Copyright bedfellows of the Left

Here’s something to think about if you have sympathy for Copyleft perspectives or are simply anti-copyright.

Lots of people use Creative Commons licenses to give blanket permission for people to use their work for non-commercial purposes. (One example is the anonymously-owned Extinction Symbol, which aims to be like the famous Peace Symbol but with the goal of promoting awareness of the current mass extinction event). I think it is important to keep in mind that this is not the same thing as disavowing copyright and declaring that the work is in the public domain. By disallowing certain uses of the work this type of license retains the rights in copyright that allow the creator of a work to control its use. I think this presents a dilemma for anti-capitalists, who might want to have their cake and eat it too, in the sense that they might want to oppose copyright as a capitalist structure while at the same time wanting to employ it to prevent commercialization. Personally, I think this means that copyright is not all bad, that it is a good thing to have a legal structure that gives creators control over their work. There might be plenty that is wrong with the copyright regime, but at its root it is something that I like. That is conceivably not the only way out of the dilemma, however.