We are anti-copyright both politically and morally. We do not believe that the existence of copyright, particularly in its current form, exists to protect artists, but instead to stifle artistic creation and experience. At the end of the day, we do not really believe there is any such thing as an “original idea;” without the ability to rip off Hamlet, The Lion King wouldn’t exist, and without the desire to create a Mother/Earthbound fangame, Toby Fox would never have gotten the experience necessary to create Undertale.

Copyright law exclusively protects art in the sense that it is profitable. Copyright law is about protecting capital, and capital does not care for art unless it can be monetized. You can argue until you're blue in the face that copyright protects small artists as much as it protects large ones, but the way copyright law has been functionally utilized would beg to differ. Notably, in plagiarism cases such as that of Ed Sheeran's "Thinking Out Loud" and Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On," the larger music community -- and Sheeran himself, in his statement after the verdict -- celebrated the fact that musicians, like many other artists, are constantly iterating on longstanding traditions and existing musical concepts, and to compare this to theft is absurd on its face.

And yet, plagiarism lawsuits continue, particularly in the realm of pop music, because it is incredibly monetizable. This Guardian article mentions a nameless major star who is known to use copyright lawsuits as a cudgel, because large artists know that a smaller artist will likely pay a few hundred or few thousand dollars to avoid having to go to court and potentially pay hundreds of thousands of dollars while they try to clear themselves of wrongdoing. This is something that felt especially impossible after Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" was found to be legally copying the "groove and feel" of Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give It Up," even though the two songs were legally recognized as being clearly distinct in lyrics and tune. Even at the time, this was recognized as a mind-blowingly broad ruling that came with many concerns about the future of artistic creation in the pop space.

For decades, musicians have been feeling the uneven burden of copyright law, and we believe that it is genuinely only a matter of time until the same profitability index comes for indie authors, who could easily be accused of "stealing" a very successful author's work with very little recourse. We can already see this in the world of fanfiction: even though fanfiction is generally legally protected as transformative work, Anne Rice is a good example of a controversial figure whose works are widely loved, but who used her position to threaten fanfiction writers, with her wealth being an effective enough tool that she convinced Fanfiction.net to remove the category for her works entirely. 

As a smaller artist, you may legally be protected by copyright law just like larger artists, but if Disney steals your idea, do you have the money to take them to court over it for months and years? Do you have the money to hire a lawyer who can out-argue Disney's lawyers? Do you have the paper trail to prove that you're legally protected? Even if you have all of these, are you certain you know where the line is between inspiration and legal theft? If you were threatened with a lawsuit by the Tolkien estate for writing a character depicted as a large, foreboding eye, would you, with the knowledge that "Blurred Lines" was found to have legally infringed on "Got to Give It Up"'s copyright by "copying its groove and feel," feel certain that you could win that court case, even if you did have hundreds of thousands of dollars laying around to spend on it?

In addition to the unhelpfulness of copyright law in its current state, we also do not want to measure our work's value exclusively in relation to capital. It is exhausting and unfulfilling to do so. We have put so, so much more work into our art than we could ever be paid by an individual -- after all, on average, a complete read of a 300-page book receives $1.50 in royalties through Kindle Unlimited. When you hold onto your work's copyright in the way we see many authors do, you are adamantly insisting, "It is fair and right that my work's value is $1.50." Opening up your artwork beyond the value assigned to it by capital allows you to say, "My work's value is based on how other people experience it as art."

Amazon (and other companies, but Amazon is one of the most widely used companies for hosting paid eBooks) wants you to devalue your art as much as you can while still allowing them to profit off it; the moment you decide that you don't want Amazon to be the arbiter of your artwork's value, they lose money. If your book is listed at $5 on Amazon with a 70/30 royalty split, but you also list it for free on your website, Amazon loses $1.50 every time you allow someone to get it for free. They don't care about you being "appropriately compensated" for your work; they care about receiving that $1.50. If Amazon cared about appropriate compensation, they wouldn't be breaking labor laws every time labor regulators leave them alone for twenty seconds.

We do not personally believe that "being willing to pay for your work" has any relationship to whether someone values your work; in fact, we believe that creating this connection negatively impacts how people perceive their relationship to art. How often do large corporations pay an artist for the copyright to their work, then devalue it in its execution? Every company that did a Capitol-themed marketing campaign during the release slate of every The Hunger Games movie paid for the ability to do so. We don't think that means these companies "valued" Suzanne Collins' work more than someone who pirated the book and became radicalized against fascism through it.

Capitalism’s race to the bottom is the main reason for the devaluation of art, not people consuming your art without paying for it. ​While we understand and validate the feeling of betrayal that comes along with having your artwork treated in a way that you have not consented to, we believe that the way to get around that feeling is not to clutch copyright even tighter, but instead to allow your artwork to be unbound by capital entirely.

We fundamentally believe that the ability to experience art should not be limited to those with money, and the desire to create new art should not be limited by copyright. We want to back that opinion up with action, as an artist ourself, and hopefully inspire other artists to do the same.