Since I was little, I’ve had a fear of sharing my artwork online. I was the artsy kid who loved drawing and painting, but I would rarely upload images to the usual image dumps like DeviantArt, Facebook, Tumblr, etc. I was so afraid that a weirdo on the internet would steal my hideous, unproportioned anime-sketches. Essentially, my adolescent boogie man was an art catfisher. I watched my favorite artists post messages about someone else selling their paintings on seedy sites, I thought I was next. I closed myself off from social media outlets and was determined to protect my identity as an artist.
Before completely succumbing to a self-obsessed vortex of pretentiousness, I luckily stumbled upon hitRECord, a collaborative site where artists could re-mix other work. For me, this was a moment of enlightenment. I realized that taking other work and developing a new context for it was a valid form of art. Of course, I shouldn’t steal other people’s work, but hitRECord made me less afraid of sharing. On the website, I watched a video from the founder, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who discussed the idea of creativity and originality. JGL summarizes that either everything is original or nothing is. For the former, he explains that every person on earth is unique, therefore all of their ideas and creations are unique and original, so everything is. However, the latter point recognizes that humans are created by everything we absorb around us. We base the stories we tell and the art we make on the media we consume. As JGL points out, even Romeo and Juliet wasn’t completely original. Essentially, humans have been remixing work from the dawn of time. Creativity doesn’t exist in isolation.
This complicates the concept of intellectual property and creative copyrights because we can’t claim to own ideas since none of us are original. Many would even argue that intellectual property isn't really property. While America sticks strictly to IP protection, countries like China don’t perceive IP in the same way. In China, IP and copyright are much less precious, as Michael Keane describes in his chapter “Unbundling Precarious Creativity in China: ‘Knowing-How’ and ‘Knowing-To.’” from his book, Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local Labor.
China has increased knowledge capital sharing, but they fail to nurture talent properly. This means that China’s quality of creativity has stagnated because people get stuck in dead-end positions. Even for talented people who eventually get recruited by independent media companies, they still face censorship restrictions. If you happen to offend anyone, your production licenses may not be renewed. Additionally, larger broadcasting services like CCTV can absorb your original concept and run with it, leaving you with nothing. Without the safety net of good content — like Netflix had with Breaking Bad, Stranger Things, The Crown, etc. — independent Chinese production companies rely on advertising sponsorships to stay afloat. This leads to an oversaturation of ads, idol-culture, and scripts written around selling a product. While sponsorship itself is not a bad thing, the media culture it’s created has left China creatively-lacking. Currently, some of China’s most popular shows originate in Korea, including Running Man and Produce 101. The entertainment industry is risk-adverse and continues funneling money towards formulaic content. Independent creators receive little support and risk seeing their ideas spirited away by the larger broadcasting channels.
I don’t know if intellectual property laws would take root in China, nor do I know if it is completely necessary. While things look glitzy with the high production values, the economic success of a particular show doesn’t ensure a fruitful future. As content becomes more diversified, audiences may feel less and less satisfied. This may lead to greater “stealing,” and we can only hope that great artists helm this movement. If not, China risks losing this powerful industry in a slow death — drowning in a sea of mediocrity.