Comment by thomastjeffery
Comment by thomastjeffery 20 hours ago
Everything is derivative. This boundary you are defending between originality and slop is extremely subjective at best. What harm is slop anyway? If originality is so objectively valuable, then why should its value be systemically enforced?
At the intersection of capitalism and copyright, I see a serious problem. Collaboration is encapsulated by competition. Because simple derivative work is illegal, all collaboration must be done in teams. Copyright defines every work of art as an island, whose value is not the art itself, but the moat that surrounds it. It should be no surprise that giant anticompetitive corporations reflect this structure. The core value of copyright is not creativity: it's rent-seeking.
Without copyright, we could collaborate freely. Our work would not be required to compete at all! Instead of victory over others' work, our goal could be success!
We know what the world looks like without copyright and that world has far fewer works created and very few artists who can do it full-time absent patronage or independent wealth.
Banning the nonsense that is character copyright and shortening copyright back down to a reasonable length of time (say, 20 years) would still enable the creation of more culturally-relevant derivative works without pauperizing every artist.