Copyrights & Copirates

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So if someone owned a rental property, and died, should the rental property not pass to their children? Should they no longer gain income from the rent of that property? Why should intellectual property ownership expire on death, but not physical property?
It's because physical property is unavoidably scarce, and has to be rationed among competing uses. If I lived in a rented room, that room would not then be available for someone else to live in as well. So the optimal price of rental protperties (when a price system is the rationing mechanism in use) is above zero and will remain above zero unless and until homes become superabundant. Whereas the right to copy intellectual property is not physically scarce: we can make copies indefinitely without running out of the intellectual property. I can make a scanned copy of a book or drawing without thereby diminishing the ability of anyone else to do anything that they might want to do, except use the electric power I used up. The intellectual content of copies is non-rival in consumption and therefore its optimal price is zero. The artificial scarcity of copies that we create by copyright law is a kludge that was introduced by legislators to deal with the fact that the creation of originals is rival with other uses of scarce resources and therefore has a positive optimal price that cannot be paid by copies at their optimal price. In theory copies ought to be free and creators ought to be paid by the community out of the revenues of a non-distorting tax (such as a Georgic tax on land-rent, TristramEvans TristramEvans ), but the legislators decided that they didn't want to have the government decide what artists and writers to pay and how much and for what works, and didn't want to have to face their constituents over the taxes necessary, so they came up with this as a compromise. We pretend that copies are scarce, and deny them to people that we could allow them to without cost or loss to anyone, to raise revenues out of which to pay creators for their efforts (which are costly).

Copyright is an abridgement of natural liberty that we tolerate because it funds the creation of fresh artistic, literary, and dramatic content. Once its job is done, i.e. after the creators have been sufficiently motivated, it is no longer worthwhile tolerating.

Both the market for originals and the market for copies are distorted, but it's probably not possible in practice to achieve the Pareto optimum in a market with non-rivalry, so near enough is good enough. While I'm in footnote mode, I'll add a comment that copyright was reasonably practical to administer while the copying process was capital-intense, i.e. while expensive specialised printing presses, concert halls, theatres, record presses, radio transmitters, movie print labs, projectors, and auditoriums etc. were needed to make copies (and expensive specialised museums and libraries to create viewing opportunities in large numbers, in the case of art and sculpture that copies are not made of, as such). Modern digital reproduction threatens to make the whole issue moot by de-centralising copying to the point where it becomes impractical to administer copyright.
 
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Again this is very much in line with patent law.
Except for renewability. And non-transferrability.

And I'm not sure, but I think TristramEvans TristramEvans means that the copyright should expire on the death of the author even if the current twenty-year term is not complete.
 
I think abandoned works are definitely something that should be treated differently than currently in print works.
How do you propose doing that without reducing copyright lengths as a whole? Demand owners perpetually keep works in circulation or else lose their copyright immediately? How do you enforce that? How do you avoid publishers gaming the law by just putting their back catalog on e-retailers and forgetting it exists until the copyright expires a hundred years later when all the fans who would care to enjoy it are dead?

The simplest action is to retroactively reverse the copyright extensions that have been made since 1900. Trademark would pick up the slack.
 
The last book (The Casebook) was published 1927.

Conan Doyle died in 1930 which means many of his earlier copyrights expired in 2000. But it's 95 years after the publication of a work. 2022/23 doesn't make a hairs breadth of difference.

Except that nothing from 1927 is public domain in the US until January 1st, 2023. So it does make a difference until then.
 
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As a blanket statement, no.

Understand that copyright is an illusory concept invented for the benefit of printers, it has no inherent relationship to other forms of wealth.
Actually more as a form of censorship, the fact the monopoly benefit a select few printers in London was incidental. The point was control over what was printed compared to the free for all that existed before.

The present system had its origins due to the effort of folks like Victor Hugo who couldn't stand the idea that people could mess with their creative stuff.
 
Creatives, outside of a rare few, are already massively underpaid as it is.

The truth of life is that we need money to keep surviving. Creative work is work, and without copyright, there is very little way too make money from it.
Patronage, historically the logistics only allowed a few wealthy people to make a difference. Today with the internet it is a different story and thus alternatives exist rather than trying to claim the exclusive to copy one's own work. For a small amount of money per work or month, you can be a patron and a support a creative's work.
 
Except for renewability. And non-transferrability.

And I'm not sure, but I think TristramEvans TristramEvans means that the copyright should expire on the death of the author even if the current twenty-year term is not complete.

Yes I was mainly referring to time. I assume his main objection to transfer is related to the extensions, not being able to extend the length pretty much eliminates any reason to object to transfers. I mean in theory an heir could pull publication for reasons, or a transferred copyright holder could then bury it (maybe it no longer agrees with their views) but with a timeline of 20-25 years, that is not nearly the issue it is with the current very long period.


Below is not directly in response to your quote, just thoughts meandering at this point.

At the current 70+ years it is obviously made to benefit corporations not artists. Average US life expectancy is 77 years, so only a 7 year old author or musician has any real risk of out living the copyright of their earliest work.

Then you have to consider the longevity of the art, sure you have exceptional cases like Mozart, Beethoven, Mary Shelly, Bram Stoker, Jane Austen etc with long spans of maintained interest, but realistically what percentage of copywrite work actually has a popularity measured in decades? Anyone remember From a Buick 8 by Steven King? It was on the New York Times best seller list of October 2002.
Clearly doesn't seem to have had the staying power of The Shining or Christine and with a 20 year cap, would have just gone into the Public Domain. I doubt that would have hurt Stephen King financially or artistically, quite likely nobody is coming around in 2022 desperately trying to throw money at him to make a movie.

Book to movie deals generally happen fairly quickly unless they somehow have a late gain in popularity. Lord of the Rings is a good example of this happening. It had a growth in popularity 10-15 years after publication and was made into films 25 and 48 years later (5 and 29 years after the authors death). Also consider movie deals and other tie ins are basically gravy, most authors live of the initial publication of a book, not movie deals.

Going back to Stephen King because he is a prolific and high profile author with many film / tv adaptions so easy to reference and this is just selecting some of the more successful adaptations from the dozens (maybe hundreds) that went from book to visual media.

Book to film:
Carrie 1974/1976
Salem's Lot 1975 / 1979
The Shining 1977 / 1980
Cujo 1981 / 1983
Christine 1983 / 1983
Stand by Me (short story "The Body") 1982 / 1986
The Running Man (published under a pseudonym) 1982 / 1987
etc etc

The Shawshank Redemption seems to have lingered longer 1982 / 1994 (12 years)
The Lawnmower man a bit longer 1975 / 1992 (17 years)
but both are well within the proposed 20-25 years, although probably fair to consider a studio might sit on the idea of The Lawnmower man for 3 years to avoid royalties at that point.

The Mist 1980 / 2007 (27 years) so we now find one of his novellas that would have been past the proposed copyright.


I'm ignoring some of the classic authors as they were well before film and plays are harder to look up.

Lets look at another from an earlier period, John Steinbeck

Tortilla Flat 1935 / 1942
Of Mice and Men 1937 / 1939, 1968, 1981, 1992
Grapes of Wrath 1939 / 1940
Cannery Row 1945 / 1982

So he would have lost out on some royalties for Cannery Row. Considering he had been dead for 14 years by that point, I'm sure he would be devastated by that loss of income / control.


I would suggest that authors should maintain control of their title / name in relation to adaptions just as actors have some control over their likeness yet unlike the family of authors the courts have decided an actors rights to their likeness does not transfer to their heirs. See Bela Lugosi vs Universal Pictures . Shocking I tell you, who would have guessed the courts would grant the big money studios with excessively long copyright protection on written works they control, but decide an actor's right to control their image ends at death.

It would be really unseemly to butcher their work while implying they had any part in it. Use of the authors name would still offer some potential influence for a living author on a work beyond copyright. Stephen King's The Mist is going to sell more tickets than plain old "The Mist".


I would also offer that there needs to be some exception to no extensions made for a continuing series by the originating author. A series like Xanth, a series begun by Piers Anthony in 1977, with the latest installment coming next year. Allowing writers to protect an ongoing work requires separate consideration from one offs. An author should not have to compete against others when writing in their own creation unless by choice.
 
Prior to the invention of the printing press every creative work was a one-off work of art. Even things like a copy of a book or a painting. The charge was the cost of production.

With the invention printing press that changed. At first for books then for images although it took some time before folks were able to reproduce full-color images like paintings. Folks could make anything that was printed far faster than the old hand methods. But this produced a problem, similar to what we have with social media today appeared where crazy number of works appeared with content troubling to the various crowned heads of Europe. Hence various government including the United Kingdom instituted royal monopolies that control the printing of works.

With the revolutions of the late 18th and 19th century, the need for control lessened. But by the middle of the 19th century numerous examples existed of well-liked authors not receiving the monetary benefit of writing a popular work. Sometimes leaving them in poverty. So copyright changed from being the state's control over what works were printed to the author's control of how their work was printed. But make no mistake copyright originated as means of oppression and control. Whether it was for political reasons for the now current economic reasons.

To be fair, the logistics of printing meant that the number of alternatives between oppressive control and a total free for all were limited. For a long time most considered it a necessary evil severely curtailing the extent of the control granted. For example limited copyright terms, renewals, second sales, fair use, and the right for libraries to loan. But all of those faded in face of the money to be made from popular media.

The creation of most work entailed costs that were far greater than the cost of a competitor creating a reproduction. So there was no easy answer to be had. In short it was a problem of logistics.

But thanks to the internet and digital technology the logistics have changed. While the process of creation, drawing, writing, etc. hasn't changed much yet. To the cost of creating the actual media, marketing it, and distributing it. Has dropped down to the cost of a single person's time. Conversely, the ability of people to connect to a favorite creative has likewise dropped to the cost of a single person's time. This means alternatives exist like direct patronage. It means with the right setup a creative can make a living from an audience of hundreds or the low thousands.

The Paradox of Open Content
The thing is we have a choice thanks to the people who developed open source licenses, creative commons, and an open content licenses. If you reject the current system of copyrights then support those who make open content. When you create something release it as open content. Focus on making good material that people want and make it easy for them to support you personally. You will be surprised at the number of people who will pay for your work.

Weirdly the stronger copyright and contract law is the stronger the license behind open content is.

But it is not free money, it is still work just different than what you had to do under the copyright system of author-publisher-distributor-store. Not all people who will thrive in the old world will thrive in the new world of open content. For one thing, you can't be a personal dickwad who is shielded by their publisher from the customers.

For me personally I believe in sharing what I make to the fullest hence most of what I personally created that isn't under some kind of license I make 100% open content like Blackmarsh and the Basic Rules for the Majestic Fantasy RPG. Along with many things that I shared on my Stuff in the Attic page.

That is how I stand on the issue of copyright.
 
How do you propose doing that without reducing copyright lengths as a whole? Demand owners perpetually keep works in circulation or else lose their copyright immediately? How do you enforce that? How do you avoid publishers gaming the law by just putting their back catalog on e-retailers and forgetting it exists until the copyright expires a hundred years later when all the fans who would care to enjoy it are dead?

The simplest action is to retroactively reverse the copyright extensions that have been made since 1900. Trademark would pick up the slack.

I do agree with the rights for an author to prevent publication. It could be a simple business deal, controlling publication to boost demand (see Disney here) or maybe you are a young man with a funny moustache and you write a book about your fight against "da man".
A few years go by and you realize, man was I a dope, that is embarrassing. Now like Alysa Millano's nude photos from Embrace of the Vampire once it is out there it is out there, but you should at least be able control further releases of it. Otherwise you could get trapped into becoming an ego maniacal dictator who has genocide as a hobby.
 
Considering he had been dead for 14 years by that point, I'm sure he would be devastated by that loss of income / control.
Unless it Victor Hugo and then he were literally rise from his grave and choke you to death before allowing one of his works to be defiled.
 
Except that nothing from 1927 is public domain in the US until January 1st, 2023. So it does make a difference until then.
I think we are debating months. Like whether or not something published in July 1927 would be expired.in July 2022. And as I mentioned, it's the last of them. So, maybe don't go publishing your Sherlock Holmes game in the next 40 days, hm?
 
That is how I stand on the issue of copyright.

Copyright is only necessary because creativity is farmed for profit, not enjoyment or art.

If the material needs of everyone was met, we wouldn't need copyright laws. They'd be unthinkable.
 
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Copyright is only necessary because creativity is farmed for profit, not enjoyment or art.

If the material needs of everyone was met, we wouldn't need copyright laws. They'd be unthinkable.
In their current form anyway. You'd still probably want some way to distinguish between fakes and reality.

At present they don't just stop people from writing stories set in Middle Earth. They also stop you from publishing them and putting "by J.R.R.Tolkien" on the cover.

Although you could perhaps protect against that with a much more limited version of intellectual property related to claims of authorship only.
 
The problem of the death of the author as the copyright limit is that they could get hit by a bus tommorow so it offers no security for the publisher. The problem with a fixed length like 10 years is that the work might only find its audience 12 years after publication and the author wouldn't make a dime on the new edition. It'd incentivize publishers to underpromote books until the copyright expired.
 
Copyright is only necessary because creativity is farmed for profit, not enjoyment or art.

If the material needs of everyone was met, we wouldn't need copyright laws. They'd be unthinkable.
Who's going to do the work to provide everyone's material needs? As a father and sole provider I've found it's a bit one sided.
 
Creatives, outside of a rare few, are already massively underpaid as it is.

The truth of life is that we need money to keep surviving. Creative work is work, and without copyright, there is very little way too make money from it.

Worth considering though that the creatives themselves are often not the ones who end up benefiting from Copyright.

I don't think we should have no copyright, but I also think present laws make them so long they take away our ability to build a shared mythology and lore (something you kind of see in places where copyright is a bit more lax, and properties can be used more freely)

I'm not sure the best solution though. It is hard to make money creating things. People who are creative in music, writing, games, etc obviously need to be able to support themselves. I'm not sure the present arrangement benefits the creative talent as much as it benefits companies.
 
Who's going to do the work to provide everyone's material needs? As a father and sole provider I've found it's a bit one sided.
That's a different tangent. It is observed however when people don't need to slave in low paying jobs to keep a roof or food, they often turn to art. Art therefore becomes the refuge of the rich. Who probably don't need to make a cent on it.
 
The problem of the death of the author as the copyright limit is that they could get hit by a bus tommorow so it offers no security for the publisher. The problem with a fixed length like 10 years is that the work might only find its audience 12 years after publication and the author wouldn't make a dime on the new edition. It'd incentivize publishers to underpromote books until the copyright expired.

I think the death of the author is a horrible measure for a lot of reasons. I would say a reasonable length after the work is created is probably the best way to go. Seventy to 120 years seems way too long IMO. But giving a writer or artist 30-40 years or so to make money seems pretty reasonable.
 
Worth considering though that the creatives themselves are often not the ones who end up benefiting from Copyright.

I don't think we should have no copyright, but I also think present laws make them so long they take away our ability to build a shared mythology and lore (something you kind of see in places where copyright is a bit more lax, and properties can be used more freely)

I'm not sure the best solution though. It is hard to make money creating things. People who are creative in music, writing, games, etc obviously need to be able to support themselves. I'm not sure the present arrangement benefits the creative talent as much as it benefits companies.
Hence why I agree that copyright needs changing. I'm only arguing against the idea that copyright ends the moment someone dies, and that if someone publishes a book with a company today and dies tomorrow, then their children see none of the benefit of that created work.

My point isn't that copyright isn't used by big companies to screw people over, it is that changing it to end on exactly on the death of the author is not beneficial to the author themself.
 
The problem of the death of the author as the copyright limit is that they could get hit by a bus tommorow so it offers no security for the publisher. The problem with a fixed length like 10 years is that the work might only find its audience 12 years after publication and the author wouldn't make a dime on the new edition. It'd incentivize publishers to underpromote books until the copyright expired.
That'd be a risky strategy as the publisher might no longer have to give royalties to the writer beyond that point, but they'd also lose exclusivity allowing a larger publishing house with more reach to beat them to a larger audience.
 
That's a different tangent. It is observed however when people don't need to slave in low paying jobs to keep a roof or food, they often turn to art. Art therefore becomes the refuge of the rich. Who probably don't need to make a cent on it.
It's all well and good to talk about people's needs being met but ignoring the need for work to be done but it's directly related to the question of how creators get paid. Maybe robots or replicators would do the trick but who makes the robots or replicators and why would they if they don't get paid? You still need parts and fuel and maintainance. The harsh reality is that you can't eat art, it won't keep you warm, and most of it can't even be fucked.

If we want art to exist beyond the kindergarten level we have to be willing to pay for it. If we want art that represents us or inspires us or transports us, we have to be willing to pay for it.
 
It's all well and good to talk about people's needs being met but ignoring the need for work to be done but it's directly related to the question of how creators get paid. Maybe robots or replicators would do the trick but who makes the robots or replicators and why would they if they don't get paid? You still need parts and fuel and maintainance. The harsh reality is that you can't eat art, it won't keep you warm, and most of it can't even be fucked.

If we want art to exist beyond the kindergarten level we have to be willing to pay for it. If we want art that represents us or inspires us or transports us, we have to be willing to pay for it.

Mozart and Beethoven didn't have copyright protection, but they lived in a time where the wealthy took pride in supporting the arts, unlike these days where many take pride in abusing and exploiting as many as they can to add a dollar to their already obscene fortune just because they can.
 
Mozart and Beethoven didn't have copyright protection, but they lived in a time where the wealthy took pride in supporting the arts, unlike these days where many take pride in abusing and exploiting as many as they can to add a dollar to their already obscene fortune just because they can.
Oh they did that then too it's just that they also supported the arts. :smile:

It's just that instead of paying for the sistine chapel roof now they buy Twitter.
 
In Dan Simmons Hyperion, there's a scene where a the poet who wrote a billion selling book asks his publisher why his second book hasn't done as well, especially since the AI's loved it, they did, and they bought one copy.
 
Who's going to do the work to provide everyone's material needs? As a father and sole provider I've found it's a bit one sided.
As someone who works extensively with robotic machinery the trendlines are point to a time within the next century if not decades where the work of one person is sufficent to supply the material needs of millions.
 
If we want art to exist beyond the kindergarten level we have to be willing to pay for it. If we want art that represents us or inspires us or transports us, we have to be willing to pay for it.
Pay your favorite creators directly either a few bucks a month as their patron or when they release a work.
 
The argument about “how will authors profit if their copyright expires?” is bullshit. Authors can start Patreons now and produce content at their leisure.

Shorten copyright to 20 years? Then that means authors can write a sequel every 20 years and cash in on that if the previous book only becomes popular after copyright expires.

Statistically speaking, very few books are ever successful, most of the successes occur within the first five years of publishing, and anything that’s a hit more than 20 years after release is usually a permanent cultural phenomenon like LotR, HP, or GoT. And there’s pretty much no books that sit in obscurity for 20 years and then becomes popular.

Not to mention that nowadays authors can become celebrities with fans loyal to them, not any dumb corpo selling copies of their book or writing bad fanfiction. Pretty much every series eventually degenerates into garbage that only sells because the author’s name takes up half the cover. The argument that copyright must last forever so the author can profit is nonsense.

The author’s family needs the money? Those leeches need to get jobs. Authors’ families are notorious for shitting on their work. The Herbert Estate and the Tolkien Estate have both put their stamp of approval on bad fanfiction for the sake of money. They’re no different from the evil corpos bedeviling society and trying to turn us into mindless zombies that give them money.

The market has changed. Unless you want basically everything that isn’t backed up on the Internet Archive to go up in flames and be forgotten forever, then we need to reduce copyright terms. This is especially relevant for ttrpgs because most of the cultural output is locked behind bullshit copyright law.
 
Hence why I agree that copyright needs changing. I'm only arguing against the idea that copyright ends the moment someone dies, and that if someone publishes a book with a company today and dies tomorrow, then their children see none of the benefit of that created work.

My point isn't that copyright isn't used by big companies to screw people over, it is that changing it to end on exactly on the death of the author is not beneficial to the author themself.

I agree 100% with that. It would also create the potential for sinister outcomes I think. If a writer's copyright of a work goes away when they die, you can envision situations where people might benefit from their death.
 
Yes I was mainly referring to time. I assume his main objection to transfer is related to the extensions, not being able to extend the length pretty much eliminates any reason to object to transfers. I mean in theory an heir could pull publication for reasons, or a transferred copyright holder could then bury it (maybe it no longer agrees with their views) but with a timeline of 20-25 years, that is not nearly the issue it is with the current very long period.


Below is not directly in response to your quote, just thoughts meandering at this point.

At the current 70+ years it is obviously made to benefit corporations not artists. Average US life expectancy is 77 years, so only a 7 year old author or musician has any real risk of out living the copyright of their earliest work.
It’s worse even than you say: not seventy years, but authors’ life plus seventy years. An author’s grandchildren are unlikely to outlive his or her copyrights.

Any financial benefit occurring in seventy years time is of little value to anyone now. For that matter, a benefit accruing in even half that time is discounted almost to insignificance at the interest rates individuals face. The last few rounds of extension to copyright terms were absolutely not for the ostensible purpose of copyright allowed by the US constitution. They provide almost no incremental incentive to future creativity, and were clearly enacted to benefit the holders of old copyrights.

Twenty years is plenty for patents. It would be enough for copyright.
 
The problem of the death of the author as the copyright limit is that they could get hit by a bus tommorow so it offers no security for the publisher. The problem with a fixed length like 10 years is that the work might only find its audience 12 years after publication and the author wouldn't make a dime on the new edition. It'd incentivize publishers to underpromote books until the copyright expired.
A publisher that underpromoted a book until the copyright expired would lose their profit margin to competition after it expired. There is a discrepancy of interest between the author and the publisher over book pricing because royalties are not proportional to profit, but the publisher’s incentive to get profit over the longest possible term with the earliest possible start is the same as the author’s chance to do the same for royalties.
 
I suspect the one thing everyone can agree on is that the current system is a broken mess.

The outcomes for a single creator might be good with patreon or other crowd funding options but when you get things like movies with hundreds of people working on them it gets even more troublesome. How much of Avatar II does the best boy own? That's why work for hire is a thing. It was your job, you were paid to do it, and your employer owns it.
 
Mozart and Beethoven didn't have copyright protection, but they lived in a time where the wealthy took pride in supporting the arts, unlike these days where many take pride in abusing and exploiting as many as they can to add a dollar to their already obscene fortune just because they can.
Beethoven bitterly resented the condescension of patrons, and tried in two ways to escape from being patronised. His publisher couldn’t afford to pay him a living out of profits on his sheet music because other German states did not enforce Austrian copyrights, so pirates ate their lunch. And his career as a performer to large audiences paying moderate ticket prices was destroyed by his deafness.
 
As someone who works extensively with robotic machinery the trendlines are point to a time within the next century if not decades where the work of one person is sufficent to supply the material needs of millions.
When that time comes the opportunity cost of letting a writer or artist create instead of drudge as a labourer, like the wage rate, will be effectively zero. Creating new content will cease to be costly, the discrepancy between costly originals and free copies will go away, and copyright will cease to serve a social purpose.

But natural resources and capital items produced using them will not automatically become superabundant. We will face the task of producing, allocating, and distributing material needs among people whose labour is no longer of value in exchange, no longer a factor of production, though the goods are still scarce. Revising copyright law will be a comparatively minor problem.
 
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As someone who works extensively with robotic machinery the trendlines are point to a time within the next century if not decades where the work of one person is sufficent to supply the material needs of millions.
Someone will own the factories and the robots and you bet your ass they'll make money on them and people will generally be poorer not richer as a result.
 
Someone will own the factories and the robots and you bet your ass they'll make money on them and people will generally be poorer not richer as a result.
And folks said something similar when the mechanized reaper and combine were introduced in the late 19th century. We figured it out then and will do so this time.
 
When that time comes the opportunity cost of letting a writer or artist create instead of drudge as a labourer, like the wage rate, will be effectively zero. Creating new content will cease to be costly, the discrepancy between costly originals and free copies will go away, and copyright will cease to serve a social purpose.
We are pretty much there in the RPG world as a subset of the changes sweeping the world of books and printing. Anybody reading this can publish high quality material in the time they have for a hobby. It not trivial and there is a learning curve to the dealing with the logistics. But the opportunity cost is effectively zero right now for books.

But natural resources and capital items produced using them will not automatically become superabundant. We will face the task of producing, allocating, and distributing material needs among people whose labour is no longer of value in exchange, no longer a factor of production, though the goods are still scarce. Revising copyright law will be a comparatively minor problem.
It would be a sea change and a lot of mistakes will be made but the decisive factor is that productivity will but such that the individual will have what they need to survive made with tools they control. There will be threats and struggle but nature of the technology means that points of true control are non existent like there were with the factories and markets of the industrial age.

To bring this around to the hobby the dominance of DriveThruRPG is often cited as a point of control. But more than a few publishers don’t put their products there for a variety of reasons. It certainly more work to go that route. But it is doable.
 
but when you get things like movies with hundreds of people working on them it gets even more troublesome. How much of Avatar II does the best boy own? That's why work for hire is a thing. It was your job, you were paid to do it, and your employer owns it.
There are people trying to figure it our and are successfully producing content in the interim. For example The Chosen a crowdfunded series about the life of Jesus.

Right now it is more miss than hit. Partly because the content people are really passionate about and wanting to make shows about are popular IPs like Lord of the Rings and Star Trek. Which bring us back the current issues raised by the OP. The Chosen works because well the bible is popular and public domain.
 
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