Should Intellectual Property exist?

[Hygro]

When it comes to compensation, a lot of people distinctly don't want recognition. They pay to avoid fame, so they can in their view live more freely. These same people generally want lots of money, so they can travel and live leisurely and comfortably.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

When it comes to compensation, a lot of people distinctly don't want recognition. They pay to avoid fame, so they can in their view live more freely. These same people generally want lots of money, so they can travel and live leisurely and comfortably.

On a more prosaic note recognition won't put food on the table.

 

[Angst]

We don't even know who made much of the art before the Renaissance and we know who made most of the art of the renaissance because it was made to order for somebody. The term patron of the arts in the renaissance was some one who paid artists to work for him Leonardo did much of his work for the Medicis. Michealangelo did a lot of his stuff for the Roman Catholic Church. Almost all the great artist and writers of antiquity had Patrons. In ancient days what today we would call a starving artist would have been some guy who was a brick layer during the day.

indeed, and interestingly, while commissioning and patronage and all that expected stuff to be produced, and while there often was payment for finished stuff, it was often also just being paid for continuously working in a court

a lot of the problems with art today is that we want it to exist, but don't want to pay for the pieces really. i'm not sure how it'd work, but artists getting paid to just live their lives and create and distribute art is more reflective of the process and what we want out of it than artists creating things that then have exchange value

but of course... within the current system, it'd need some form of benefactor. and some form of gatekeeping. whether private or government, within the current system of employment, sales and subsidies, giving a free job like this without question is questionable to some. but i'd underline that it goes well hand in hand with the UBI speculations that were hot a few years ago. it'd also, bluntly, remove a lot of the need for the toxic legal framework we have in regards to IP. since it'd emphasize artistic practice and artistic production, not sales at the endpoint, so someone reproducing wouldn't really matter nearly to the degree it does today.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I'm saying; change engenders violence.

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." I Azimov in "Foundation"

There are handy quotes for almost everything. There are fewer hard rules. The internet and social media were serious cultural changes and they came about without violence. Now if you change the meaning of "violence" in your post to include "unhappiness", then you are closer to being correct.

 

[Gorbles]

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." I Azimov in "Foundation"

There are handy quotes for almost everything. There are fewer hard rules. The internet and social media were serious cultural changes and they came about without violence. Now if you change the meaning of "violence" in your post to include "unhappiness", then you are closer to being correct.

I explained my argument a lot more thoroughly than an Asimov quote

I am saying violence. Violence doesn't have to be immediately physical, but it's still violence. Change above a specific threshold is a rather wandering road to walk, especially if the people I'm discussing don't seem to want to understand, but hey. Giving a spoon to someone, unlikely to be change of a level that requires violence. Getting a city governor fired for (actual) crimes committed engenders some level of violence in return. But that's not wide-reaching enough. We're talking about changes to the status quo. Violence is baked-in. Whether I'm inflicting it, or it's being inflicted on me, is hardly of consequence at this point.

But again, I'm repeating myself.

Let's take a low-stakes example, that actually happened in real life, close to twenty years ago now. A town doesn't have much in the way of restaurants; it has pubs. It has a single restaurant of any note, that's been there years. Others have come and gone. Another restaurant is about to open. It's managed and run by a well-known chef who's worked in the town for years (at other restaurants), who is now direct competition to that existing restaurant. Mysteriously, weeks before opening, someone rerouted the air conditioning into a sewage tank. Luckily, it was picked up on, and no real damage was done.

But this is harm; this is violence. It would've costed lasting damage, had it not been caught in time. And the perpetrators never were. This is a single, isolated, anecdotal example of how pushing back against power in an area either inflicts violence, or engenders it (however soft the power, however low stakes restaurants are - the answer is soft and low, respectively). Apply to that, say, a political party that changes its direction. Or a county who, through a stroke of luck, elected a bunch of good local officials who may or may not see eye-to-eye on politics, but are united for the common good against industrial activity in the region. How do these stories end? How many stories do I have to tell?

The restaurant example is real, by the by. Definitely still anecdotal, but maybe it'll help you see the push-and-pull I'm trying to outline for you.

(although if you think the Internet and then social media didn't in any way engender violence, harking back to an earlier post of mine: you just don't want to see it)

 

[NinjaCow64]

The whole "I will not eat ze bugs" meme originated on the left, but has evolved into an anti-establishment rallying cry across the political spectrum.

No it originated on the right and it has remained something that primarily right wingers are concerned about because leftists are, generally, better at caring about actual problems.

 

[NinjaCow64]

Eventually some YouTube lefties like ShoeOnHead (but other lefties think she's fascist)

She is a fascist

 

[NinjaCow64]

In fact most of not all the memes that gain traction throughout the internet have originated within (and therefore were once of a right wing slant) four chan first before spreading in sequential order to Reddit/Tumblr, Imgur, Pinterest/Instagram/Tiktok/Snapchat, YouTube, then finally dies on Facebook/Twitter.

1+3chan has always overstated its importance in the meme ecosystem, especially nowadays. 1+3chan is old news, most of the creative people have left.

Anyway sure some memes that start in the rightosphere can have the reactionary crap washed off but like, “eat the bugs” has not because its a stupid concern frankly.

 

[NinjaCow64]

To circle back to the original topic of conversation - I believe that IP, and by extension capitalism, harms artists. It is impossible to untangle IP from capitalism - currently IP benefits massive corporations more than individual artists, one might be able to imagine a configuration of IP that favours individuals over megacorporations by why would the megacorporations ever let that happen? They own all the politicians, they will never let an IP arrangement that is fair emerge outside of massive and sustained public pressure.

Capitalism is a terrible environment for artists because most art is not profitable and therefore artists have to waste their time on more profitable activities in order to survive. Artists who can make a profit often “sell out”, becoming more concerned with using their art to sustain their business and thus dilute their vision. Artists who can sustain themselves without diluting their vision are extremely rare and extremely lucky.

Some people in this thread have implied that capitalism provides incentives for artists to pursue their craft. I cannot more strongly disagree with this, being an artist is (on average) one of the most poorly paid careers imaginable.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

We don't even know who made much of the art before the Renaissance and we know who made most of the art of the renaissance because it was made to order for somebody. The term patron of the arts in the renaissance was some one who paid artists to work for him Leonardo did much of his work for the Medicis. Michealangelo did a lot of his stuff for the Roman Catholic Church. Almost all the great artist and writers of antiquity had Patrons. In ancient days what today we would call a starving artist would have been some guy who was a brick layer during the day.

Yes, I'm aware of the patronage system. It's in use nowadays with the "Patreon" aspect of YouTube, whether it's reaction videos, livestream music concerts, or Shadiversity incorporating sponsorship products into his videos in an entertaining and dramatic way so as not to disrupt the flow of what he's talking about.

What I'm actually asking is (hypothetically): Once Michaelangelo was done with the Sistine Chapel ceiling, who owned that work? Michaelangelo or the Catholic Church? Could he have then gone on to paint someone else's ceiling with the same or related imagery and get paid for that as well, without objections from the church?

indeed, and interestingly, while commissioning and patronage and all that expected stuff to be produced, and while there often was payment for finished stuff, it was often also just being paid for continuously working in a court

a lot of the problems with art today is that we want it to exist, but don't want to pay for the pieces really. i'm not sure how it'd work, but artists getting paid to just live their lives and create and distribute art is more reflective of the process and what we want out of it than artists creating things that then have exchange value

but of course... within the current system, it'd need some form of benefactor. and some form of gatekeeping. whether private or government, within the current system of employment, sales and subsidies, giving a free job like this without question is questionable to some. but i'd underline that it goes well hand in hand with the UBI speculations that were hot a few years ago. it'd also, bluntly, remove a lot of the need for the toxic legal framework we have in regards to IP. since it'd emphasize artistic practice and artistic production, not sales at the endpoint, so someone reproducing wouldn't really matter nearly to the degree it does today.

Yeah, art doesn't just spring into existence. It takes time. Even the quickest stuff I make takes about an hour from start to finish, unless it's very small.

I remember one jerk at a craft fair demanding, 'You want $2 for THAT?" (for one of my parrot fridge magnets, that uses 11 different colors in it). I told him how much time it had taken to make the thing, and pointed out that what I was asking really wasn't much in comparison to the then-current minimum wage. So yeah, I'd like to be compensated for materials used and at least some of the time spent. He went off in a huff, hoping to find something nice for a quarter or somesuch. Well, maybe at the tables that were selling second-hand garage sale stuff. When I sell my needlepoint, none of it is second-hand, and it's hand-made.

 

[Angst]

Yes, I'm aware of the patronage system. It's in use nowadays with the "Patreon" aspect of YouTube, whether it's reaction videos, livestream music concerts, or Shadiversity incorporating sponsorship products into his videos in an entertaining and dramatic way so as not to disrupt the flow of what he's talking about.

What I'm actually asking is (hypothetically): Once Michaelangelo was done with the Sistine Chapel ceiling, who owned that work? Michaelangelo or the Catholic Church? Could he have then gone on to paint someone else's ceiling with the same or related imagery and get paid for that as well, without objections from the church?

from what i read about IP pre industrial age/first IP things: the catholic church owned the work, because they owned the building, but they didn't own the rights to its likeness, no! noone did. so technically he could just up and paint it again elsewhere. they could, as well! there were other mechanisms in play; difficulty of creation, and michelangelo's reputation as an artist. copying the ceiling by either party is both, importantly, very difficult and would diminish its value for the church of having a michelangelo work, as well as diminish the value for michelangelo's worth as a worker (who'll paint him for extravagant unique things if he just does it again elsewhere?). i don't know about north italy in particular, i want to stress, patents were introduced in venice in the 1400s, but if we talk about most of europe, this was the state of the world. owning rights to usage of likeness wasn't a thing.

it's like books before printing press. they could always be copied, honestly, so they were kept physically restricted in order to keep their value, and copying a book was a tremendous undertaking anyways (which speaks to the worth of the first book to begin with), so copying a book didn't even diminish the value of the first one that much. and compared to a book, whose purpose was, still back then, containing information, doing that much work for something that just looked pretty didn't really make sense. they might as well hire an artist to do something else pretty and unique. this was also before the idea of genius and high art classics mind you (in a sense), so it's not like "this art is a precipice of genius and civilization! i want one of the same too!"; rather, people did enjoy the craftsmanship, they did recognize that some art was special in a way, but our modern relationship to high art is relatively new; they didn't have this particular relation of genius to art. that kind of stuff mostly started in the enlightenment, and is quite kant's fault.

like, bach for example was just a minor, pretty good composer in his day. he remixed his own works all the time because he was basically just a practicing musician. our current repetoire of bach's works is a selection among his numerous iterations of his own works. he didn't really think of his pieces as platonic ideals of super makings set in stone. it was just good music. maybe great music. but that was it.

 

[AmazonQueen]

indeed, and interestingly, while commissioning and patronage and all that expected stuff to be produced, and while there often was payment for finished stuff, it was often also just being paid for continuously working in a court

a lot of the problems with art today is that we want it to exist, but don't want to pay for the pieces really. i'm not sure how it'd work, but artists getting paid to just live their lives and create and distribute art is more reflective of the process and what we want out of it than artists creating things that then have exchange value

but of course... within the current system, it'd need some form of benefactor. and some form of gatekeeping. whether private or government, within the current system of employment, sales and subsidies, giving a free job like this without question is questionable to some. but i'd underline that it goes well hand in hand with the UBI speculations that were hot a few years ago. it'd also, bluntly, remove a lot of the need for the toxic legal framework we have in regards to IP. since it'd emphasize artistic practice and artistic production, not sales at the endpoint, so someone reproducing wouldn't really matter nearly to the degree it does today.

The nearest we have to that now is artist/writer in residence at academic institutions and for royalty poet laureates, in both cases there are expectations but not requirements concerning work to be produced, the problem being the artist needs to be somewhat established to be considered for such a position, and in the case of the poet laureate loses some of their freedom of expression.

edit: some theatres have writers in residence as well

 

[Joij21]

How is that irony?

It's ironic to teen zoomers who rebel against their parents or envy those who are able to get a single family house ahead of the rest of their peers.

You know a specific zoomer issue, so a specifically zoomer meme, whereby only a zoomer would find it ironic (but also depressing)

 

[Evie]

One aspect worth noting and little commented on here that underlay much of the need for collective work in arts (the medieval guild system, which is a big part of why few works are signed and attributed to a single creator) and later on the patronage system, is the sheer cost of creating art up until the last few centuries.

Just consider pigments: other than red colors (which were, actually, relatively easy to produce from plants and easily accessible minerals), the only way you were getting a vibrant blue or green for your painting was by grinding gemstones into dust. Those medieval paintings of Mary holding Jesus (and Vermeer's use of blue)? That's ground Lapis Lazuli, worth more than gold at equal weight because the only way you were getting it in Europe was importing it from Afghanistan. The main alternative, Azurite, was a more muted color that darkened dramatically over time and simply was not considered very good. Likewise green, where the best greens were made from grounded malachite, which, while not as rare as lapis lazuli, was still incredibly hard to get your hands on. The main alternative, verdigris (yes, that verdigris) produced a more faded, less vibrant green that a certain Leonardo found wholly unsatisfactory and wrote against using. (And even those alternatives woudl still be excessively pricey compared to what we're used to for pigments today).

Likewise support: canvas only appears in the fifteenth century and takes its place as the main medium for art in the sixteenth or seventeenth depending on where in Europe. Prior to that it's wood panel painting, and those wood panels required intensive preparation to create a painting surface. And while local wood was used a lot, importing higher quality wood from halfway across Europe (polish oak was quite popular at one time) was absolutely a thing.

Which may go to explain why people were used gold sheets in medieval art: it's not an inordinate splurge, it's really about on par with a lot of the other materials. And often enough, not even the priciest material on the painting.

Working without a patron or a commission or without working collectively as part of a guild - creating "for the sake of it" as the saying goes - would simply be extreme self-indulgence in the terms of that period - you'd be sacrificing astronomical sums to produce something without any guarantee of getting anything in return. That kind of art creation only becomes relatively common c. the nineteenth century, once artificial pigments at a fraction of the cost become available,

 

[Joij21]

The restaurant example is real, by the by. Definitely still anecdotal, but maybe it'll help you see the push-and-pull I'm trying to outline for you

Yeah except the restaurant thing is purely situational it's not always a given that every restauranteer tries to sabotage the competition. That was just that guy in that particular incident doing something illegal. There's many times when no one does anything illegal when they have new competition, yet you make it seem like it's a guarantee.

Getting a city governor fired for (actual) crimes committed engenders some level of violence in return.

Not really your just arresting him. Only if he resists arrest would violence take place, and there are many who surrender to the authorities without issue.

1+3chan has always overstated its importance in the meme ecosystem, especially nowadays. 1+3chan is old news, most of the creative people have left.

Anyway sure some memes that start in the rightosphere can have the reactionary crap washed off but like, “eat the bugs” has not because its a stupid concern frankly.

When was the last time any leftists were on the site? Early 2010s before gamergate? 2000s when it was essentially a tentacle rape hentai porn fansite?

Either way the website was always bad with some kind of nasty element to it, so I can't imagine any leftists who uses to hang out there in some past era to be like good people.

 

[Evie]

The threat of violence is itself a form of violence. If someone comply with a police arrest under the implied threat of baton, tasers or guns coming out, then it is still violence that lead to their arrest.

 

[Farm Boy]

Humans mostly held things in common for about 200,000 years before agriculture, as far we can tell, the "my stone ax" idiocy that was pulled out of the ass of a different poster notwithstanding. So these arguments about "human nature" are based in, like I said in a previous post on this thread, total ignorance of the subject matter.

In other "total ignorance of the subject matter" news, this distinction between private and personal property was theorized by socialists before Marx, it's hardly exclusive to Marx or Engels. I don't entirely agree with it as good theory myself because I don't think there's a clear line where we can distinguish capital from non-capital, but my rule of thumb for policy is that it's generally bad for someone to own more stuff than they can actually use.

This comes up again and again. This is presuming the nature of a period before pottery allowed the preservation and transportation of goods to the extent that this was a breakthrough. There were only so many things to take. Only so many ways to move them. But, if you look at the bone records, and yes, you can google it, it was a remarkably violent time, human on human. I know we like to ignore all those spiral fractures on young women's wrists, but it's not like we don't know what twisting causes those.

 

[Crezth]

Well that's were entrepreneurship in trying to creatively figure out solutions to create more accessible distribution networks comes in. Hence Amazon Books.

I mean, I think Amazon has been a huge catastrophe for the world, so I really just think you're proving my point here. The wasteful supply networks that allow huge piles of garbage to be dumped in the first world are not worth the books you can pay $0.99 to "own" on a device that won't last ten years anyway (and fritters away even more precious rare earths.)

Under socialism, without any entrepreneurship, you'd go to a library and pick one of thousands of books, many of which have only been printed a few times, because the authors wanted to and waited in line like everyone else. And just like before any of this capitalist production and Amazon Books nonsense, people would still write and you'd still expand your imagination with impossible new stories you'd never thought of before. The only difference is you couldn't walk into a room of people and be like "WHO ELSE LOVES STAR WARS" and listen to fifty baying pigs go "ME ME ME I LOVE THE ACTION FIGURES AND 32 OZ PROMOTIONAL PLASTIC SODA CUPS PARTICULARLY"

 

[Lexicus]

This comes up again and again. This is presuming the nature of a period before pottery allowed the preservation and transportation of goods to the extent that this was a breakthrough. There were only so many things to take. Only so many ways to move them. But, if you look at the bone records, and yes, you can google it, it was a remarkably violent time, human on human. I know we like to ignore all those spiral fractures on young women's wrists, but it's not like we don't know what twisting causes those.

Which I guess would be relevant if I were saying that things were categorically better in those days or something, but instead I'm merely responding to ignorant claims about "human nature".

 

[Gorbles]

Yeah except the restaurant thing is purely situational it's not always a given that every restauranteer tries to sabotage the competition. That was just that guy in that particular incident doing something illegal. There's many times when no one does anything illegal when they have new competition, yet you make it seem like it's a guarantee.

Like I said earlier in the thread, I can say whatever I want, but I can't have a discussion with someone who isn't even willing to consider the argument.

My example was anecdotal. All my non-hypothetical answers are, because time is short and as I've discovered recently, the ongoing carving up of the Internet by capitalist monopolies / near-monopolies have swallowed sites whole over the past ten years or so. I've lost a lot of my bookmarks.

That said, I doubt you'd read them!