after what happened with yuzu emu, im done...
EDIT: This post is a joke! It was posted in /c/memes, of course it is going to be a meme! If you consider this news, please re-evaluate your choice of sources.
At the same time, I think it says something about Nintendo that some actually believed this...
I don't know what to tell you that could satisfy your internal struggle here. If you have a style worth stealing it will be stolen. Copyright doesn't protect that.
For what copyright does protect, it is only enforceable if you have the funds to protect it.
The system wasn't designed for people like you, it was literally designed during the same time in which only the wealthy were able to peruse art. It was created to protected monied interests, not the commoner.
If you expect to make a living on your art, you need to plan to collect earnings up front. Commissioned work is exactly that.
This idea that you're going to create some initial idea and then coast on it for life does not align with any reality.
Sometimes, if you create something new and interesting, you'll end up with a following and they will fund your endeavors but there will still be copycats and you either waste your life perusing that or spend your life perusing your art. You cannot do both. Paying someone else to peruse your "rights" doesn't change this equation, you'd be creating to fund the protection. Enforce it too hard and your fans will turn on you, as the original post here illustrates.
There is no winning move via copyright that leads to the land of riches. That's the problem. That's what copyright is bullshit.
It's not designed to protect us but so long as the monied interests can convince us otherwise, we'll go along with it like temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Always convinced if we'd play the game too, we could win.
The system is rigged and it's not in your favor. Whatever appears to favor you is a facade meant of not to keep you playing the game.
Sincerely, thank you for explaining this perspective. You make a lot of really good points!
You're right that it's a mess out there and stuff will always get stolen. And no, I never expect to coast on anything for a lifetime, but I still think if we were to abolish copyright as it stands, there should still be something enforceable that benefits creators of works.
One who publishes a book or a game should accept piracy as a reality, but having zero recourse for say, anybody uploading your exact work a dozen times on Steam under their own names would be pretty terrible wouldn't it?
If it were abolished out in the open, yeah, we'd basically need to not have to earn money anymore. Otherwise, there would simply be no point to anybody making anything.
We're already seeing such a threat from un-checked ML scraping everything in existence.
Thank you so much for the valuable discourse. I hope you have an awesome day :).
(P.S: I think you meant "pursue" rather than "peruse")