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redwall_hp 2 hours ago

It's pro-creator as well. Creators are artificially restricted from drawing upon the commons to create new things due to copyright.

In the 1800s, musicians would freely write new lyrics to existing tunes, which is why folk music has various songs that share the same music. (There is the satire loophole, but that's creatively limiting.)

In the 1980s, musicians would record short slices of chords from records (or breakbeats) onto sampling devices and make new music from them, giving rise to an incredible number of musical genres.

Copyright came for all of them and created a new status quo where exercising that sort of creativity is legally cumbersome.

And now the paperclip maximizers are trying to chip away at fundamental music theory, with lawsuits over chord progressions (of which there are very finite possibilities) and other attempts to grab slices of other pies. (See: the recent suits against Dua Lipa, Katy Perry and Ed Sheeran.)

We wouldn't have Wicked, one of the most beloved twenty-first century musicals and now a high-grossing film, if Oz were still legally encumbered.