i was for a more balanced approach to selling off copyright... like in Germany where ...you can never give up your copyright, or French law where if you sell a painting by a living artist you pay him a certain %
Either that or shut up about how creative people suffer without copyright... they suffer with it just fine...
I think this is where you and I differ. Creative people in Germany are RESTRICTED. They do NOT have the freedom to fully sell their idea/concept/art. In other words,
artists have LESS freedom there to do with their works according to their whims.
What is so sacred about an idea or a work of art that gives it special status such that you think it should never be fully sold - that the original creator should always retain some rights to it?
Keep in mind that in the current US system - which provides
more freedom to the artist - the artist is still able to sign contracts that give them the same residual copyrights that they would naturally have in Germany or France.
So what is balanced about that? As far as I can tell it actually takes options away from artists. At best it protects new and stupid artists from themselves, but that shouldn't be the job of copyright, especially when it restricts artists who know what they're doing.
As far as creative people suffering with or without copyright - wat? Artists hold the copyright. Period. Until they
choose to sell it. I don't get your objections. The nice thing about the US system is that you don't have to register your copyright (unlike many European countries) - you naturally own it once you create your work. You own it fully and completely. You can do with it as you please.
How, exactly, do artists suffer under the current copyright system? This baffle me. Are people stealing their copyright without them giving permission? The cases you remark on show either a flaw in the contract, or, as you say, public pressure. The artists involved gave their copyright up, then argued that they didn't really mean to do so, it just sorta happened. I guess? But the reality is that they freely sold their work, and they only cared about the copyright once it became financially advantageous to do so. They must have created hundreds of other works each, but I don't see stories about them trying to obtain rights back to work they legally sold years ago which are of no consequence today.
1. Sell one hundred things
2. Find the one person who was able to turn one of your things into a million dollar business
3. Tell them that you didn't really mean to sell them that thing, and that you want part of the money they made by turning your thing into a successful product
4. Profit!
I just don't get that mentality. The artists are trying to steal back something they sold. Something that wouldn't have been successful if they hadn't given it up to someone that knew how to make it successful. They don't go after the other hundred things they sold, so it's quite clear they are only in it for the profit - not because the art held a particular meaning or feeling for them. It was a thing they sold that someone else made a ton of money off, and they decided that they would cheat the buyer out of the original sale.
I'm all for reasonable copyright laws. But the whole point of copyright is to encourage artists to distribute their artwork to the benefit of the whole society. Without copyright artists wouldn't be able to profit from their work, and many people would choose a different living, others would only sell their work privately into collections which would never allow public viewing because they couldn't protect the works except by limiting exposure. Society would suffer, artistically, without copyright.
Going too far in the other direction would be just as damaging to society. In the US copyright extensions have gone too far in preventing works that are very old from passing into the public domain. We would not have the knowledge, technology, and artistic abilities that we have today without centuries of artists before us who we can print in textbooks and study openly in many places, without having to spend a fortune (ie, only rich kids would be able to attend art schools) because the art is still owned by someone who formed a company based on their ancestors art.
So yes, I agree that a balance needs to be maintained. But I disagree that the artist's rights to sell their work should be restricted.
