Quote:
Originally Posted by carld
We're not talking about a market shift here, we're talking about market destruction. I've yet to see any practical example of how someone, a writer let's say, is going to make money writing when anything they produce is immediately available legally, and for free, to anyone who wants a copy. The same goes for movies and music. Why would I buy a movie theater ticket, or a music CD, or a DVD, when I can legally get it off the net for nothing?
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Movie theatre ticket: Performance experience--For those who want to watch it on a big screen, with a huge crowd. A lot of people don't want that; they would no longer have any reason to go to theatres. But if the theatres don't have to pay licensing fees, they could offer a much broader range of movies to those who do like theatre settings. Theatres, like stadiums, will do *fine* if we abolish copyright.
CD/DVD: Convenience--For those who want the special artwork that comes with it. Or those on vacation and want that particular mix, now, for the drive; they don't want to go back to the hotel and scrounge up all the songs and hope they're recorded at low compression & with the same sound levels. These won't sell nearly as well; album stores may pretty much vanish. Some enterprising people will probably manage to set up a service for custom album mixes made on the spot while you wait. Again, paying for convenience, and a bit of tech skills.
Selling written content options:
1) Patron, individual or group (private book club): Content is only released to the patron, for a fairly high price.
2) Pay first, read later: content is posted in chapters; payment level for next chapter must be reached before next chapter is posted. Possibly, chapters are only available for a few weeks unless you buy insider access. Yes, the book will be around on other sites, but you'll have to go find it--pay for the convenience of reading what you know is the correct version at the author's site.
3) Government sponsorship: authors & artists who show a certain level of skill/popularity are given a stipend. (Yes, this is subject to abuse in zillions of ways. However it is possible for many artists to make a living this way. And it's possibly no less fair than the traditional publishing route that turns away authors for not writing vampire romance novels.)
4) Buying the official version gets bonuses: access to the official publication site, forums with author participation, etc. Paying in advance gets access to the ARC, or author's notes. And so on.
None of those are perfect. None of those would allow the current huge author's market to continue. Some combination of those and methods I haven't thought of could eventually work--because we *want* new books, and we will figure out how to pay authors to make them.
I suspect that what we'd figure out is some law that works very similarly to copyright. It's got big problems, but the reason we haven't gotten rid of it is that nobody's come up with anything better. I'm not saying the options I came up with are better--just at least somewhat plausible. If copyright were abolished by UN fiat for the purpose of World Peace (because, I dunno, we need total free information exchange to eliminate the zombie hordes or something), we'd find some other system.