this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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Small creator: I made a cool thing!
Big corporation: we made a cool thing :)
To give an example, if all books were automatically public domain HBO could have created Game of Thrones without paying George R.R. Martin a single cent for it, then publish and sell "Game of Thrones: The Book", aka the entire Song of Ice and Fire series, again without paying him anything and stealing all of his profit in the process.
So could anyone and everyone all at once. In a copyrightless scenario, the sheer force of the creative effluence would drown out the power of HBO.
It is the artificial monopoly that can be sold via copyright licenses that generates the massive profits for these media tycoons in the first place.
But there would be no-one to do so. In a copyrightless world George R.R Martin would need to have another job to pay the bills and wouldn't be able to dedicate his time for writing, and HBO or anyone else pouring massive amounts of money to create shows also wouldn't be able to exist as they would gain no profit from what they do as their creations would also be in the public domain. Unless you live in an utopia with universal income and replicators that completely eradicate any need for money or ownership of anything, copyright itself as a concept is vital, the issue is just how corrupted the current system has become - which is mostly due to the greed of Disney.