> His images have been bootlegged endlessly by Asian companies placing them on t-shirts and selling them for $5 on Etsy and every other marketplace.
And why not, really? How does that affect your brother? Why should your brother have a say on what people can or cannot put on a T-Shirt? Creating pieces of art professionally should be paid for. But having some weird right of ownership on what is essentially just a huge number is, frankly, a clutch at best and outright criminal at worst. Digital artwork can be copied at zero cost and artists have to deal with that, not the world has to bend to one particular model of generating revenues for artists.
We need to stop with these schemes at one point and shift to a better market or we will effectively have to ceed all control of data and computing to copyright-control companies.
At one extreme you have Disney corp squeezing money out of copyrighted material they created/bought/licensed. On the other extreme, without any copyright, you have Disney corp squeezing money out of any material they can find. Copyright is a moat that works both ways. Without copyright, profit from art goes to the most efficient t-shirt screen printer.
Be careful what you optimize for. Clearly the thing you actually object to is Disney squeezing money out of things. Maybe just make that part illegal, and forget the copyright?
I'm not sure what the solution is, but I do feel IP protection is important.
If we were to get rid of it entirely then your success in the market largely depends on what resources you already have. Large companies have the upper hand as they already have the user base, along with the marketing budget to sink you (not that the current situation differs all that much).
If your argument is "thats the way it should be, let the market decide who succeeds" then that's a whole different conversation.
Either way I don't see an obvious solution that doesn't benefit the very companies you say we need to stop, though I agree on the sentiment.
well, imagine you're selling your merchandise on a marketplace, but then some other company comes around, takes your product design, and then sells a product very similar to yours, at a slightly lower price. even if they get a slightly lower margin of profit due to undercutting, they still capture that profit, while you get nothing.
and then, imagine if a company arrives that offers a product, let's just say, imagery. artwork. at a low low price of 'free'. not just "free copying of existing artwork", but complete "professional creation". for free. it's real hard to compete with 'free'. you may have been selling your artwork for some price, but when a 'free' alternative comes around, what do you do? how do you solve for that "challenge" on the market? tough shit. and also, since it's 'free', it's also 'whatever price they want to set', so they can undercut you at any price point, because they can just make up any price point. capturing customers, capturing profit, while you just get displaced in the market. good luck trying to explain to people that "creating pieces of art should be paid for" and that "you" "should be paid. people can just get art for free! or, at a low low price that undercuts you.
see a problem that arises here? this is what those annoying art people have been trying to argue about.
And why not, really? How does that affect your brother? Why should your brother have a say on what people can or cannot put on a T-Shirt? Creating pieces of art professionally should be paid for. But having some weird right of ownership on what is essentially just a huge number is, frankly, a clutch at best and outright criminal at worst. Digital artwork can be copied at zero cost and artists have to deal with that, not the world has to bend to one particular model of generating revenues for artists.
We need to stop with these schemes at one point and shift to a better market or we will effectively have to ceed all control of data and computing to copyright-control companies.