My first gut reaction is to say “zero. Not a god damned single solitary second. If you want to own a story or a song or whatever, keep it the fuck in your head you fucking moron what the fuck is wrong with you?”
And my only hesitation to say that is: copyleft isn’t so easy to accomplish without copyright. Particularly, without copyright, the way the GPL does the whole “source code provision” thing falls apart. Without said provision, OpenWRT wouldn’t exist. And for the existence of the source code provision, with a little luck we’ll have FOSS OS distributions for smart TVs sometime in the foreseeable future. And hopefully that same court case will spawn a proliferation of other “OpenWRT but for <kind of consumer smart device>” projects. That actually work.
It might not actually be impossible to do a “source code provision” without copyright. It’d probably involve some kind of NDA with “source code provision” kind of conditions, though. And if you allow for NDAs on stuff in place of copyright and every game or book you buy forces you to agree to an NDA… is that actually better than copyright? It’s probably worse.
So, I think even given all the above, my answer is still “zero”. But aside from that, I also hold the opinion that we should have legislation which makes for a “source code provision” on “all software” (for some definitions of “all”. In practice I could see it being difficult for companies to comply with that with regard to software made well before the law was passed, for instance. For instance software for which the source code is now lost.)
Beyond that, I’ll say that I believe in a right to attribution, which feels a little more like a trademark-y kind of thing than copyright. Rather than artificial scarcity, let’s “promote the progress of… useful arts” (quote from the U.S. Constitution) by helping creators cash in on their reputations. That plus physical products (collectors editions, swag, etc), unique experiences (live shows, theme parks, etc), authenticity (if you get it from the creator, you know you’re getting the real canon and not someone’s fanfic), quality… that sort of thing. Don’t believe the big-copyright industries when they say they’ll go out of business without the outdated and ruthlessly abused model of promoting culture that is copyright. They’ll largely have to pivot into business models that don’t depend on government-granted monopolies. But that’s a good thing.
Plus, consider your favorite individual creators. Most of them don’t make money really on what they do at all. And for the ones that do, would you really put less money toward their creative efforts if copyright didn’t exist than you do now? I support my favorite small creator on Patreon. (Don’t get me wrong. I’m concerned about the chokepoint that Patreon has at the moment, but I like the “patron” model for supporting artists better than copyright.)
Anyway. Go watch “Steal This Film” or “Good Copy Bad Copy” or something.
My first gut reaction is to say “zero. Not a god damned single solitary second. If you want to own a story or a song or whatever, keep it the fuck in your head you fucking moron what the fuck is wrong with you?”
And my only hesitation to say that is: copyleft isn’t so easy to accomplish without copyright. Particularly, without copyright, the way the GPL does the whole “source code provision” thing falls apart. Without said provision, OpenWRT wouldn’t exist. And for the existence of the source code provision, with a little luck we’ll have FOSS OS distributions for smart TVs sometime in the foreseeable future. And hopefully that same court case will spawn a proliferation of other “OpenWRT but for <kind of consumer smart device>” projects. That actually work.
It might not actually be impossible to do a “source code provision” without copyright. It’d probably involve some kind of NDA with “source code provision” kind of conditions, though. And if you allow for NDAs on stuff in place of copyright and every game or book you buy forces you to agree to an NDA… is that actually better than copyright? It’s probably worse.
So, I think even given all the above, my answer is still “zero”. But aside from that, I also hold the opinion that we should have legislation which makes for a “source code provision” on “all software” (for some definitions of “all”. In practice I could see it being difficult for companies to comply with that with regard to software made well before the law was passed, for instance. For instance software for which the source code is now lost.)
Beyond that, I’ll say that I believe in a right to attribution, which feels a little more like a trademark-y kind of thing than copyright. Rather than artificial scarcity, let’s “promote the progress of… useful arts” (quote from the U.S. Constitution) by helping creators cash in on their reputations. That plus physical products (collectors editions, swag, etc), unique experiences (live shows, theme parks, etc), authenticity (if you get it from the creator, you know you’re getting the real canon and not someone’s fanfic), quality… that sort of thing. Don’t believe the big-copyright industries when they say they’ll go out of business without the outdated and ruthlessly abused model of promoting culture that is copyright. They’ll largely have to pivot into business models that don’t depend on government-granted monopolies. But that’s a good thing.
Plus, consider your favorite individual creators. Most of them don’t make money really on what they do at all. And for the ones that do, would you really put less money toward their creative efforts if copyright didn’t exist than you do now? I support my favorite small creator on Patreon. (Don’t get me wrong. I’m concerned about the chokepoint that Patreon has at the moment, but I like the “patron” model for supporting artists better than copyright.)
Anyway. Go watch “Steal This Film” or “Good Copy Bad Copy” or something.