Artist Merchant Hack

Why does anybody create?

Publishing and distributing cartels such as the RIAA and MPAA claim that a strong and harshly-enforced copyright system is needed, so that ‘artists can be paid for their work.’ And the US Constitution, in establishing copyright, cited the need

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts

as reason why that country needed copyright protection. The assumption here is that artists would not create anything unless they had some assurance of protection for their works. Now, why would an artist need protection for his work? I can see no other reason than the one the cartels offer today, so that he may be paid for his work.

The history and pre-history of mankind (and indeed all creatures, if we can say that birdsong and whale-song are a form of art) disputes this.

Copyright did not come into being before the invention of mechanical means of reproduction. Before the printing press came into wide use, manuscripts were copied all the time. It was considered well within the rights of any owner of a manuscript that he pay his scribes to copy it out; if a man borrowed a manuscript from a friend, he too thought nothing of having his scribe copy it out so that he might keep a copy in his own library.

The truth is that throughout human history up until the printing press, men wealthy enough to own books in the first place treated them just the same as today’s file-sharers treat the music in their collections.

And yet men went on writing and telling tales, and musicians went on singing and writing songs, and painters painted, and jugglers juggled, and mimers acted.

Some of them were paid for their efforts; many were not.

Without copyright, artists were paid for their art. And even without payment, artists created their art.

Now it makes sense that publishers and distributors would feel the need to be sure of future pay before they would publish a book, release a record, or produce a film or television show. Publishers and distributors are in business, after all, they aren’t artists, they buy and sell, and they must spend cash to publish release or produce their goods.

Publishers and distributors buy and sell. They are merchants by profession.

Are musicians merchants? Are talesmen? Are painters, actors, comedians, singers?

Another way to phrase this: do musicians, talesmen, painters, actors, comedians, or singers create their art solely for money?

Some do, to be sure. In the trades, these are commonly called ‘hacks’ and the term is not used in praise. Talesmen who call other talesmen ‘hacks’ do so in order to set those men apart from themselves, the true talesmen, the artists in the field.

And we find it very often that an artist says that he loves what he does so much that he would pay in order to do it, and it is a dream come true to be paid for it, and that the true painter, the true musician, the true talesman, the true artist, is one who does what he does because he must do it. He can’t help himself. The creative urge is too strong in him to be denied.

We need only look to all the fan-fiction created by amateur talesmen. These talesmen write their loving pastiches without any hope of ever being paid for their work. Often they work under the threat of legal action, fines and imprisonment if they are ever caught creating what they do. And yet they carry on, they go on writing and telling their tales.

Why?

A hundred years ago (before the invention of the phonograph) it was not uncommon for men to sing in bars. In some parts of the world (Wales, for example) this custom yet lingers. They sing without being paid for it.

Why?

If the ‘true artists’ in any of the creative fields scorn their colleagues who hate their work and are ‘only in it for the money,’ then these ‘true artists’ imply that they do what they do for some other cause. The payment of money might be one of their reasons, but they make it clear that money is not their main reason, nor their first reason, nor really, after all, even a good reason.

So why do they do it?

If we were to eliminate all the creative works done ‘only for the money’ the ‘true artists’ seem to be saying we would all be better off. In other words, ignore all the hacks and merchants in the art world, and the art is much improved.

Some of these ‘artists’ admit that, at times, they have ‘only done it for the money.’ They say this to condemn those works, to admit that those works are inferior to the works they have made out of love or inspiration, because they really wanted to make them and ‘would have paid for the privilege of making’ them.

So why do we need copyright laws?

It seems not to protect the artists or to see that they are paid. But the laws are needed to see that publishers and distributors get paid. And the history of copyright supports this view, for it has always been the publishers and distributors who are most vocal in crying out for copyright law, and extensions to copyright law, and harsher punishments for any violations of copyright law.

Maybe the law should be reconsidered in this light.

(Composed on keyboard Thursday 7 February 2008)