All through history, people have been living off things they stole from others. From the “great” Egyptian and Roman civilizations, that featured people living in splendor off the backs of slave labor, to the British Empire, that went around the world with its Navy and its weapons, subjugating and enslaving vulnerable indigenous people and looting [...]
Intellectual property–a better term for which would be “idea property”–is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, promising to allow individuals to dominate what they create, what is a self-glorifyingly spiritual ideal, as if our physical reality can be left behind and we can accompany our ideas wherever they wander in the ether. Just as much, though, the concept seeks to ubiquitously chill and control what I do with what has come into my eyes and ears, what has become my human experience. The more media I engage, however passively, the more of an automaton I become–the more my experience is owned by another, the less of it that is mine to claim. An artist should crow against this, and if it weren’t for their dreams of hitting the idea lottery, maybe US artists would.
