s heirs, or a commercial organisation who have paid for the rights to something, should carry on milking a legacy forever and a day, which seems to be a current trend.
Totally agree. I think this is where there’s a sensible conversation to be had.
Playing Devil’s advocate, the flip side of that is why should someone who didn’t create something or fund its development profit from it, regardless of how long ago it was created?
What about a scenario where a writer is scraping a living by their scribblings and just about supporting his/her wife/husband and kids. He/she creates a massive best-seller but dies at the hands of a mugger (for example) just after sending it to his/her publisher.
Should his/her family not get any benefit, seeing that he/she is no longer alive?
Didn’t make myself clear Mike. Of course rights should pass down to family but I meant that I don’t think someone unconnected should be able to benefit from someone else’s creativity just because a work is over a certain number of years old. Not sure where the line should be drawn though, especially now we’re all living longer.
I can remember Cliff Richard griping some years back about the fact that some of his earlier recordings were going out of copyright here in the UK. He didn’t get all that much sympathy, as I recall.
He didn’t get much of mine.
Curious thing – I asked a very experienced record dealer in Scotland a while back, just for a bit of chat, which act was a dead loss on the second hand market. Without hesitation he said Cliff. ‘Even the early singles?’ I asked. Yep, everything. He could never shift them.
I’d agree with that. Around 2010 when Cliff’s early singles and first 2 or 3 LPs went out of copyright they were all reissued on “no name” unauthorised labels. I spoke to Hank Marvin about this and he was less than pleased.
As far as I understand it the 50 year copyright law has been extended/changed to cover material which has already been released, but it does not protect unreleased material.
That may explain why the Beatles made around 20 outtakes/alternate versions of tracks recorded in 1963 available on iTunes for a limited time. Once they had been on sale, no matter how briefly, they were covered by the extended copyright law.
Bob Dylan has also done this on a much larger scale with material from his 2nd, 3rd and 4th LPs. After a few unauthorised CDs appeared containing material from the first Dylan LP and related live material from 1961, Dylan took steps and briefly issued virtually every unreleased outtake from the Freewheelin’, Times They Are A Changin’ and Another Side Of albums, totalling 100s of tracks.
This instantly placed that material under copyright for (I think) another 25 years in Europe. In the US they already had the longer 75 years copyright law.
For the same reason we don’t have 100% inheritance tax – because leaving something of value to your kids is a massive stimulus to hard work and creativity.
This is basically just a question of balance; our IP system needs to do enough to incentivise creativity, but not be so restrictive that it then locks the fruits of that creativity away for centuries at a time, long after the incentive effects have evaporated.
I love all these replies and I’ll respond when I have time. Thanks for not just treating me as a troll!
It’s a really interesting conversation to have, so thanks for starting it!
Most of the campaigns against copyright infringement are laughable: hysterical and OTT.
Shame that they don’t calmly make some of the points mentioned here.
I’m sure points have indeed been reasonably and calmly made many times in the debate.
Like most public debates where vested interests are at stake, it’s the hysterical and OTT that gets most widely reported.
I think that copyright is a fundamental right that allows someone to “own” something that they have created without the risk that someone merely uses it for their own benefit. Having said that, there is an issue with the way that for example the music industry continues to operate using a system of licences and royalties which doesn’t fit so easily with today’s streaming culture. Perhaps a system of copyright that could be bought and sold would be the solution – so a band produce an album and are paid a lump sum (or some other mechanism) by a label who then “own” it to market as they will including streaming etc.
At the point at which we ditch the idea of anybody getting paid for their work – hey, brain surgeon, why are you taking a wage, isn’t it payment enough just to be fixing those little grey cells? – then we can ditch copyright too.
I am really tired of this argument that artists, writers, musicians, whatever, should be tossing their work into the ether for nothing. I don’t see that argument being made for lawyers, accountants, toilet cleaners, footballers, checkout operatives or airline pilots.
“if you need to be paid to give your art meaning…” Sorry, but what kind of argument is that? Being paid is the settlement our society has come to as recognition for any kind of endeavour. And in a world where the old 40 hour week is increasingly a thing of the past – thank you opt out of the social chapter, hello post-Brexit world of absolutely no employee rights – where are all these artists going to find the spare time to produce Under Milk Wood, The White Album or Casablanca in the future?
Interesting sub-point you make there about ‘giving art meaning’ vis a vis cash. (BTW, I agree totally with your general point, as shared by many others.) I had a conversation with an artist (painter) friend just yesterday and he was wrestling (not for the first time) with this dilemma. The art world has a unique ‘financial worth’ structure. Once a living artist has a show, sells work for X, the next show the prices have to be X or X+Y, and so on. They can really never be X-Y.
My friend’s trouble is that, unusually among artists, he has a restless muse and his style of art has changed quite significantly over the past 25 years or so – which means that even though he’s now inspired, through wanting to give meaning and create something in line with his muse, to work in a very primitive way with little obvious painterly skill, he struggles with knowing the ‘book price’ (for want of better term) that such works would have were he to show them. His last couple of shows sold poorly because his art was going away from the very painterly, obviously skilful style that he had made his name with (four figure canvasses) and while he has an offer of a London show next year he knows it would be futile to accept because the work is going in a direction that he feels no one will want.
It must be strange to know that you ‘could’ make money if you used your skill in a certain way, but to also know that you have to follow your muse or it has no worth to yourself.
I can only grasp this up to a point. Though I’ve certainly turned down a couple of pretty much on-a-plate book deals, of higher profile (and, I suppose, potentially more financial rewards – though in the book world it’s never going to be much) than anything I’ve written thus far, because I just didn’t have the heart for them.
And another thing… funny you should mention ‘Under Milk Wood’: I just came across a 1966 interview with Brit jazz pianist Stan Tracey, talking about his ‘Under Milk Wood Suite’ LP of a few months previous. It’s now regarded as one of the pinnacles of British jazz, and even then Stan was thinking ‘wow…’ and waiting for the phone to ring – but it never did. Decades later he had to reissue it himself on his own label because nobody else would. There has to be some kind of moral there…
One for John Rental – QTWTAIN
Rentoul
That was a bad move of me to raise such an aggressive topic and then fail to respond to any of the arguments raised back. Lack of time. Soz.
Anyway, I do stand a little humbled. The Massive is a great hive mind for talking sense when one’s thoughts turn to fancy and nonsense. I concede my call to arms was a bit naive. Yes, common sense dictates people need to receive due reward for their efforts, and I recognise this is something that the concept of copyright seeks to protect. I also see (a point very well explained by Bingo above) that really it’s the wider concept of intellectual property that’s at stake.
And yet, and yet… I’m nothing if not a contrarian…
Arguing with all of you would be like a swordsman taking on a whole army at once, so I’m going to pick on one comment from above by Molesworth…
“I am really tired of this argument that artists, writers, musicians, whatever, should be tossing their work into the ether for nothing. I don’t see that argument being made for lawyers, accountants, toilet cleaners, footballers, checkout operatives or airline pilots.”
Well.. Isn’t”art” different though? Those other occupations are all services that people with skills carry out, and if people want to use the skills of those particular professionals, they set up a contract and pay them. Otherwise, it would be difficult to get anyone to carry out that service. It’s the equivalent of a musician carrying out a commissioned piece, or making a paid live appearance. Both of which are fine in my utopian fantasy world. But what I can’t see is why anyone should have the automatic right to be recompensed and protected for the far more hazy concept of “creating something”.
Yes, I see the creative model as it stands relies on financial motive for artistic pursuits. But I’d also be willing (I think) to consider throwing out that baby with the bathwater and see how things ended up. I don’t necessarily think it would be either a world of silly youtube videos, or a folk paradise, but I do think it might be somewhere in between.
Anyway, you may say I’m a dreamer, but (edit – can’t finish that sentence as it’s probably a copyrighted lyric…)…
Thanks again, everyone.
I suspect a lot of people in this Information Age/instant-online-everything world who are engaged in artistic pursuits are doing so in the knowledge that financial returns are far from the top of their list of motivations. People who create stuff often simply want to get it ‘out there’ – the creation of a work/body of work or the hobby-esque act of creating are rewards in themselves, an outworking of creativity as a balance to other pressures in life.
I’m sure (well, I think I’m sure!) Disappointing Bob, for instance, and Twang, for another instance, would agree with me that opportunities to create or (in their cases) perform music are an incentive in themselves – the reward being perhaps a listening audience or people who get pleasure from something one has created.
In a way, the fact that money is rarely a prime incentive is what is sustaining the lower 90% of the ‘music industry’, and will doubtless go on doing so.
That being said… I have periodically been very grateful, as a non-professional musician/writer of music who nevertheless has professional recordings ‘out there’ when PPL or IMRO [Irish PRS equivalent] funds appear. They can often offset weak periods in other income streams. My proofreading work is slow this week and, as if by magic, a three figure PPL payment arrived today.
Would I be happy if there were NO even occasionally possible income streams from work I had created? No. But it’s far from the main incentive.
In terms of other copyrightable work, would I write books about music if there were no possible financial rewards? No. In that sphere, some degree of financial reward HAS to be there, even if it’s a modest advance that, in reality, represents far less than the minimum wage for the time it takes to research and write a decent nopn-fiction work. as long as there’s SOMETHING to juggle with. You can’t live on air.
While the music world would continue even if copyright was banned tomorrow (because enough people either just want their hobby work to be ‘out there’ or yearn to play at Glastonbury,. ort whatever), I suspect the book world would see almost everyone put down their pens and go and do something else.
Any other opinions?
Some fantastic food for thought there. In regards to music, I agree. People will still make music even if they don’t see a financial reward (me for one, as well as probably a great chunk of people on this blog).
In regards to writing, your experience probably makes you best placed to comment, Colin. I had it in my mind that cliche about JK Rowling writing Harry Potter sitting in an Edinburgh cafe while on benefits….
I’ve written books in cafes. I’ve yet to see the benefits…
Joking aside, I DID get into a routine, writing my jansch book in 1999, of looking over the previous day’s work in the morning at a cafe in East Belfast and gearing up for more slog in the afternoon/evening. I’ve tended not to ‘work’ in cafes since then, but I’ll happily break up the week (if I’m writing in a full-time sort of way at a given time) with the odd coffee-shop session with friends.
I’m in the very early stages of a book at the moment (in between other stuff, and financial reward is again not of first concern) and with the weather being so great over here recently, managed a day or two in my back garden/patio table working through some primary sources. Most enjoyable!
“The automatic right to be recompensed for the hazy concept of “creating something””.
Who says there’s an automatic right? If nobody wants it, you dont get paid. But if somebody wants to read your book or article, watch your film, listen to your song, where is their automatic right to get if for free?
“Creating something” doesn’t happen inside five seconds with the wave of a wand and a puff of smoke, unless you’re a magician by trade. To paraphrase Wodehouse, it starts with the applying of the seat of the trousers to the chair and ends hours, days, months, years later. If somebody wants to enjoy the result of that creation, they can hand over the cash. There’s no difference in that to handing over the money for a pint that somebody created in a brewery.
This idea of art for art’s sake is laudable. But that should be the choice of the artist alone. It shouldn’t be imposed on him or her by freeloaders knocking up a spurious moral case that art should be free like the air man. No it fucking shouldn’t.
And then you have the additional argument that if something is free, it ceases to be valued. There’s a lot in that too, but we that’s just a back up argument.
Oh, and by the way. I have a close acquaintance of great intelligence and international renown in his scientific field, left-leaning, salt of the earth… who also thinks the moon landings were fake.
On the subject of copyright volation, there’s this:
http://www.ibtimes.com/kickass-torrents-alleged-owner-atrem-vaulin-arrested-website-down-2393487
Apparently Kickass torrents was big potatoes in the allotment of illegal downloads. But don’t look for it – it’s not there any more.