Copyrights?

Tribute to Durer©2010 Robert Daniel Ullmann

There is a huge change in the way intellectual property is handled. The ability to make perfect and infinite numbers of copies of everything and anything digital has changed the landscape to put some vaguely effective copyright protections in the hands of the big corporations, who can also spend obscene amounts on readily breakable (usually by some teenager) DRM protection.

I've photographed several WIPO conferences and listened to the great poo-bahs of intellectual property get it wrong. The so-called dark net was only mentioned once, China and it's pirated everything, never, and the rights of individual artists were mostly dismissed (as in the statement by a prestigious law professor that "photographers will just have to find some way to protect their work".

Yeah, sure. If major corporations can't protect their software, movies, music, books and games, how can I, with no programming skills, protect myself?

Yes, Virginia, there is the Creative Commons licensing, which seems to be a great favorite among those who already have money, and good jobs, like academics , and don't mind their work being used for god knows what by god knows who.

What to do? Organizing artists to form something like a union would be akin t0 herding hyper-active kittens. Beg other artists to stop giving their work away?

Any ideas? Anyone?