[NatCh]

Originally Posted by bingle

Excellent! I ranted a bit myself, so I only expect the same in return. And of course, you always write well-thought-out comments that provoke thought - and you do it politely ;-)

I ... think that's one of the highest compliments I've ever received, bingle. Thank you.

Originally Posted by bingle

However, you do have to recognize the growing importance and presence of "amateur" creators - YouTube, the Open Source Movement, the Creative Commons, blog posts like this one (hey, I could get paid $0.005 a word for this stuff! ;-)). Obviously, only a small fraction of content is created this way, but it's growing. There are even full-length, fan-made movies these days. However, I don't think this sort of content will be the only type people want. We will certainly want professional, full-time content creators still working away.

That's a good point, bingle, but how much of that content would you consider paying for? Would the average person consider paying for? I know there's some worth it, but the vast majority, while interesting/entertaining, simply isn't of a grade that most folks would pay for. And that little bit that is, is kind of viewed as not worth paying for because it's all mixed in with the other. Ad revenue is about the only way to make an approach like that pay, and no one's developed an approach on that that works very well for books.

Originally Posted by bingle

You have in your mind a particular business model for writers getting paid - and it's one that's been in force for a while now.

I couldn't honestly say whether I do or not, but your point is very well taken regardless.

Originally Posted by bingle

But I think there are other ways of doing things.

Indubitably.

Originally Posted by bingle

I realized the other day that I get paid for creating copyrighted works - and I get a salary for doing so. Many people are in a similar situation. I see no royalties from my work, I've traded royalties for a steady paycheck. So that's one model, possibly - writers in cubicles, getting paid per annum rather than per librum ;-)

Trouble with that is that at some point revenue for the work still has to be collected, so that doesn't really change things much, just shifts it so that this notional "employer" would be more in control of the process, they'd still want their purchased rights to the content protected.

Originally Posted by bingle

Another is a transition back to the patronage model. Writers would be supported either by a single wealthy individual or corporation, or a group of fans, contributing money held in escrow. A few authors and musicians have tried something like this....

The first thing that comes to mind on this idea is that there's a reason that the patronage model passed out of common practice. Most likely a lack of patrons, at a guess. The multi-patronage model may work, but there are some serious challenges to overcome, and again, I think it just rearranges the paradigm, rather than shifting it -- instead of the readers paying royalties through the pubs, they're doing it directly, presumably things like copy-editing turn into a contract service that the authors use or don't as they choose.

Originally Posted by bingle

Another is the sort of multi-talented, hybrid model of writer like Cory Doctorow - he sells some books, but he gives his writing away for free and makes his living on a mishmash of speaker's fees, University posts, donations, advertising, and who knows what else.

Yes, well Mr. Doctorow is a very unusual animal, I should thing that very few individuals (out of many quite good writers) could make that approach work for them.

Originally Posted by bingle

Yet another is the National Endowment for the Arts model - grants given from the government (or private entities) to writers and artists to enable them to work for the benefit of society.

I'm afraid that both my first and most considered response to this is the sound made by sticking out one's tongue and blowing forcefully. That's kinda my reaction to most suggestions that the gubmint should solve things for us. I just don't see that there are too many things that are worth the bloat, waste and corruption that come from letting the gubmint "help" us. But that's another kettle of fish for another type of forum (the type I generally stay far away from, actually), so I'll leave it at that.

Originally Posted by bingle

Honestly, I don't know what the best way to promote authorship is. However, I don't think we get to pick (we being society). We can try different things, like the NEA, but eventually the market will sort the whole thing out.

I suppose that the market will likely sort it out, but I'd love to come up with the magic bullet that gets the process moving in a good direction without a huge amount of growing pains. That being said, I freely admit that I have no idea what that answer would be.

I fear I sound like I'm just trying to shoot down all your ideas, but what I'm really doing is coming to my own realization that whatever we end up with, if it's going to work it will have to be totally different from anything we're doing now and that we've ever done before.

Logically, all the past approaches were abandoned because they didn't work in some wise, and the current ones need to be left behind because they don't really work all that well either (though they do seem to work better than most of the previous approaches, whatever warts the have, and they do have them).

I wonder if the question will be definitively resolved in our lifetimes? If it ever will be resolved?


One thing I do believe is true, and it's been said around here by others: we, as a culture, and as a collection of cultures, need to change our way of thinking on the point of paying for stuff that can be easily copied. It's one thing to take things for free that are explicitly given away, it's another to take them when they're not. I think that's why we see less shareware than we used to (another tangent, that). You and I, and most of our fellow MobileReaders grok that point, but until the majority of the human race accepts and believes in its collective bones that intellectual property should be paid for just like anything else, we'll have copyright issues, and things like DRM plaguing us.