Comment by harimau777
3 months ago
Part of me thinks that the law should be changed so that IP covers works but not "universes". E.g. only Disney would have the right to distribute A New Hope but anyone could create their own work set in the Star Wars universe.
This would better match the way that popular culture has worked throughout most of history where anyone could create a story about King Arthur, Robin Hood, or Sun Wukong.
There would probably need to be some sort of protections to prevent corporations from simply scooping up independent artist's work. However, that seems like something that could be worked out.
However, that seems like something that could be worked out.
That’s a pretty heavy lift for that poor sentence. The way it “works out” in my mind is that the instant an indie work pokes its head above water, Disney sweeps in and makes a franchise out of it without payment to the artist. Because your proposal works both directions.
There's lots of ways that this could be done.
A franchise could only become open for unauthorized developers once it has made a certain inflation adjusted revenue, or once a franchise has works created by more than a certain number of artists.
Or these changes could simply only apply to corporations. So individuals could own franchise IP but corporations could not. Or corporations would be required to compensate the original creator but independent artists would not.
It's not necessary to make a perfect system. Just one that is better than our current dysfunctional system where corporations own most of our culture.
Why not throw out the rest of the "IP" bs?
Historically culture has relied as much on retelling the same stories (with slight modifications) as it has on creating related ones.