Quote:
Originally Posted by Harmon
Well, here's a thought: maybe the problem is that copyright itself is beginning to fail. It could be that copyright is technologically unsustainable.
If this is true, perhaps we are falling back into the pre-copyright environment. But the rub is that the entry costs to the publishing business - the ones that used to exist, like buying a printing press & needing physical inventory & a sales force or distribtion network - have themselves been eliminated by technology. So maybe the pre-copyright environment itself has been destroyed by technology.
So whatever better model there might be could well be something that cuts loose entirely from the concept of copyright.
Not that I have such a model to propose. I do think that the model would involve branding. Another aspect of the model would be some kind of added value. The question is, whether any of that would show up on the hardware side, the software side, or the content side of the product.
It could be that the economic environment would grow different models if copyright were off the scene. Perhaps at this point, copyright is not only obsolete, but a barrier to a better system.
BTW, your description of the "region problem" struck me as exactly the problem faced by the pharmaceutical industry. And the parallel is the patent system.
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If I was to try and monetize my writing at this stage I can think of no better way than T-Shirts. If, in essence, the fictional product in zero's and ones becomes worthless, then why not shift pricing over to physical objects that still have worth?
Like my book? Buy a t-shirt, buy a mug, buy a pen with pithy phrase on the side. Everyone likes t-shirts, and sure you could copy them, but then it's painstaking and you can end up with varying results.
I think price-shifting might be the best idea. The customer ends up with two products, one in the digital one in the physical world, so it becomes a bargain. The added value is not just in the purchasing of an object, but in the supporting of something you like.
Anyway, that's my idea of how it might go
