This piece in the International Herald Tribune, "Imagine a World Without Copyright" is just... dreadful.

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blockquote>Our democratic right to freedom of cultural and artistic exchange is slowly but surely being taken away from us.

That's ridiculous. It's simply untrue. Of all the absurd things to say in an age of flowering media and expression...

It is also unacceptable that we have to consume cultural creations in exactly the way they are dished out to us, and that we may change neither title nor detail.

Why? They mean every creator has to make everything unconditionally alterable and customizable? All the time? That this is a right? Even if it means that they can't make a return on their investment?

So, onward.

What is interesting about this approach is that this proposal strikes a fatal blow to a few cultural monopolists who, aided by copyright, use their stars, blockbusters and bestsellers to monopolize the market and siphon off attention from every other artistic work produced by artists.

There's a monopoly on creative works? Since when? There's a real puzzle, they are using a plural--"monopolists." I take it these monopolists don't compete with each other, though? Because then they couldn't be monopolists, now, could they?

"The domination of the cultural market would then be taken from the hands of the cultural monopolists, and cultural and economic competition between many artists would once again be allowed to take its course."

Oh, I get it. They don't mean monopolists. I think they mean "artists and media based in the United States." Well, then, why don't they say so? The problem is that then readers might recollect that they quite like some of the artists and media produced in the United States.

And on and on... Now we discuss how a world without copyright might not provide enough incentives to produce some kinds of works:

It may be the case that the public still has to develop a taste for it, but that we still find, from the perspective of cultural diversity, that such a work must be allowed to exist. For this situation it would be necessary to install a generous range of subsidies and other stimulating measures,

Ah, now we come to it. Let's spend someone else's money. My public policy personae recoils. But the amateur artist in me, well, just let me take a seat by that trough.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 1:16 PM | International

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