| Why is copyright protection
important to me as an individual artist? The bottom line: this is how I make my living. I
don't go to an office every day and collect a paycheck from the accounting department.
Artists bring a lifetime of learning and experiences to every piece of artwork we create -
it's impossible to set an hourly wage for that, and yet, we are entitled to be paid for
it.
Those who use my work without compensation are
stealing from me. And this makes it more and more difficult to pay for the basics of
living, let alone have the freedom (time/funding) to explore and learn still more, which
in turn brings greater depth to my work. Government or business support in the United
States is extremely difficult (read: impossible) for an individual artist to obtain, so I
rely on selling my work and services directly to my customers.
Many artists and creative people are concerned
about putting work online at all because we don't know what will happen to it once it's
out of our control and accessible by so many others. And for those of us who strongly
support the ideals of cyberspace - unlimited access to information and free
exchange of ideas - the reality is that far too many people, through ignorance or malice,
abuse this freedom.
But the issue of stronger laws for protection of
copyright is a two-edged sword, with that other edge, when taken to the extreme, turning
into censorship, That's not acceptable, either - but standing against censorship and
protecting copyright are not mutually exclusive issues. |
