[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

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.

If it's not done for money, it won't be done.

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.

At the expense of the person who actually created the work, of course. And I don't really think that "fan fiction" adds very much to the culture, for that matter.

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.

Sure, there are expenses in maintaining copyright. There are expenses in enforcing all laws. That doesn't mean that the expenses are a bad idea, though.

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.

Cool. We can look forward to a copyright-free world in which authors are reduced to begging.

Bards made money from their *performance*. (Although they mostly made money from staying with wealthy patrons, not from the public at large).

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.

Yeah, anyone can make up any hypothetical situation to support their point. I can imagine a copyright-free world in which all authors starve to death. See, it's easy.

The fact is, it is completely *delusional* to somehow believe that there are five authors who would produce works better and more popular than HP if only they could copy HP. But since they can't copy HP, they are doomed to obscurity. HP isn't successful because it's HP. HP is successful because of the writer. If these imaginary other writers were able to produced something better than HP by copying HP, they would be able to produce something better (or as good, or nearly as good, or even half as good) by coming up with their own characters. It's not like the hundreds or thousands of Jane Austen derivatives are anything other than poorly written fan fiction or novelty vampire fiction that only sells because of the Jane Austen connection. I see no evidence in the real world that the inability to copy anything is harming creativity much.

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?

Because if they were such good authors, they would be able to write without copying HP.

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.

Why does this only work if you violate copyright? If there is all of this talent out there, it will be able to produce something good without copying someone else.

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.

It's only in your imagination that people can make better stories than existing novels by copying the novels, but are somehow unable to do so independently, without copying.

Yeah, Homer's great. But anyone, even today, can make a story based on historical events. Historical events aren't copyrighted. Anyone who thinks that they can write a better story about Caesar than McCollough is completely allowed to do so. They can even use most of the same characters, including Caesar, Mark Antony, Cleopatra, Crassus, etc.

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.

Yes, this sometimes happens. (Although all the indie authors put together make less money for the publisher/retailer than *one* successfuly traditionally published book, which sort of suggests that the editors do know what they are doing.) And I'm not sure how this relates to copyright; the indie authors also have copyrights, and if one indie comes up with a mystery series that, say, sells a couple of thousand copies, I don't see that it is good that all of the other indies should be able to hop on the bandwagon and *all* write sequels to that successful novel.

The fact is that 270,000 plus *titles* are published in the US *every year.* Almost that many are published in the UK. I see no evidence that copyright is interfering with the production of cultural goods; I have far more book choices than I did even 25 years ago.

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?

I'm not sure what this refers to specifically; maybe I've answered it above?