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Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
Sure, authors sold works before copyright. And when it became easy to duplicate and redistribute someone's work without their permission, thanks to the printing press and other technologies, copyright was devised to restore fairness to the system and make it worth a creator's time and effort to create.
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No, copyright was created to shift power from publishers to content creators. Before Copyright, an author would sell their work to publishers, who would retain a permanent monopoly over the work. Copyright (specifically the Statute of Anne) represented a shift in the social framework, from a system of privileges to a system of rights.
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Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
No, it hasn't completely deterred theft, and some are cheated out of their profits now (mostly by those who ignore copyright laws).
But all of these reasons are not sufficient to abolish copyright; they are good reasons to fix it and enforce it better.
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I don't find the arguments that piracy is hurting the entertainment industry convincing. For one thing, the entertainment industry generally has outperformed the rest of the economy. At the peak of the bubble the savings rate had fallen to zero, and considering that wealthy Americans did have savings, that means that the average American was spending more than 100% of his income. Eliminate piracy and you reduce consumption of media, but you will not likely increase revenues.
In the current economic malaise the savings rate has risen while wages have either declined or stagnated. Since most Americans are desiring to save more (despite falling wages) to pay down debt, their propensity to spend on luxuries, such as entertainment, is very low.
However, the amount spent on entertainment is a very small percentage of GDP (something like 1-2%), so even a small change in the spending habits of the population could have a significant impact on the entertainment industry. Suppose, for instance, that revenues for the entertainment industry are 1% (150 billion dollars) of GDP. If American's increased the amount of money they spent on entertainment by half a percent, that would increase revenues by 75 billion dollars, equaling a 50% increase for the entertainment industry.
Would that justify stricter enforcement of copyright (or an extension of it, which is more relevant to this thread)? First, I think your characterization of copying as theft is wrong; reproducing something is not the same as taking something. Even so, congress (and the government in general) must always act to balance competing interests. Even if you were to suppose that copyright infringement is theft, that does not necessarily follow that it must be enforced at all costs. You would not, for instance, try to prevent shoplifting by putting a police officer in every store. The costs of that enforcement would greatly exceed any benefits from it. I think Doctorow puts it well:
"why are we prepared to sacrifice free speech, free assembly, privacy, and human rights for an industry that outperforms the US economy overall, nets more foreign profits than the pharmaceutical industry or the food sector, and is enjoying year-on-year growth?"
As for your contention that copyright infringement hurts small-time artists--that is unlikely as well. I am not saying that no small-time artist has been hurt, but it is unlikely that in general small-time artists are hurt by infringement. The entertainment industry is notoriously top-heavy--much less than 1% of all creative work is commercially viable, and only a small percent of that is very profitable. It is that 1% of creative works that would mostly be affected by infringement, and even if in ideality there would be no copyright infringement even for the massively profitable works, that still doesn't mean that congress should act aggressively to ensure that Avatar has 1.7 billion dollars in revenues instead of 1.5 billion.
Additionally, the works of small-time or relatively obscure artists tend to have very high price elasticities; this means that even a very small change in price would dramatically decrease demand. Thus, it is very unlikely that many copyright infringers would purchase the works of obscure artists at the price they are willing to sell their works if you were to more strictly enforce copyright. I'm not trying to rationalize illegal downloading, I'm just pointing out that it is unlikely that obscure artists would be even marginally better off if copyright was more strictly enforced.
The entertainment industry has very large profit margins, about 23%. Increasing the profit margins for the entertainment industry will not benefit the overall economy. Considering that those profit margins represent rent, an extra billion dollars spent on the entertainment industry will not create nearly as many jobs as an extra billion dollars spent in the rest of the economy; when discussing the lost profits of the entertainment industry we never consider the interests of people who would have jobs but don't because of the inefficiencies caused by the massive amounts of rent-seeking due to copyright laws.
http://www.ey.com/US/en/Newsroom/New...-entertainment
Lobbyists in the entertainment industry often point out that infringement costs jobs. This is assuming that a dollar not spent on entertainment is a dollar stuffed in a mattress and not spent or invested. From societies perspective, all that matters is whether a dollar spent on entertainment creates more economic value than a dollar spent elsewhere, and in general, the answer is that it does not. Indeed, it is much worse, because increased profits for the entertainment enables them to spend more on lobbying and campaign donations, distorting the democratic process.
This goes back to the original copyright regimes, whether that is the Copyright Act of 1790 or the Statute of Anne in 1706 which the Copyright Act was modelled after;the purpose of the government protection and granted monopoly called copyright (enforced using societies resources) is to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts," or in the words of the Statute of Anne, "for the Encouragement of Learning." Somehow this has been morphed into a belief that copyright supersedes all other rights and must be enforced at all costs. The question that should concern congress is not how to best enforce copyright, but whether or not the copyright regime (or copyright in general) is the best way to "Promote the progress of Science and useful Arts."
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Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
Those other forms of media had methods of ensuring profit: Theatres still must be physically attended, and people can't just walk in off the street to see a show, so you have ticket sales for profit (and thanks to TV, commercials for those who watch at home); radio found profit in advertising to subsidize the broadcasts; VCR tapes sold pre-recorded media with more advertising subsidies, and blanks kicked back a few cents to the media industries at each sale.
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In none of these instances (except for movie theaters) was the method of monetization apparent. That had to be figured out after congress and the courts made sure that existing content industries didn't destroy the infant industries. The point is that with any technology, you can't know how it will evolve, so you don't want to mess with it too much.
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Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
If content like ebooks had a guaranteed source of profit, like ad subsidies, govt subsidies, or ways to keep freeloaders from accessing content without paying, copyright would quite possibly not be needed at all.
Since ebooks and other digital content don't have these things, we need copyright laws to provide them.
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Why should ebooks have a guaranteed source of profit?
I have read a few proposals for funding content producers without copyright. One is Artistic Freedom Vouchers, proposed by Dean Baker.
http://www.cepr.net/documents/public...ip_2003_11.pdf
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The AFV would allow each individual to contribute a refundable tax credit of
approximately $100 to a creative worker of their choice, or to an intermediary who passes funds along to creative workers. Recipients of the AFV (creative workers and intermediaries) would be required to register with the government in the same way that religious or charitable organizations must now register for tax-exempt status.
This registration is only for the purpose of preventing fraud – it does not involve any evaluation of the quality of the work being produced.
In exchange for receiving AFV support, creative workers would be ineligible for copyright protection for a significant period of time (e.g. five years). Copyrights and the AFV are alternative ways in which the government supports creative workers. Creative workers are entitled to be compensated once for their work, not twice. The
AFV would not affect a creative workers ability to receive money for concerts or other live performances.
The AFV would create a vast amount of uncopyrighted material. A $100 per adult voucher would be sufficient to pay 500,000 writers, musicians, singers, actors, or other creative workers $40,000 a year. All of the material produced by these workers would be placed in the public domain where it could be freely reproduced.
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I am not against copyright, but I don't see any imperative for congress to more strictly enforce current laws.