Contextsspeechless; our cultural memory is taken from us and locked away; the development
and spread of our cultural identity is stunted, and our imagination is placed in chains
by the law.
Contrary to what one might expect, the seemingly endless possibilities of copying
and sampling using modern digital technologies have so far only aggravated the
situation. publicly offering even a mere second’s worth of copyrighted work will almost
certainly attract attention from lawyers on behalf of the ‘owners’ of the material. sound
artists, who used to freely sample work from others to build new musical creations, are
now treated as pirates and criminals. Whole copyright enforcement industries have
emerged, scouting the digital universe day and night for even the smallest snippet of
copyrighted work used by others – and those who are found out often stand to lose
everything they have. one may wonder – and this is a relevant question for artists
- why do so many artists let this happen while the cultural industries are united in
strongly defending their own interests?
Copyright has yet another intrinsic fault which makes it difficult to defend in a
democratic society. Copyright nowadays revolves almost exclusively around so- called
intellectual ‘property’. This is a problem because the traditional notion of property is
largely irreconcilable with intangible concepts such as knowledge and creativity, i.e.
a tune, an idea or an invention, will not lose any of its value or usefulness when it is
shared among any number of people. in contrast, a unique physical object, such as a
chair, quickly becomes unusable as more people want access to it. in this latter case, the
term ‘property’ has a clear meaning and purpose. unfortunately, in the past decades
the legal definition of property has been extended way beyond any physical constraints.
These days, almost anything can be someone’s ‘property’, such as fragrances and
colours; even the makeup of the proteins in our blood and the genes in our body cells
are being claimed as the exclusive property of one company or another, which can
subsequently bar anyone else from using it.
it is therefore high time to reconsider the current concept of property. There is
ample reason to send our current system of copyright to the scrapheap. artists will of
course feel threatened by such a bold move. The common perception is that copyright,
first and foremost, protects the well- being and interests of the artists themselves. after
all, without copyright, they will lose all means of existence, won’t they? Well, not
necessarily. let us first look at some numbers. economic research shows that only 10
per cent of artists account for 90 per cent of copyright proceeds, and the remaining
90 per cent of artists share only 10 per cent of proceeds. in other words: for the vast
majority of artists, copyright has only marginal financial advantages.
What is called for is a way to ensure that artists can make a fair income from their
work without the risk of being pushed out of the market and losing the attention of
the larger audience as a result of the marketing power of the cultural industry. The
interesting thing is that it is quite feasible for artists to thrive without copyright. after
all, copyright is simply a protective layer of armour around a work of art and the
question is whether the benefits of this protection outweigh its drawbacks. artists, and
their agents and producers, are entrepreneurs. What then justifies the fact that their
work receives vastly more protection – i.e. long- term monopolistic control over their
work – than the work of other entrepreneurs? Why can’t they simply offer their work
on the free market, and try to attract buyers?