I fail to believe that he actually did retire when he went on to start posting #stopcreating on twitter only about 13 hours after his "retirement" with a picture of the same thing in skywriting.
I get that a lot of people don't think anything having to do with him is a big deal, but watching him steal material from lesser known artists and then claim that it was his divine right as an "artist" to do that is a dangerous precedent. We already have some pretty muddy copyright waters to deal with in the first place. The last thing you need is to have a guy like this storm through the debate and become the voice of people who think all copyright should be destroyed when it's a fact that the minute that happens you're going to see rich dicks like him steal from the nobodies and get away with it (more than they already do).
On top of that, for people who don't create original content, it still impacts you. When companies push to enforce their copyright laws in draconian fashions (illegally at that) against someone like an LP Channel, they're going to have guys like this to point to and go "well if we don't do it then assholes like that are going to just steal from everyone." And in a grand stroke of irony, as they do that, they would be stealing revenue and profit from the little guys who really did create legitimately legal derivative works.
Copyright isn't a black and white issue, there's a lot of fine details that have to be paid attention to to allow people to make derivative works without out-right stealing. But if you let people like him polarize the issue, the one true thing that will happen is that little guys will get crushed as the big assholes fight it out over ownership.
I get that a lot of people don't think anything having to do with him is a big deal, but watching him steal material from lesser known artists and then claim that it was his divine right as an "artist" to do that is a dangerous precedent. We already have some pretty muddy copyright waters to deal with in the first place. The last thing you need is to have a guy like this storm through the debate and become the voice of people who think all copyright should be destroyed when it's a fact that the minute that happens you're going to see rich dicks like him steal from the nobodies and get away with it (more than they already do).
On top of that, for people who don't create original content, it still impacts you. When companies push to enforce their copyright laws in draconian fashions (illegally at that) against someone like an LP Channel, they're going to have guys like this to point to and go "well if we don't do it then assholes like that are going to just steal from everyone." And in a grand stroke of irony, as they do that, they would be stealing revenue and profit from the little guys who really did create legitimately legal derivative works.
Copyright isn't a black and white issue, there's a lot of fine details that have to be paid attention to to allow people to make derivative works without out-right stealing. But if you let people like him polarize the issue, the one true thing that will happen is that little guys will get crushed as the big assholes fight it out over ownership.
