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Originally Posted by taustin
Nearly all entertainment today is produced as a business, and the quality is much higher than it was when it was all done by amateurs.
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very debatable point, Taustin. The technical quality may be higher, but I doubt very much whether the cultural quality is anywhere near as high. Today we have, for example, very flashy TV shows, but for the most part they live well up - or down - to P T Barnum's rule. Here in Sweden we don't have the same number of channels one has in, say, the US, but it happens very often that I or my wife will scour the TV program and come to the conclusion that, one more time, the evening is a cultural desert. And before you say that entertainment is more than TV, remember that TV includes most other forms of entertainment - films, music shows, and its own contribution, and for many people living outside of large cities, is the only reasonable access to entertainment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by taustin
And writers do not work alone. Most writers can't write their way out of a wet paper bag without a decent editor. Hell, a lot of them can't spell or construct coherent sentences without help. That's why we have publishers.
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Writers do work alone. The writing part of their work must be one of the loneliest jobs on the planet. And whilst I accede that an editor may be useful, I take extreme exception to the statement that "most writers can't write their way out of a wet paper bag without a decent editor". I think it's time someone said on here that it's the writer who makes a story and not the editor. If it wasn't so, editors would do the writing. And the only f*ing book we'd have to read would be the Chicago Manual of Style.
Quote:
Originally Posted by taustin
And, for what it's worth, yammering like yours is why publishers keep getting away with ever longer copyright terms and stricters laws to enforce them. If arguments like your are the best the other side's got, then what's the issue? Clearly, there's no serious resistance to greater copyright protection. In other words, you're part of the problem. Grow up, get a job, and maybe $10 for a book won't be so onerous.
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I also think that this paragraph comes close to warranting a note to the moderators. The poster's presentation may sometimes be a little naive, but (s)he has some valid points which I and many others do not think are being answered by our elected representatives, who all seem to be on the payroll of various branches of the entertainment industry. There is something very sick about the fact that a medicine or some other manufactured product which gives productive value to many peoples' lives is protected for about 15 years depending on country, whereas something so ephemeral as a pop song which keeps them amused for three minutes is protected now for 90 years, or was it 70 that the EU recently agreed to.
I'm devoting some of my time now to writing, and I reckon that I can turn out a full-length novel in about a year. I'm not Shakespeare, so I'm not expecting people to read it in 400 years' time, I'm just a teller of tales. If I can keep on finding readers for four or five years, I'm happy. And in that time I can hopefully produce four or five more novels. And hopefully people, if they enjoy my tales, will come back for more and so it rolls on. I'd be satisfied with a royalty period of five years. Even the big publishers reckon on a life of at most five years for the average novel nowadays. Soon after that, it's likely to be out of print.
So start looking at what the OP is trying to say, and stop being rude.