yeah. it’s mind blowing to me how the Internet was convinced to give up its a culture of piracy and privateering and become sycophants for corporate protection of IP under they imaginary impression that they are “protecting artists”.

There were industry executives and think tanks litterally quoted (in the 2000s) for saying that their job was to effectively convince people that piracy “hurt the artist”, that this was the way to stop piracy: convince people they were hurting artists by piracy.

Turns out, almost no artists except the most extraordinarily successful make any money off copyright or IP. They mostly make their money the way they’ve always made their money: ticket sales, merch sales, performances, etc.