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Originally Posted by Andrew H.
Yeah, this is stupid. You can find all sorts of support for stupid arguments on the internet; that lends no credibility to the argument whatsoever. And no one - including Levine - can make any sort of reasonable argument about how artists would get paid if they didn't own their copyright. In fact, he basically admits this, but claims that ripping off the artists would be better for the public at large because - paraphrasing - the public wouldn't have to pay the artist.
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1. What makes you think there will be any total loss of creativity resulting from public at large not paying the author?
On Internet currently there are millions of so-called "digital sharecroppers" - people devoting their time, making it their hobby, to do something useful, without getting anything in return ( see for example
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/200...recropper.html for further information on that ). I don't believe creating should be done for money, as a source of income, rather that it should be done as a hobby. Current copyright laws are blocking the flows of memes through culture, and the only reason why the stifling of creativity they're causing isn't visible is because of civil disobedience, and fair use, which causes people to take creations of others anyway, and use it in their variations, fan-fics, other rehashing of cultural material showing up on various community sites. I believe that abandoning copyright would result in jump of creativity of fans, much bigger than slump in creativity of those who restrict the access to the memes they've put together and taken off the public playground through copyright.
Levine is making argument that there are tangible losses resuling from both patent law and copyright law, and there is no evidence that removing copyright would result in any loss. Personally, I can think about thousands of people, like patent clerks, and copyright-specializing lawyers who might switch to doing something useful if IP is abandoned.
2. What makes you think that when there's no IP, there's automatically no gain for the author? People aren't stupid; they know that author who doesn't gain from the work has no incentive to work more. Since the advent of Internet it became possible to donate money directly to author, not only proportionally to the price of dead-tree book, but however much you may want to donate to help the cause of author creating more books you want to read. In middle-ages, bards travelled between cities and people paid money to hear them sing, or in reward for the stories - those bards who weren't good changed the occupation, those who were got enough money, without any copyright, to keep singing. That's not the only way to reward - people can choose to buy the work of author through the channel through which author gets the most money to keep the incentive higher as well. Finally, if the author decides to stop creating works, without IP others can take their place, and who knows, they might make better job of it.
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Originally Posted by Andrew H.
Look at J.K. Rowlings: her first HP book had a print run of 5,000. After the books became popular, the publisher put out many more copies, she wrote sequels, there were movies, etc.
In the copyright free world, the publisher puts out 5,000 copies (netting her, maybe, $5-10,000). Because the book is popular, anyone can now reproduce it and sell it; the largest amount of money made from HP would likely be from the printer in china who prints out $1 million copies, sells them, and gives the author nothing. This would result in lower book prices, but it is "better" for consumers in the same way that confiscating and redistributing all income over $100,000 per year is "better" for the consumer.
The fact is that there is very little incentive for JKR to produce another HP book. And making a HP movie would be very risky because you could invest years and millions in making a movie, only to see someone else come out with another movie first. The result of this would not be more consumer choice in movies; the result would be no movies from books at all because of the uncertainty and risk.
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You don't see the opportunities that would stem from no IP though. Let's imagine that a month after Rowling's success 5 great works show up, all very similar to Rowling's, all featuring Harry Potter, each of them a bit different, each of them a bit better than the original. Fans divide among those works, the authors become famous, the best Potter writings win. It's the Potter story who becomes famous, not Rowling, not some anonymous million-dollar company in possession of copyright. The best performers of the story are chosen by the audience. Current situation restricts the list of authors who can write Potter stories to Rowling - how do you know she's not relatively lousy performer compared to who might have written the works with no IP?
Similarly, if we had 100 home-quality movies produced by fans, one of those gaining fans' critical acclaim and millions of followers, the big-money producers would have the incentive to pick and choose that one, remake it commercially, and put it into theathers, having much better chance of getting money by being faithful to its original tried-and-true scenario than paying the money up-front, and having some random director make something up. Here the creativity happens in thousands of households with amateur directors, scenario writers and actors, competing with each other, taking best pieces from each others' works, mixing and matching. This is how Homer songs were made in ancient Greece, by singers mixing and matching and "stealing" others' tricks, not by one person writing the whole thing. All this creativity is currently overshadowed by copyright, so many unknown creators not even thinking about making better versions of known stories out of fear that copyright lawyers will go after their asses, it makes me cry.
Even now, with e-books, we're getting to the point where:
1) thousands if not millions of authors produce their works, and put them up on sites like Smashwords, with no money up-front,
2) the best works bubble-up to the top, by words of mouth of millions of fans,
3) the publishers pick those cherries from the top, and release them as printed books, no longer having to rely on hunches of single editors, and on commercials and advertising to make the books known. The choosing is now performed by readers, and the books is already known by so many when the printing presses start.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
Not that there isn't room to improve IP law, but arguments for eliminating IP are economically illiterate and morally bankrupt.
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This is very untrue in my opinion, and seems to contradict the facts about the world as I have them. Perhaps you have any source/book/article where this point of view is explained and reasoned, so that I might read it and possibly get persuaded by it, or it this solely your personal belief?