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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.
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What are you talking about? The original statement was:
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No one was able to make a living as a writer until the copyright act was passed.
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Thats historically untrue, and I get offended by people attempting to rewrite history for the sake of making a strong selfserving statement. Many authors made a living, both under the patronage system and for hundreds of years without patronage. I enjoy discussing with you, but I insist on accuracy, even if the original statement wasn't yours, you chose to comment on it.
As for a source, I've provided one in my previous post aswell as below, which proves that Germany experienced an economic upturn as a result not having copyright, and that a big industry of many original authors and publishers profitted from this and. The industry profitted from it well enough that it was capable of producing 10 times the volumes of original works than Britain by comparison.
I also included an individual example between a completely unknown german author working without copyright, compared to one of the most well known british authors of that period, working within a copyright system.
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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.
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I'm amazed at how two people can read the same article and come to such drastically different conclusions. I somehow feel that you didn't really read it, since your conclusions are also widely different from those of the research conducted.
""For the period of the Enlightenment and bourgeois emancipation, we see deplorable progress in Great Britain," Höffner states".
DESPITE plagarization in Germany, the industry thrived. Producing a wealth of original works and providing ten times the amount of authors with a living than in Britian, not only that but the authors earned 2.5 to 5 times more in average pr. book than in Britain Creating a dynamic book industry. Let's get our definitions right, you're saying plagarization as a negative loaded word, probably because you have such a heavy investment in defending copyright. But plagarization in itself isn't bad, it's only bad if it has some negative consequences, which obviously isn't the case here.
The only ones who profitted in the UK was the publishers who rode gilt carriages. There was less authors making a living. There was less books available to the public. There was a regressive development in the industry.
Here's some additional material: Unfortunately due to Copyright issues, I can only provide you with a short presentaton rather than the actual report
http://www.cippm.org.uk/downloads/Sy...eng-10_min.pdf
I wonder if the reason why we're viewing the same article in such different lights, is because we have a substantially different perspective and motivation. From what I can infer from what you just wrote, the criterias that defines the success of copyright is:
1. That the publishers earn as much money as possible.
2. That books having a high price is a goal in itself.
It's always doing someone else a disservice to ascribe them views, but you did write that "There was great profit", and these were basically the benefit of Copyright in Britain, especially since the average author in Britain earned alot less than the average author in Germany (see page 25 of my new link). I personally am not a publisher, and for me the success criterias of a dynamic book industry is:
1. As high a volume as possible of original works.
2. That as many of these works as possible reach as many people as possible.
I am sorry if I come out confrontational, I respect that you argue your point of view well and respectfully.
But classifying success as publishers earning alot of money, and pricing books high as being something having an inherent value by itself, is something that is diametrally in opposition to the interests of all us regular people who either benefit from obtaining the books, or those who originally author them. It makes me wonder if some of us here suffer from a bit of Stockholm syndrome, being in a symbiotic relationship with this industry, since we're willing to support principles that are obvious contrary to our own self interest, and doesn't even benefit the content creators themselves.
I'd love to discuss how I disagree with you on how digital copies makes profiliation of works so easy that no author can make a living. Authors faced similar problems before and overcame them, there's so many ways to change ones business model to profit despite that. Can a digital copy make a beautiful leatherbound book? Author tours, props etc. Imagine a free business model, where the profiliation of an authors works decided their income from derivatives of their work. I'm not saying that it's a good idea. I am just saying that it's in our interest that the market adapts to our needs, or both the industry and us consumers will suffer from the struggle in between.
To finish off. History has proven that:
There's no virtue to high priced books.
Besides making publishers ride gilt carriages