out_of_the_blue: you’re actually bringing up some interesting points. You’re not correct, of course, but at least you’re not simply shouting “pirate Mike” or “freetard” or whatever like you usually do. Keep it up.

“the public” doesn’t have a role in the /creation/ of works.

Even conceptually, this is not true. First of all, professional artists create primarily for an audience, not primarily for themselves. If they weren’t, they would never publish the works in the first place. You’d never sing outside your shower, play guitar outside your bedroom, or publish that novel you wrote. If you’re truly doing it only for private reasons, then your art will remain private.

Second of all, as others have pointed out, art is never created in a vaccuum. Art is created from culture; and the more that culture is owned by private interests, the less it can be used to create art. And art that is not created out of culture is art that is simply not valuable.

There is a good reason for this, a reason which you especially may find hard to swallow, but is nonetheless true. And that is that “artistic value” is not created by the artist. Artistic value is created by the audience. You may have the guitar skills of Joe Satriani and the songwriting skills of John Lennon. But unless, and until, an audience likes it, your music has exactly as much “artistic value” as some kid playing “Smoke on the Water” in his bedroom.

Now, I am not arguing that popularity is the same thing as “artistic value.” (Good Lord, am I not arguing that.) That would make the mistake of believing that there is only one audience: the overall mass of humanity. But human beings are not monolithic; there are millions, perhaps billions, of different audiences. My point is that the audience, whatever that audience, is the arbiter of artistic value. Art, music, film, and so on, are only valuable because they are part of a culture – not the other way around.

And this type of value is expressly what copyright is supposed to promote. If you’re arguing that the public has no stake in the arts, then you’re arguing that those arts should not be covered by copyright at all. I have no problem with that argument, but I suspect you might.

They PAY for its production: you don’t.

Oh, so you mean it’s totally legal, and morally good, for me to simply take whatever art that I like without paying? Good to know.

…Wait, what’s that? I don’t have that right, and I have to pay for enjoying art? I have to actually buy a CD, or purchase a theater ticket, or pay to see a symphony orchestra?

Well in that case, I am paying for its production. The moment you start charging for your art is the exact moment that you are demanding that others pay for its production. And it is at exactly that moment that I have a right to use the art that I paid for.

This also brings up another point. Most artists do not pay for its production. They are paid by sponsors, labels, studios, publishers, and so on. In fact, this is literally the difference between professional artists and amateurs: professional artists are paid for their art by someone else. If you are arguing that the people who pay for it have the ultimate right to it, you are arguing that these entities have more of a right to the art than the artists themselves.

This is fully in agreement with copyright law, and it is one thing I do not at all like about copyright: it takes power out of artists’ hands, and puts it in the power of the businessmen who make money off of them. I suspect you don’t like this aspect of it either.

They own it morally, besides in practical terms.

Copyright in the U.S. and England was never about artists’ “moral right” to their works. Even in Europe, where such “moral rights” exist, they are limited to stuff that is covered by libel laws in the U.S. Essentially, the extent of “moral rights” is CC-BY (which is why that’s the least restrictive CC license that is lawful internationally).

Aside from the law, it is really hard to argue that artists have a “moral right” to control what happens to their works once they are released to the general public. It’s like saying artists have a “moral right” to a good review in a magazine. It just doesn’t fly.

They’ve NO obligation to distribute it according to what’s convenient for you in either method or price.

Indeed they do not have this obligation, and nobody is saying that they do. The question is whether they should have the right to stop other people from distributing it, at their own cost, in what is convenient to the public in either method or price.

If we had an open market, the answer would be “no.” The right to keep others from offering their version of your product is called a “monopoly.” Remember Lord Marclay’s words, when he was discussing copyright law, in 1841: “the effect of monopoly generally is to make articles scarce, to make them dear, and to make them bad.”

“Scarce,” “dear,” and “bad.” Could any words better describe the American cultural landscape in the 20th century?

Hence the increase of corporate control is directly linked to piracy and file-sharing.

You must be joking.

The type of “piracy” you’re talking about – non-commercial, person-to-person sharing – hurts only those corporations you’re so adamantly against, and only those corporations that refuse to offer a viable, competing service to those potential customers.

On the other hand, the technology that enables artists to create valuable works without corporate control, is the same technology that allows non-commercial file sharing. You can’t fight against one, without damaging the other. That piracy may hurt those artists who are dependent upon those corporations as their sole source of income (which is very few of them), but every other artist is better off. Artists have more opportunities to make money now than they did twenty years ago, or even ten years ago.

This is what the media corporations are fighting against. Corporate control of the arts hasn’t increased, it has decreased – and not by a little. And this is the real purpose of all these “anti-piracy” laws: to regain control they’ve lost, as gatekeepers to culture.