They're important in the fact that they do immense damage to our economy, with perverse incentives and rent seeking everywhere.
There is little no evidence that IP improves innovation or even benefits creators as whole. There are instances like this all the time showing what a terrible system it is.
Copyright and patents shouldn't exist at all, and especially shouldn't in their current capacity.
Copyright shouldn't exist at all? If you write a song or a book, or film a feature film, you should be able to sell one copy (and then cheap copycat commodity production can take over) and that's it?
Your argument is ”Corporate/Govt Sponsors, Kickstarter, and Patreon exist”. That’s fine and all, but they have their own problems.
A one-time funding model like sponsorship/grants and Kickstarter is fundamentally un-meritocratic. Money is given to promises of quality or broad appeal, not the actual attainment of it.
Patreon/subscription presupposes either a serial format or long-term commitment to producing many works. Attempting to use periodic small donations to fund a single long-form / high-labor work adds a burden on the creator to maintain a circus of “progress updates” and unrelated “rewards” to make the petty donorati feel adequately compensated for their “generosity”.
There tends to be a mindset of "we can't replicate every current business model without copyright, so it must be preserved." That's a false argument for two big reasons:
1. Creativity adapts to the environment available. The guy who whines "I can't make my artistic vision without the current licensing/copyright financing model to bankroll it" isn't that different from an artist in 1600 whining "I can't make my vision because CNC milling does not exist." If you want to tell a story, you'll find a way to make a go of it with the tools you have. Maybe you'll have to make a lower budget version, or come up with an installment format to make it viable-- sometimes it's the constraints that give creative works their charm.
2. Could we be missing out on entire new styles of expression because of copyright? Collaborative and evolutionary works, especially at scale, has always been touchy under a regime that requires attribution and ownership. Maybe the Great American Wiki replaces the Great American Novel. Voluntary open licensing doesn't actually help there-- compliance is still complex, expensive, and time consuming, even if it's done with a good intent.
As for crowdfunding, I'd say it's extremely meritocratic once bootstrapped. Once the system has been around for a while, it becomes clear who delivers.
That is not my argument. My argument is that supporting this one form of monetization does not justify the existence of copyright. Tons of creative work exists outside that system now and existed long before copyright was a thing. Additionally, the negative aspects of the system far outweigh any monetary benefits creators may see from it.
Donations and patreon, etc, sure, I can buy... but I don't think they'll pay for a feature film with a $150M budget.
Basically all the others require some sort of publisher exclusivity or friction on republishing that just doesn't exist today.
I also fear that ... trying to get exclusivity through restrictive contracts in the absence of copyright protection could be a cure worse than the disease.
> Films get a majority of revenue from the box office.
Which would no longer be protected from others obtaining copies of the film and showing it.
> They could sell high-quality masters to streaming services, etc etc
Which then can be legally streamed by anyone else immediately.
> People will pay to get a lot of art in one place, to get it in guaranteed high quality, and to get it quickly.
Yes, and anyone else can take this role of curation. Curation is cheap compared to creation. A 17 year old quality-compulsive downloader goes a lot of the way to having performed this function ;P
> Except the difference is that contracts only apply to those who agree to them.
Yah, so once someone breaches contract everyone downstream can have the content.
> Which would no longer be protected from others obtaining copies of the film and showing it.
We already live in a world where piracy is rampant, and yet rarely if ever are theater-quality copies of movies available. People have to record the movie with a camera to get it out there before the home video release.
Studios manage this by using proprietary formats and blacklisting theaters who fail to control their copies correctly. And theaters have a vested interest in those copies not getting out as well because that would cut into their revenue.
It does not at all depend on copyright protections for theater exclusive showings to exist.
> Which then can be legally streamed by anyone else immediately.
Yes but that relies on a competitor taking the time to rip their copy and upload it across all of their servers. That takes time so for live broadcasts like where an episode of Game of Thrones goes live and everyone wants to see it, they'll be behind the ball.
We already live in a world where you need merely search for and download the torrent to achieve the same thing you're saying will run rampant without copyright. This is already the way it works, but people still use streaming services because they're convenient and offer exclusive things they can't get elsewhere.
> Yes, and anyone else can take this role of curation. Curation is cheap compared to creation.
Wow you mean consumers won't have to buy ten different services to view what they want? That would be amazing!
> Yah, so once someone breaches contract everyone downstream can have the content.
Yes, just like our current world. Any contract with end users would be impossible to enforce just like copyright is now.
> This is a good thing.
What you're saying is that the fact that someone who has had no interaction with the creator, agreed to nothing with them, and caused them zero harm can be liable to the creator and even criminally liable is a good thing. Incredible.
> People have to record the movie with a camera to get it out there before the home video release.
If a party who got a copy illicitly could commercially distribute it in competition with theaters (i.e. someone who has profit motive) I think you'd have a lot more of this.
> Studios manage this by using proprietary formats and blacklisting theaters who fail to control their copies correctly. And theaters have a vested interest in those copies not getting out as well because that would cut into their revenue.
So you're effectively conceding that if we squash copyright, we'll have a whole lot more reliance on DRM and proprietary exclusion. I'm sorry, I think that's worse-- I'd rather give authors protection for their creations for a limited time (maybe 20 years + another 20 years with a steep renewal fee paid? or 20+10+10+10) than deal with that.
> Yes but that relies on a competitor taking the time to rip their copy and upload it across all of their servers. That takes time so for live broadcasts like where an episode of Game of Thrones goes live and everyone wants to see it, they'll be behind the ball.
I might have bought this argument in 1990, but what fraction of people watch content live anymore?
> This is already the way it works, but people still use streaming services because they're convenient and offer exclusive things they can't get elsewhere.
Sure, but I could curate a nice copy of everything on Disney+ for half as much if it wasn't legally prohibited.
> Wow you mean consumers won't have to buy ten different services to view what they want? That would be amazing!
So you are conceding that commercial services will no longer be viable in charging for content.
> Yes, just like our current world. Any contract with end users would be impossible to enforce just like copyright is now.
It nicely tamps down commercial infringement and the associated high-quality curation which would render monetization of content unviable.
> What you're saying is that the fact that someone who has had no interaction with the creator, agreed to nothing with them, and caused them zero harm can be liable to the creator and even criminally liable is a good thing. Incredible.
"Zero harm" is debatable, and it depends on your philosophical stance about this.
Note that criminal liability generally involves commercial infringement, too.
I believe that people should be able to profit from things they create. That's the idea with copyright: they're entitled to an exclusivity period in exchange for the work eventually belonging to society as a whole. It's the latter part where we've lost our way: terms are way too long.
They're important in the fact that they do immense damage to our economy, with perverse incentives and rent seeking everywhere.
There is little no evidence that IP improves innovation or even benefits creators as whole. There are instances like this all the time showing what a terrible system it is.
Copyright and patents shouldn't exist at all, and especially shouldn't in their current capacity.
http://dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm