One of the argument’s that is often trotted out by free culture advocates and the copytheft hive mind is to make hay of any artist or creator who gives away their work willingly as an example of how free models can work to benefit creators. Well, the truth is that creators have been employing “Freemium” models long before the birth of the internet. Previously, musicians would for example employ street teams to canvas consumers exiting the concert of a similar type artist and give them free music.

However, it was also the creators choice to determine what would be given away for free, how much of it and for how long. In other words, the creator embracing the power of free, also retained the power of choice. Unfortunately the simple concept of choice and consent has been lost and the faucet free can no longer be turned off.

The power of free, works best with the creators power of choice.

After all, anyone can surrender their Copyright, opt out, or even use Creative Commons. Which also begs the question, if Creative Commons is the solution, shouldn’t there be enough content available after 10 years to show how much better Creative Commons is for artists and creators than traditional copyright protections?

If there are really so many people, creating so much great content, and willing to give it away for free wouldn’t this alone render Copyright a useless and antiquated concept? Why argue so aggressively to take what is not given, when there is so much being given away freely?

It makes no sense to oppose the protections granted in Copyright or to deny these rights to those who wish have them, when there is so much content being made available for free. Why so little faith in free markets? Why not honor the artists and creators who chose not to give their work away by removing their work from the businesses of the exploitation economy? Why not let an honest marketplace chose between the products made available willingly for free, and see how they perform against those who wish to charge?

If we are talking about free markets, wouldn’t there be a great benefit to the artists and creators who embrace “permissionless innovation”? If there are so many benefits to artists and creators in “permissionless innovation” it would attract more than enough creators eager to reap the rewards. We think the answer is pretty obvious as to why so many in the free culture movement insist on wanting to take rights away from artists and creators. Simply put, “permissionless innovation” is nothing more than theft for profit, without consent or compensation.

It appears many of these so called new business models are so deeply flawed as to be incapable of functioning with only willing participants. In other words, they can only function with unwilling participants, who have not granted consent and who are not being compensated.

The epic fail of the free culture and copytheft movement is to have so little faith in their own philosophy so as to not believe that creators and artists would actually, willingly surrender enough content of high enough quality to allow their models to function.