Intellectual Property doesn’t necessarily protect the artist

It seems to me that many people support the idea of IP (intellectual property) because they think it functions to protect the artist (including music and literary artists here) of the work, but I think this is actually not all that common. Generally when a person is unknown to the public, they often end up signing all their rights away to some type of company such as a publisher or record company. This artist ends up at the mercy of their recording company/publisher, and they don’t necessarily get paid all that well, unless they’re true superstars of their artform. If their recording company doesn’t want to promote their music, they’re not really able to do much about that.

So is this suggesting that good artists should not be rewarded for their efforts? Not at all, good artists are rewarded in the marketplace by people who want to ensure that they keep producing more. Many bands and singers make lots of their money from live performances, and they don’t actually make all that much out of CD sales because of the recording company’s cut as well as other costs involved. There are even artists who take a “screw the record labels” position and tell their fans to download their music, such as Trent Reznor of NIN. Here’s a really interesting article about how there are some artists who are now embracing the internet as a way of cutting out the middleman: Trent Reznor: Take my music, please. In the past, it would have been much harder to promote your band/music as a nobody, but now with the internet and websites like youtube, if you produce something that people like, it’s very easy to distribute your music and promote yourself as an artist. Here’s another related blog post at mises.org: Authors: Beware of Copyright.

All of this IP monopolising is only possible with the state’s violent imposition on people who don’t have contractual agreements with each other to not reproduce ideas or use ideas. Compare this with the open source and free market method of computer software, which promotes scientific growth. Plenty of the technology used to access the internet is open source in some way, or IP was not sought over it, and we are much better off for it. The guys behind one of the first popular types of web browser (NCSA Mosaic) could well have changed history if they had instead tried to patent the concept of “a web browser”, and forced everyone else to pay through the nose everytime they used the internet? Where would the world be now if they had the money and desire to use the state ‘protections’ for monopolising intellectual concepts? 

In the true free market, artists will find many ways to be rewarded for their efforts, whether that is through voluntary donations, being the first one out with a product, live shows or something else. IP isn’t necessary for artists to make a living, IP is only necessary for entertainment industry middlemen to make cash at society’s expense.