...Seeing everything I care about wrt copyright minimalism crumble in the face of the "anti-AI-art people" makes me think of how the Creative Commons movement basically failed to create an economic model for collective artistic wellbeing, and how that lead to us getting fucked by the "copyright will save artists" people.
Like, the examples provided of piracy/the Creative Commons helping artists make a living were always individual cases, often of pre-established larger artists, never organizations or collectives that could provide that sort of institutional foundation.
And I can;t help but think that part of that was because of how much that movement descended from the tech scene and Unix with its libertarian tendencies, so of course they wouldn't advocate for collective institutions to allow for artistic wellbeing while producing Creative Commons works because "tHaT wOuLd Be CoMmUnIsT,"
Which ended up under-developing our best tool for artistic labor security outside of copyright, while leaving copyright maximalism to be able to pretend it's the pro-labor position even though; just like any rent-seeking institution, the benefits will always end up aggregated at the top, and copyright isn't meant to protect you so much as the guy who buys you up.
This gets even more infuriating when you think about how vulnerable online freelance artists; one of the most under-organized groups of artists; ended up in this gap, and how much more vulnerable to copyright maximalism bullshit they ended up due to that lack of collective institutions in their corner; with so many of them advocating for the destruction of fair use that will inevitably make their jobs so much worse.
Like, on my side everybody fucking dropped the ball on this one, and I am pissed.
