The reality of our current international laws, going back centuries, disagrees. And most artists disagree.
Perhaps I need a bit of education here, but have there been _international_ laws regarding intellectual property for centuries?!
AFAICT, the first major international IP treaties were in the 1880s (the Paris Convention on Intellectual Property Rights in 1883 and the Berne Convention covering copyrights in 1886; so only ~140 years.)
That's just a legal fiction invented so people can pretend to own physical objects even though we should all know that in this world you can never truly own anything.
Everything we do or protect is made up. You've just drawn the arbitrary line in the sand as to what can be "owned" in a different place than where other people might draw it.
Just to play Devil’s advocate for a moment, why should we require human artists to be held to the same standards as automated software? We can make whatever rules we want to.
A human might implicitly copy, but they are not infinitely scalable. If I draw a picture that in some way resembles Buzz Lightyear I am much less of a threat to Disney than an always-available computer program with a marginal cost of zero.
Isn't this the same question as, "why should we allow general purpose computing?" If the technology of our age is our birthright, don't we have the right to engage whatever mathematics we find inspiring with its aid?
> If I draw a picture that in some way resembles Buzz Lightyear I am much less of a threat to Disney than an always-available computer program with a marginal cost of zero.
...that sounds like a good argument in favor of the always-available computer program.
I don’t think so? It’s not illegal to call random people on your phone, but if you do it millions of times per day with a computer it can be illegal.
...and it's not obvious that transmitting bytes (within frequency and bandwidth protocols) is ever justly criminal; they are trivial to ignore.
Ownership is a legal fiction invented because it is perceived to encourage behavior that is seen as desirable; this is no more true of ownership of intellectual property or other intangible personal property than it is of tangible personal property or real estate.
If the State wishes to prevent expression that is deleterious to the ruling class, it will simply not strongly protect freedom of expression. "Legal protection" isn't an exogenous factor that the State responds to, it is a description of the actions of the State.
But the political cover of "but think of the poor artists!" is used as a cudgel for situations where "we prefer to censor Bob!" is unpalatable.
1. I hate the argument of "legal fiction" because the whole concept of law itself is a "fiction" invented that gives states more control. But I imagine you wouldn't want to live in a "lawless" society, would you?
2. Can you please explain how ownership of content gives states more control over creativity? There are so many way better methods of control a state can do (state-approved media, just banning books, propaganda) that this sounds like a stretch.
3. Alot of mainstream media is underdog rebels beating an Empire, and ownership of content definitely stops the spread of that idea.
2. Of course states can outright ban content, but the facade of protecting the poor artist gives enormous political cover. Saying, "You can't create that content because it is subversive and likely to convince people that the state is superfluous in the internet age" is just a much more honest (and politically impossible) approach - saying instead "you can't create that because it infringers on someone else's property" makes it sound like there's an attempt to serve justice.
3. Can you say more about this?
That's true of all the best artists ever.
> They're just there to whitewash away liability from blatantly stealing someone else's content.
That's because that's not a thing. Ownership of "content" is a legal fiction invented to give states more control over creativity. Nobody who copies bytes which represent my music is a "thief". To be a thief, they'd need to, you know, come to my house and steal something.
When someone copies or remixes my music, I'm often not even aware that it has occurred. It's hard to imagine how that can be cast as genuine theft.