I don't see any kind of hypocritical stance here honestly. All this time the criticism of the enforcement of copyright law or now the lack of it just reflects the fact that some people are genuinely concerned that bad actors(big corps) are using the law to damage society in order to pursue their own interests.
There are just companies big enough to ignore those institutions for which copyright law was created, like Google, etc, and the fair use exceptions Google carved out empowered AI companies to make similar moves. To an extent.
What's hurting artists and smaller companies and various licensing schemes intended to push back is the fundamental structure of the laws.
All copyrights need to be nuked and replaced. If we want to support individuals and maximize protections of individuals, and we want to disincentivize data hoarders that do nothing but recycle old content and IP in perpetual rent-seeking schemes, we should implement a 5 year copyright system.
The first 5 years, you get total copyright, any commercial use has to be licensed explicitly, fair use remains largely as it is now. From year 6-10, fair use gets extended - you have to credit the creator, pay a 15% royalty direct to the creator, but otherwise you can use it for anything. Year 10-20, you must credit the creator, but otherwise the media is in the public domain.
We should be pushing for and incentivizing creative use of data, empowering as many people as possible to use it and riff on it and make the culture vibrant and active and free from centralizing, manipulative actors.
99% of commercial profits come from the first 5 years after any piece of media gets published - book, music, film, artwork, etc. Copyright should protect that, but after that 5 years, things open up so the price you pay in order to participate in the marketplace which the US fosters is that your content thereafter becomes available for use by anyone, and they have to pay a fair markup for the use. You don't get to deny anyone the use of the media. You'll get credited, paid, and then after 10 years, it's public domain + mandatory credits, kinda like an MIT license style. After 20 years, it's fully public domain.
Throw in things like "if you're not paid the royalty, you can sue for up to half of the total revenues generated by the offending work" or something appropriately scaled to prohibit casual abuses, but not totally explode someone's life over honest mistakes, and scale between the two extremes accordingly.
Things like Sony and Disney and Hollywood studios are evil. They're effectively data cartels and hoarders, rarely producing anything, gatekeeping access and socializing, imposing obscene contracts on naive artists and creators, exploiting everything and everyone they touch without returning concurrent value to society. They don't deserve consideration or protection under a sane copyright system, especially in a world with gigabit internet everywhere. Screw the MAFIAA and all the people responsible for things ending up like they have.
Until then, pirate everything. If you feel an ethical obligation to pay, then do the research and send some crypto or a $20 bill in the mail to the author or creator. All sorts of people have crypto wallets, these days.
Claim not supported. You haven't established that absolutely no one else could create the thing. People create things all the time under such liberal conditions as public domain, so having dictatorial power over a thing is not a necessary condition to create it.
> People create things all the time under such liberal conditions as public domain
And people are free to, even under the duress of copyright. What's the problem there?
What was the last movie you saw?
I assume a free society should operate with the least duress, because duress is "compulsion by threat or violence; coercion" which actively restricts activity as opposed to merely ignoring or not participating in it.
If someone would be free to create the thing without copyright duress, it is better even if delayed, because it was done with the least restriction of freedom.
The last movie I saw was Disney's Frozen which is based on a Hans Christen Andersen story currently in the public domain. It was good, but not "life of the author + 75 years" good.
>If someone would be free to create the thing without copyright duress, it is better even if delayed, because it was done with the least restriction of freedom.
Who said delayed? I didn't. The alternative isn't Mulholland drive coming out in 2011 instead of 2001, it's it not being made at all.
And it's trivial to opt out of copyright protection, giving your work up to the public domain. I wonder why more authors don't!
My use of duress was ironic and this conversation is not productive.