For much of human history, artistry of all sorts has been a profession, as much as a hobby. The idea of attribution and ownership over one's art has been a core part of why that has worked and allowed creators to thrive. I would argue that the alternative of having no such system at all would ultimately lead to less art and information being created and shared at all, if the creation process is unsustainable at an individual creator's level.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Perhaps so, but isn't that up to whoever creates the information?

No, what I'm saying is that at a fundamental physics level, information is inherently abundant in a way that nothing else made of matter or energy is. There is effectively zero cost to replicating it an infinite amount of times. That is fundamentally not true for anything made of energy or matter.

If you invent a story, why would you not be entitled to own it?

Why would you "own" it? If you tell a story what prevents me from also telling that story? The threat of you punching me if I tell my own copy when you're not around? That's not owning something that's unilaterally declaring that you own all copies of something and forever own all copies of it going forward. If I invent a white t shirt, should I be able to claim ownership of every white t-shirt that anyone makes forever? That's nonsense.

For much of human history, artistry of all sorts has been a profession, as much as a hobby. The idea of attribution and ownership over one's art has been a core part of why that has worked and allowed creators to thrive.

Completely and utterly wrong.

Because no, the idea of ownership of a song has virtually never been important to art. Professional artists, in the time periods where they have existed, have largely been able to because they would be constantly performing art in the era prior to recordings, and they would constantly be performing other people's songs that they did not write themselves or they would add their own twists to it.

A song like House of the Rising Sun can be traced all the way back to 16th century English hymns before eventually winding it's way through countless Appalachian and travelling singers, before being picked up by 50s era folk musicians, before being picked up by a British rock band called the Animals. This is how music has worked through literally all of human history until the abomination that is copyright.

Hell it wasn't until the classical music era, and the rise of sheet music that you actually started seeing real authorship granted to individual people, and even in that era you didn't own a song, if someone like Mozart could listen and transcribe it then they could also perform it themselves.

I would argue that the alternative of having no such system at all would ultimately lead to less art and information being created and shared at all, if the creation process is unsustainable at an individual creator's level.

Yeah, well it's a good thing there are lots of alternatives to copyright that aren't 'no system at all'.