Rick Falkvinge writes an excellent and poignant column for Torrent Freak on what role corporate copyright should have as stakeholders in copyright culture (spoiler: not much). While wholly worth the read, the gist is that just because big media benefits from the current copyright culture doesn’t mean they have the right to control where it goes.

Falkvinge also writes: “The copyright monopoly legislation is a balance between the public’s interest of having access to culture, and the same public’s interest of having new culture created.”

Consider this taken a step further. Copyright should incentivize creation, granted, but most people believe that the only way to do this is to afford the creator (or – as is much more often the case – the rightsholder) a state-enforced monopoly, ie – a greater chance of making money, or to prevent others from making money. But what we’re seeing now is creative efforts that have nothing to do with money, where there is not other incentive but sharing what’s created, and the intrinsic motives of achieving that creation.

So where does that leave our current copyright culture? What happens when money is no longer the motivating factor, but when content creators are able to produce high quality, popular media with no budget and nothing to drive them but their own self-motivation? Shouldn’t copyright laws be re-evaluated to consider what it is that really motivates creators? Otherwise – and in this case, otherwise means our current reality – we have to admit that copyright is not a tool of incentivizing future creation, but rather one of ensuring profits for a small minority of rightsholders.

Alas, I don’t believe this real purpose differs much from what most citizens would consider copyright’s purpose. In other words, since copyright’s inception it has moved clearly to longer and broader terms and protecting rightsholders, whether they create or not, and most people would accept this as the legitimate and self-evident purpose of copyright law, despite beginnings that are far more well-intended.

Ask people why you can’t copy a Disney movie, and they’re far more prone to answer “because they’ll punish you” rather than “because Disney needs an incentive to create more movies”. Blending this with Falkvinge’s argument, I agree that big media should have little to say about where copyright goes, but when most people already believe that copyright is in place to protect corporate rightsholders, big media already has several seats at the table.