Copyright Was Never Your Friend

There’s this weird new consensus forming on the left (or so it would seem): AI is coming for the artists, the creators, the makers, therefore copyright must be defended at all costs. The same people who spent years dunking on Disney for locking up the public domain are now acting like the DMCA is a progressive institution. It’s embarrassing. Copyright does not protect regular people. It never has. It is the reason you can’t stream on Twitch with music playing in the background without risking a ban. It is the reason YouTube will mute or demonetize a video the second a three-second sample of a song shows up, even if the song is decades old and the label hasn’t given a shit about it in twenty years. It is the reason Spotify exists in the first place. Record labels and publishers used copyright as a bludgeon against Napster and every other file-sharing service, then handed the entire distribution system to a handful of platforms that pay artists fractions of a cent while making sure you…