In a recent tweet I bemoaned that even many people skeptical of IP still favor it and oppose abolition, and I glancingly mentioned tech journalist Glyn Moody (I have cited him positively many times for his work critical of IP; see his techdirt posts). He replied and said he is actually for IP abolition, and pointed me to his book, Walled Culture, which is also free online and CC0!
The book may not explicitly be anticopyright but the vibe is there. He writes (last few pages of the last chapter):
This book has described the growing problems that copyright is causing in the online world as a result of the inherent incompatibility of a law designed for analogue creativity and the digital world of the Internet. There are dozens of actions that could be taken to ameliorate some—but not all—of these problems. Given the likely impossibility of making even a fraction of those changes, which in any case would not address the underlying issue, maybe it is time to consider a simpler strategy. Might abolishing copyright altogether be a better and simpler way to solve the problems it has created?
… Abolishing copyright may be bold, but it could be achieved, perhaps by paying appropriate compensation to ease the transition. Such compensation could be funded by the digital platforms that have the most to gain.
The choice the world faces is stark. Society can either continue to suffer the negative consequences of present and future punitive laws, designed solely to preserve an ancient intellectual monopoly that profits a few; or it can choose to maximise the potential of the digital sphere, for the general benefit of humankind. Copyright or the Internet—choose one.
The same is true of the abolition of slavery in the United States. The slaves gained their freedom, it is true, but the land, the plantations that they had tilled and therefore deserved to own under the homestead principle, remained in the hands of their former masters. Furthermore, no reparations were granted the slaves for their oppression out of the hides of their masters. Hence the abolition of slavery remained unfinished, and the seeds of a new revolt have remained to intensify to the present day. Hence, the great importance of the shift in Negro demands from greater welfare handouts to “reparations”, reparations for the years of slavery and exploitation and for the failure to grant the Negroes their land, the failure to heed the Radical abolitionist’s call for “40 acres and a mule” to the former slaves. In many cases, moreover, the old plantations and the heirs and descendants of the former slaves can be identified, and the reparations can become highly specific indeed.”
“So, the big studios’ demand amounts to this: “You must shut down the system that delivers billions of hours of enjoyment to hundreds of millions of people so that we can go on delivering about 20 hours’ worth of big budget film every summer. … To me, this is a no brainer. I mean, I love sitting in an air-conditioned cave watching Bruce Willis beat up a fighter jet with his bare hands as much as the next guy, but if I have to choose between that and all of YouTube, well, sorry Bruce.”
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