Flash forward twenty-odd years, and now instead, Netflix and other streamers are producing movies that they never intend to make available even once because it is more financially advantageous to avoid paying taxes by writing off the production expense than to make it available to be...watched as if it were art on which thousands of skilled, creative people collaborated and which customers might love. Streamers are also regularly removing older movies from their services while then adding commercials to streaming because DON'T WE ALL JUST MISS "FREE" BROADCAST TV SO FUCKING MUCH AND WANT TO NOW PAY FOR THE PRIVILEGE?
On the micro scale of that corrupt tax avoidance scheme are a handful of indie knitting pattern designers who have decided to take their creations offline, but I doubt they have taken their intellectual property bat and ball and gone home in order to avoid taxes. Whatever their reasons, I do find it very annoying that I cannot get patterns that I see on Ravelry because a designer inexplicably decided a trickle of residual income was...what? Too much of a hassle?
And worse, I can't buy or trade the pattern from someone who already has it because it turns out that the "purchase" of a digital knitting pattern is not a purchase. As with the terms of use that we click blissfully past as we install software, we are paying for a license to use a digital file that we do not actually own. So I cannot sell or even GIVE AWAY a digital file of a pattern, even if I delete it afterward so that only one person has it because that would violate the license agreement, which—because I didn't read the TOU—I was unaware I had entered into by "buying" the pattern. End lesson: I need to save and/or print out a hard copy of EVERY DIGITAL PATTERN I'VE "PURCHASED" before Ravelry, Apple, and/or Dropbox change their terms of use.
I love artists of all sorts and I believe they should be compensated for their work. I believe they should have control over their creations while they are alive. I have some minor reservations about how much control and profit their "estates" should have because I'm not a huge fan of generational wealth, but off the cuff, I would say that an artist's spouse/partner and children, who knew and supported or were supported by the artist, should be in control of the work until THEY die, but after that, not so much. Then things should enter the public domain.
I know I do not have a right to anyone's work. But damn if I'm not disappointed that people are hoarding creative work where the world can't enjoy it, even when we are willing to pay, or are ALREADY PAYING—looking at you, Netflix.
