[leebase]

Originally Posted by Leyor

You're attempting to rewrite history here. Besides that the source of the actual income is irrelevant, if we're defining who could actually live off writing, it's just plain factually inaccurate.

The patronage system for the arts is factually accurate. At least historically it wasn't easy to duplicate works. In the digital world something can be reproduced for "free" and instantly distributed to the whole world.

Originally Posted by Leyor

After the introduction of paper presses, which must be seen as the milestone for making books commercially available to the public. Many authors, publishers etc. made a good living for several hundreds of years.

Would love some sort of reference to this. A nice intro to the history of copyright can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law

It's kinda funny that the very debates we are having about copyright were the same as were argued back then.

Originally Posted by Leyor

It's actually an interesting fact that with the introduction of Copyright in the UK in 1710. The UK compared to Germany who did NOT introduce copyright for another 127 years, experienced an increase in price, a reduction of actual works being made, and a steep reduction of the actual works reaching the public.

Sources?

Originally Posted by Leyor

Germany with no copyright laws flourished however, outputting 10 times more original works pr. year. As for the individual authors earnings. Sigismund Hermbstädt, an unknown chemistry and pharmacy professor in Berlin, earned more royalties for his "Principles of Leather Tanning" published in 1806 than British author Mary Shelley did for her horror novel "Frankenstein," which is still famous today.

Just how would Herr Hermbstadt make "royalties" on his book today without copyright? Can he sell his work when someone else gives it away free on the internet? What would prevent a big college school text book corporation from making his book and selling them to universities without a penny given to the author?

Originally Posted by Leyor

Whats interesting is that they had to deal with MANY of the problems copyright defenders worry about today, like others copying their work and selling it for a profit. They had to find ways around this by actually developing smarter business models, creating fancy editions for their wealthy customers and mass produce cheap paperbacks for the common workers.

ANYBODY can make copies for free and distribute them instantly around the world in the digital age. And without copyright, anybody could make those coffee table versions without compensation to the author.

Originally Posted by Leyor

Here's an interesting article about the situation for those actually wanting to read more about it:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...710976,00.html

In closing I'd like to say that:

There's no virtue to high priced books
On the contrary, in a historical content, high priced book hurts everyone except the publishers. EVEN the authors.

Your article actually paints quite a different picture. There was rampant plagarization in Germany due to the lack of copyright. There was great profit in England after the enactment of copyright.

There were societal differences between England and Germany to go far more to understanding the results than copyright law. As far as that is concerned, the article supports what copyright supports believe.

Without copyright there is widespread plagiarism. If it was bad then, it is infinitely worse in the digital age.

That leaves us with the notion of "people will continue to produce works without any profit incentive". We've had historical evidence of the contrary. England in the 1700's is not a case for modern capitalism.

Lee