RE: Does Steemit count as commercial usage of content?
Copyright laws protect an artist's ability to profit from what has been created. By saying they are "outdated" I don't exactly know what you mean. Different societies have respected copyrights to different degrees over the years. What I do know is that weak copyright laws result in lower quality content overall as a practical matter.
If a content creator cannot depend on strong copyright laws, the incentive to create content is reduced. Think of it from a musician's point of view. If I'm 20 years old and I consider myself capable of making really good music, I have a decision to make. Do I want to embark on a career as a musician or is it time for me to start working 9-5 in an office job? The office job is basically a guaranteed career but in order to succeed it requires me to give up on going at music full-time. Sure I can do music in my "spare time" but that is a hobby. If you want the smartest and best to go into music and create the very best music to entertain you, there has to be a great incentive for them to do that. You want guys like Aerosmith and The Rolling Stones, incredibly talented and smart musicians, to decide as individuals that music is worth the risk they are taking by NOT taking a normal career path.
Right now, I agree that the copyright is to some extent treated as "outdated" by many people because of the issues you raised. But in the end, the less people respect the idea of copyright, the lower the quality of the content that will be produced. These days because of online "sharing" of music digitally on services like soundcloud and spotify, musicians make far less money than they did back in the days when the only way to get music was to buy it at a record store. Now there are very well-known bands that are only scraping by as a result. This is a well-known phenomenon in the music business.
What effect will this have? Unless something changes, smart and talented musicians are increasingly going to choose not to risk their own futures on music simply because the risk vs reward does not add up. If you want brilliant people to risk their futures on art, you have to guarantee their ability to profit from what they make. There is no way around that. In the end it's just math, and it applies equally to all types of material, from fiction to music to photos to paintings, to whatever else.
if a creator, innovator, discoverer, manufacturer cannot look to ownership in whole or in part yes then some will lose incentive though some will not. Goals and motivation aren't simple. the question of how to equitably or fairly define the value of a "unit of work" isn't straightforward either never has been. the visionaries push the boundaries of what can or might be done which is of immense value. though as far as actually DOING what has to be done in order to bring any given project to fruition is that only and always just manual labor and not really as notable and so less valuable? Doesn't it involve a great degree of risk and sacrifice? in the minds of many concept to execution it seems is so simple to apportion it is not
no its not just math. what it is is incredible power and great responsibility in regards to not only what is known and tangible but also in regards to potential and possibility. In some ways it is simple in other ways its extremely complex and whats at stake is the entire Gaia system as well as the future of Homo Sapiens. simple is where we start as children being told what is right is good and what is wrong is bad but then we spend most of our lives dealing with and hopefully learning about the most human concerns are in a vast grey are between good/right & wrong/bad.
I am completely with you that all should at very least "respect the idea of copyright". Better still all should ACT in accordance with respect for ownership/rights/attribution/usage & hells yes compensation when comes to certain stuff. Thopugh how? Early 21st century & since the dawn of the internet even strange times anything and everything that can be moved to digital & netwroked & computerized will be. Certain fundamental questions we once asked and thought were answered have to be re-examined and dealt with in new and very different ways there is no shoving the genie back in the bottle
The farther you move away from strong copyright, the less quality you will see in art. That is simply a mathematical fact if averaged over a population. There are outliers of course, people who will spend their lives writing or painting no matter whether they are compensated or not. You'll always have someone like Milton writing Paradise Lost from his prison cell just because. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the overall consequences of failing to legally protect artistic intellectual property. The legal system/society that does not protect copyrights will suffer the loss of creative value in direct proportion because the best minds will tend to apply their talents where they can prosper.
I have this brilliant image, but oh dear, I just don't have the right words to go with it so I think I'll just copy someone's blog. No one will mind, right? LOL! That's how ludicrous this whole argument about taking photography and other art is!
Wow, I didn't know that John Milton had written Paradise Lost from prison! That's really interesting. I'll go check out his Wikipedia article.
I've seen some people who believe that copyright is slavery or something like that, as if, since they didn't "sign" the laws, conventions or even the social contract, they don't affect them, like they're free to do whatever they want. And their argument against copyright is that ownership is an illusion.
I think I debated him for two full days and we wrote together more than 6k words, but in the end, we stopped halfway.
100% agreed, and this is the problem that I see in communism too where, "ideally", everyone works where they will do best for society and they will get as much as they "need". This sounds good until you realise that people are self-interested and we want to work for our own goals and not for the goals established by some super-altruistic authority who believes themselves greater than my free will.
I will always defend the freedom of both the selfish and the generous, against the tyranny of those who think they know better than the rest of the world because of their philosophical views about sharing everything and expecting nothing but appreciation and the means for survival.
I would say to those people that slavery is when you don't get compensated for the work you've done.
Yes, John Milton was a crazy SOB. He was imprisoned for political beliefs when he was like 40 and instead of despairing he spent the rest of his life writing the greatest literature the world has ever seen.
Lol, I need to read his Paradise Lost. I haven't checked it. I was out, just coming back, I'll google him and his works and take a peek.