Quote:
Originally Posted by radleyp
Since the advent of copying machines, it has been possible to reproduce and distribute books illegally.
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Sure, but it was expensive (compared to now). You needed to buy/build the machine, have the expertise to use it, and provide raw materials in order to produce copies. The only people who really did this on a large scale were doing it for commercial gain. You didn't see the average consumer doing this themselves, so there was still value in going to a distributor to buy content. Copyright was created because production/distribution was expensive. It's basically encouraging artists to produce by guaranteeing them that they'll have a chance to make a profit from the creation of the work, but also largely that the expense of distribution will be reimbursed. It protected them from somebody undercutting their distribution costs and taking the market away from them by granting them a limited monopoly on the supply of their content.
In the digital world a "copying machine" is now a free piece of software, the expertise required is essentially being able to click a mouse, and there are no raw materials since it's all digital. Basically, digitial copies are now easy to make and free. What changed is that you don't need to be making money at it in order to be able to do it since there are no longer large costs that need to be recouped. It is now trivial for the average person to be a large scale digital distributor. This means that the real distributors aren't seen as providing any additional value, so people will be less and less willing to pay for that link in the chain.
Artists still provide value, because the content is what people want. However, there is no longer as much need for a middle man to distribute content. In the old business model, it's the middle men that were making the most money. They are very powerful and have a lot of incentive to resist change, but I don't think it's going to last forever. I'm not advocating eliminating copyright, there still needs to be some guarantee that an artist will make enough money from creating a work that they are encouraged to create, but in the digital world there no longer is a need to guarantee them enough protection to offset production/distribution as well. There have been a lot of extensions/penalties added to copyright that protect the large distributors. Harsher penalties may prolong things, but ultimately that's not what this is about. The reality is that in the future, distribution of digital content is a lot less relevant than it used to be when products were physical. That means that the model that placed the majority of the profit in the distributors hands will change as well.
I think the original intent of copyright started to go wrong when it became more about protecting the large corporate middle men than it did about protecting the individual artists. It's the middle men that are being threatened by changes in how the business model will work.
The trick is figuring out a new model that will work. Creating the content still has value, but copying/distributing the content doesn't. That's where things get interesting. One method that some people are talking about is taking what used to be one of the highest parts of the price of an artistic work and turning it into either free or very low cost (valuable distribution has become trivial distribution in a digital environment). Then figuring out a way to make money for your labor in creating the original content elsewhere. Either as services (concerts) or additional offshoot products. The key for authors is to figure out something that works for them. Most of the ideas I've seen being thrown around in this area are more geared towards musicians than authors (probably because for most people that's where the focus is). Authors need to figure out what value they provide to consumers other than production/distribution of the book that will let them make a living from the labor of creating the book. That's the piece that's still missing, and finding the answer is not going to be easy.