The historical dialectic in action! Previously, industry’s interests in intellectual property rights was a fetter on the development of human culture (eg. Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records Inc and Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films, the rulings on samples in music). Now with the advent of big data and “AI” scraping, wide-reaching copyright itself has become an obstacle. Industry has become historically progressive, attacking copyright and proletarianizing the middle class. Artists especially have taken a conservative stance on the subject, lauding copyright out of self-preservation (as seen in all discussion about generated art, as well as the Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library period where writers were very happy to risk the existence of the archive for the sake of their intellectual property!).
Of course, it’s not an ideal situation. Immiseration is not something to celebrate even if it’s strategically useful, and the quality of art will continue to degrade. Just because there is now a contradiction in the interests of the bourgeoisie does not mean it will be resolved in a maximally beneficial manner for us. Instead of a major weakening of intellectual property rights, it’s likely that it will be applied ad hoc for quite some time to the benefit of bourgeois interests. And an angry, precarious middle class is not beneficial at all to the communist movement if we cede messaging entirely to the right! No, we must make clear the necessity of the simultaneous abolition of copyright and public funding of the arts! Communists need to be strategic and put forth a real program on this issue instead of apologizing for property rights and defending the current state of cultural production!
The historical dialectic in action! Previously, industry’s interests in intellectual property rights was a fetter on the development of human culture (eg. Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records Inc and Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films, the rulings on samples in music). Now with the advent of big data and “AI” scraping, wide-reaching copyright itself has become an obstacle. Industry has become historically progressive, attacking copyright and proletarianizing the middle class. Artists especially have taken a conservative stance on the subject, lauding copyright out of self-preservation (as seen in all discussion about generated art, as well as the Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library period where writers were very happy to risk the existence of the archive for the sake of their intellectual property!).
Of course, it’s not an ideal situation. Immiseration is not something to celebrate even if it’s strategically useful, and the quality of art will continue to degrade. Just because there is now a contradiction in the interests of the bourgeoisie does not mean it will be resolved in a maximally beneficial manner for us. Instead of a major weakening of intellectual property rights, it’s likely that it will be applied ad hoc for quite some time to the benefit of bourgeois interests. And an angry, precarious middle class is not beneficial at all to the communist movement if we cede messaging entirely to the right! No, we must make clear the necessity of the simultaneous abolition of copyright and public funding of the arts! Communists need to be strategic and put forth a real program on this issue instead of apologizing for property rights and defending the current state of cultural production!