A World without Copyright
Copyright is one of the big controversial topics that have emerged in times of digitality and Internet. Yesterday, I attended the now festival at Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) where Jost Smiers discussed his suggestions concerning copyright and artistic/cultural production.
Smiers is a professor for political sciences and investigator for the arts and economics research group at Utrecht School of Arts in the Netherlands.
He stated that the whole problem of copyright is closely connected to the presence of big media conglomerates that use it as investment protections for their businesses. The legitimate economic recompensation for artists is therefore kidnapped by those interests. The solution he offers, a three step plan, is as easy as utopic to achieve:
- Put “enormous amounts of money” into research programs that investigate the relationship between the cultural sphere and those conglomerates (like Bertelsmann, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, etc)
- Create a free cultural market by reviewing the competition laws and destroying those illicit companies.
- Abolish copyright.
When this is achieved, Smiers explained, a market system that bases on reputation rather than exclusion would emerge. Everyone would be able to share and remix everything and via government subsidies certain arts that require bigger investments should be financed.
What I personally found very interesting is, that Smiers had a quite critical attitude towards the copyleft movement. “Sharing is nice, but as an artists you also have to make a living”, he argues and calls the the creative commons “a coalition of the willing” where only those participate that have a stable income or do not depend on the economic value of their cultural artifacts. The real problem, he criticizes, the economic aspects of the cultural sphere – is not addressed.