Because if financial reciprocation is your first incentive to be creative you've already lost the mind game. If you are a creative, you will understand that sometimes we just like to do things...
You can't eat self-actualization, nor can you build houses from it. Sunshine and enjoyment of your work is not sufficient to sustain your body, not to speak of all the other needs that effectively require money to be fulfilled.
Then again, I work all week with little entitlement to the "intellectual property" I generate, but I still receive income for my work. Making a livelihood by getting paid for the work I do and its value on the market, and the time I spend doing it and its value to me is the situation most people are in.
Being able to extract substantial rent in effective perpetuity from e.g. some copyright you own is a luxury only afforded to a relatively small minority, and ideally I think only productive work should be awarded, not rent. That will incentivize productive work rather than rent seeking.
> Making a livelihood by getting paid for the work I do and its value on the market [...]
You're only getting paid because people have to pay you the market rate for your work. If a musician creates and records a song [1], releases it at market rates (say, 2 USD), and everyone can just copy it without repercussions, he won't be able to make a living, no matter how productive he is.
[1] Which entails many hours of work, plus equipment costs.
It shouldn't be surprising that an economy will grow to depend on copyright if it exists and is enforceable.
It's really a strange, indirect way to go about it, though. It doesn't in itself incentivize further work (a lot of the music I still regularly pay for was recorded by dead artists in defunct studios, so no incentive short of Frankenstein will compel them to make more) and it may or may not cover the investment the artist/studio made in terms of actual work and equipment costs.
The up front costs is in creating and recording the music, which consumers could pay for instead of copies. A lot of creative artists are already taking this approach with crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Patreon.
Even now, it's probably true for most musicians that sales of copies isn't particularly lucrative compared to concerts/work for hire/project contracts, while recordings have an ever increasing number of pockets to line before the artists get their take. It's a potentially infinite revenue source, so why not?
I've talked to a thousand people like this and generally they seem immune to logical conversations. If you are in the 1% who gets a nice fat check thanks to IP laws, hurray for you. I've been there too, it's a nice comfortable life. You can promote the Big Lie all you want, but any smart honest person will figure out eventually that IP is evil from every angle.
It is an argument. IP is evil/suboptimal from every angle. What happens when debating people who repeat tired tropes of “a musician won’t get paid” or “we won’t have new medicines” or “copying is stealing” is that you can never satisfy them because they aren’t discussing in good faith. They provide 3 angles, you refute those 3; they provide 3 more; you refute those; et cetera. There is no angle to support IP unless you are in the 1% and support it for selfish interests in maintaining the status quo, or you take the autocratic angle that it is important for a government to have more control over its people. Those are interesting debates to have, but discussing the logic and data about how IP is unjust and bad economics is not, because generally people just regurgitate “the Big Lie”, and it’s a waste of time talking to them. There’s plenty out there refuting any point in favor of IP, and simply thinking from first principles is a fast and simple way to arrive at the truth.
I do apologize for me jumping on you there and assuming bad faith, it’s just that most folks who raise similar points to you are coming from that, but wasn’t fair of me to assume the worst from you. I like your point about holding opinions that go against your own self-interest (being against IP has personally cost me a fortune), and I encourage you to delve more into this issue.
> Sunshine and enjoyment of your work is not sufficient to sustain your body, not to speak of all the other needs that effectively require money to be fulfilled.
You've neglected to argue as to why these needs should be artificially subsidized by the issuance of state-enforced monopolies for certain concepts.
> You've neglected to argue as to why these needs should be artificially subsidized by the issuance of state-enforced monopolies for certain concepts.
... What? Avicebron argued that "financial reciprocation" should not be a priority of a creator, I countered that idealism won't keep you alive for long, and that creators need to make money to be able to create. Your post is completely beside the point.
Why do they need special laws to subsidize their creation? People can pay them to make their work, that's historically how things were done. Now suddenly they need special laws so its illegal to take a photograph in public without permission? Of course they need to get paid in order to live and to work, so do I, so does everyone else. Can we now discuss why creators are so special that they get an entire class of quasi-property rights where enforcement is subsidized by the state?
> People can pay them to make their work, that's historically how things were done.
So who's going to pay them? Their employer? That raises two problems: 1) Creators can't be independent and self-employed anymore, and 2) how is their employer going to make enough money?
