[djgreedo]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

No matter how you put it the idea that digital media has zero value can only lead to people wanting to pay zero for it. If people want to pay zero for it then subscriptions, grants or any other new/old idea on how to pay for future creative digital works means nothing because people will see it as having no value and therefore will not give any money for it.

Digital reproductions have no value. There is a difference. It costs nothing to copy an ebook 1 million times. This doesn't mean the original copy is valueless, but the value is intellectual rather than physical.

Subscriptions wouldn't mean nothing because you would presumably pay up front for content not yet created. If they payments stop, the content stops being made available.

In the brave new digital world where the prevailing mindset is "it's digital so it has no value and so it should be free", the vast majority who could create something of true worth will not because of the need to provide for themselves and their family. Further, the quantity and quality of art to choose from will substantially decrease.

People want to create art/content, and people want to consume it. A way will develop to accommodate this.

I doubt quantity will decrease, but quality probably will. Perhaps with so much amateur free content out there people will turn to paying for what they percieve must be better quality.

And all that isn't even considering how absolutely selfish and childish the idea that "I want it for free so the author should just give it to me for free" really is!

I'm not sure anyone is asking for content to be free or complaining about paying for ebooks.

Would people buy McDonald's burgers if we all had Star Trek food replicators that could instantly create any food we wanted (including McDonald's burgers) at negligible cost? I doubt it.

Regardless of the moral implications, it is impossible to prevent access to free digital content. DRM doesn't work. There is a huge shift in thinking for the upcoming generations. Digital copies are worthless if the original can be reproduced infinitely with no cost to anybody.

Our values are rooted in physical items having worth. Intellectual property is harder to regulate; add digital into the mix and it becomes essentially impossible to regulate.

So artists and publishers have few choices:
1) Try to transfer the physical supply/demand/control model to the digital age
2) Accept that there is no feasible way of continuing the old model and adapt to the market forces.

It may be disasterous for authors, but that is a moral objection, not a fact-based one. When every book/movie/TV show/ album is available at your fingertips at no percieved cost how do you make people pay? That question is for the artists and publishers to answer, and they'd better hurry up.