[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

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

This one's absolutely false. I myself spend considerable amount of time daily adding value to common Internet sties, and no one's paying me a cent for it.
Also, I believe both you and me create something valuable to other readers just by discussing this topic. Is anyone paying you money for this?

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

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.

I know quite a number of very good fanfics I'd put on par with the original work. I'm a bit afraid to recommned them though, if they get too well known, the author's lawyers might smeel enough money in it to sue.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

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.

It doesn't mean those laws are a good idea either.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

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).

I don't believe the world should keep being adjusted so authors can live entirely off their works. 1. If other work pays more, they're free to do it instead. 2. It still seems to me that we're losing more than we're gaining by letting some people get a lock on different stories.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

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.

Only my situation looks a whole lot more plausible to me

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

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.

Many people don't have a whole range of abilities Rowling needed to create HP. One person may be very bad with character descriptions, but write brilliant dialogue, another can't describe people, but can make places really come to life. Currently those people are forbidden from improving on single aspects of existing work, which they may have talent for, the creativity is instead restricted to having to create the whole thing. This is just an example of one of many restrictions.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

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.

This is the consequence of current laws. Improving on existing works is potentially dangerous because of the laws, so many good writers choose to learn exclusively on their own creations. There's also a psychological taboo added - many people are so cowed by existing viewpoint on copyright, they think anything written by another author is some kind of "property" of that author, and not a piece of shared, common culture, with rights to copying temporarily restricted by state-protected monopoly.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

I see no evidence in the real world that the inability to copy anything is harming creativity much.

I can see that; I'm not sure how to show it more clearly though

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

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

As I replied above, not everyone is good at everything - but collaboration, improvement of work done by many people, and existence of many slightly differing and competing versions of the same work would lead eventually to improvement of the work itself. An input of a single collaborator might be as small as one brilliantly written piece of dialogue, and yet the work would be improved by it.
Only, copyright law shuts down all those possibilities, in some cases makes people even unable to think of this mode of creation, chaining entire books to single persons.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

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.

And it does; new works get created. But I believe many more would get created, and many more people would dabble in creation if they could work on the current cultural basis made by the great ones, without worrying about potential lawsuits, and free to share their small modifications with everyone else.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

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.

It's only in yours that they can learn just as easy on their own, completely new creations, as they could by modifying existing works. Perhaps I see this in a bit different light, as being a computer programmer I see certain analogies between writing entirley new programs and modifying existing ones; the second activity gives one much more insight in the way they are written. Luckily for programmers, there's a big open source base of well-written code on can learn from; writers have not been so committed to sharing. Also, for good programmers, there's not such thing as "your code", there's only "code you've written".

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

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.

It doesn't matter that those were historical events. I aimed to show that other people took the work of hypothetical Homer, and when singing it, changed it slightly, improved it in their own eyes. And then, their pupils, learning the song from them, changed it even more. And there were different versions of Homer's epic works, it was sung differently in different places, evolved independently. Only when it was written, some 400 years after is was first known to exist, the first written version became canonical. Such evolution was largely impossible in the age of written word, and now, when Internet and people's sharing once again makes it possible, copyright makes it unthinkable. It's sad.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

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.

I tried to show that at least in ebook market the readers are starting to replace the people who accept the work for publishing, with millions more eyes to read and recommend to others, and pick what they like. This market is now evolving quickly, and in 5-10 years indie authors may well make comparable amounts of money to today's bestsellers, and tomorrow's bestsellers will be chosen from tomorrow's reader rankings, all books having print runs only after they gained fame as ebooks. (at least reading J.A.Konrath's blog makes me think that).

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

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.

Well, the book I mentioned a few posts above describes the evidence; I see no point in quoting lots of it here. One thing worth mentioning is that in the absence of copyright the discrepancy between best-selling authors and new ones is projected to be much smaller, ie. the best-sellers aren't selling as much and gaining as much money, but many more small authors gain enough money to be encouraged to create more. Now, I wonder if J.K.Rowling is still encouraged by monetary gains to write the next book, at the level at which she's now? It looks like she has enough money to specifically prohibit sale of ebooks of Harry Potter for what seems to be mostly luddite reasons. Is this good for the society as a whole? Is copyright working as intended in her case? I believe it would be more beneficial if large percent of this money ended up naturally, in absence of copyright, in pockets of 50 not-so-well-known authors instead.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

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

I'm not persuaded, so apparently that's not it. But I see our viewpoints are more worlds apart than I initially expected