I’m telling you this as someone that works in the arts, that’s just not true.

You can pirate digital material and repackage it. I see illustrators getting their designs ripped off by large scale clothing manufacturers all the time.

Similarly, I know some acts that have heard their music on adverts and films and haven’t been paid. It seems like it is being stolen if you ask me.

There needs to be protection or the creation of art becomes a luxury for those that can afford to not make money from it.

What’s wild here is that when you talk about IP you are talking about entertainment and art and not lifesaving drugs and technologies on a global scale.

It’s a very privilidged western view of copyright and IP.

And as I said in my comment, it isn’t my customers that want stuff for free, often they want to pay to support me. Those laws stop big multinational corporations from taking my work and selling it on their t-shirts.

We are social creatures, but fuck me, we need to eat and pay rent.

I see you make art. What if I said to you, I’d like to give you some money for that art, for maybe a print of it. Not just so that I can own some but because I want to support you.

And then someone just copies your art and gives it to me free. You get no money for it.

Are you genuinely OK with that? Are you saying that everything you make is copyright free?

So you think that because some people chose to make things for free there should be no legal protection for people that want to sell what they make?

The only people who can choose to make things for free are the privilidged few.

As someone who makes minimum wage from my intellectual property, the IP laws (in the UK) have allowed me to prevent the very wealthy just taking my ideas and profiting from them.

And they have tried repeatedly.

It isn’t the law, but the corruption of the law that’s at issue. However, without that legal framework there would be no financial incentive for anyone but the wealthy to make IP.

Is that what you want? Entertainment by big corporations only, and art made solely by the upper middle classes?

I like following verbal meme trends, then watching them die out.

Couple of years ago everyone described nearly everything as “spicy”.

The overuse if “hear me out” before making a mid statement.

That dark period of time when people used “amazeballs”.

Dan Simmons, Hyperion… Or Carrion Comfort.

I’d love to see some modern tries at Dashiel Hammet’s work too.

Seconded.

Mate, I am the owning class. And so are you. You just like to pretend you aren’t. That’s cool, I’m down with role play.

Mostly I’m down with freedom of choice though, and not telling everyone how to behave.

Which is why I’m cool with you trying to offend me.

Sure companies rip us off. But we have the power to not engage. I suggest using that power.

Like, right now.

Dude just wants to single handedly destroy all band merch.

How about giving people the right to not buy stuff? Wait, they have that. That’s cool.

Someone knows their cock rights.

Oh no, I get you. I think we are a similar age.

I was at the Reading Festival in '96 and I think offspring were playing.

There was a slightly older guy stood in the middle of the crowd shouting, you call this punk… This ain’t punk. This ain’t shit.

The kids were laughing at him.

This week in Glasgow Green Day played a gig and all I saw was middle aged men and their daughters wearing matching merch t-shirts.

I’m assuming at some point I travel back in time to '96 to try to stop this.

She may be a Puncke: for many of them, are neither Maid, Widow, nor Wife.

W. Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (1623)

Damn, you really old.

I’m gen-x and I am at the point where I don’t know if I say anything unironically any more.

(But you are spot on, slang is there, always, and it mutates as it is needed, but it isnt generational so much as sociopolitical and regional.)

Nah, its for “grizzled tanman”. You oldies just don’t get it.

I once made a music video for Sony Universal.

They paid me £4k.

They liked it a lot and asked if I would do another. I asked if the fee was the same and they said I’d be doing it for exposure.

I told them I’m capable of exposing myself.

I stuck it to them.

I’m still poor, but at least I’m not working for it.

If by us, you mean American christians, then sure.

Wait… The very notion of the seven deadly sins is a Christian construct… It only really applies to us anyway…

Ah. My bad. Carry on.

Right you are g’vnor

Rock it like a Brit. Most things in metric except for your height (feet and inches) and your car speed (miles per hour) and when you measure your manhood (inches… Or fractions thereof).

Also, milk is pints.

Land is acres.

And the ponies run furlongs.