[djgreedo]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Yes, that's exactly what it is. However, there is a good reason for that "artificial scarcity": It is the established method to compensate creators for their creations, and thereby encourage their creation.

Steve, you make a very good point. I would like to add that this 'established method to compensate creators' is not necessarily the only way to compensate creators, nor is it necessarily the best way. It's just what has worked for physical media in the last century or so.

Take away "artificial scarcity," and no one has to pay for anything beyond the very first copy; Creators do not get compensated; and most of them will stop creating, or create much, much less, because they live in a world where people have to work to earn a living.

I disagree with your conclusion here.

I think/hope that creators can find ways to generate income from their work that doesn't necessarily involve a direct payment for a digital copy. Many people already earn money indirectly from free content (podcasters, bloggers, musicians), and I'm sure creators will innovate in this area.

I think you may be right (sadly) about creators' incentives being reduced. With so much free content out there, creators can only compete by dropping prices to a point at which the gap between paid and free is not a big deal to most people. The money earned from -for example- advertising is not going to be as much as the money earned from a publishing deal and royalties (I'd like to be wrong here, but I doubt I am).

Quality of creative work may very well suffer, but that's for the market to decide (and that doesn't mean I like the fact the market will decide, but the buyer has the power in the end - even more so when free content -and 'free' as in pirate content- is so freely available).

Those who want creators to create, for zero payment, simply have to figure out a way those creators can make a living, without money, in a money-dominated 21st century world. (And if you do figure it out, be sure and tell someone!)

I think you are misinterpreting the general attitude of people - I don't want digital content to be free, but I think in the digital age, it needs to be for practical reasons - lack of scarcity and the abundance of free alternatives are the main reasons. The quality better be high if a publisher is charging $20 for a book about a topic for which 100 free books already exist.

As for making a living without money: not being paid directly for digital media is not the same as not being paid at all.

I don't have the answers, but as long as there is a product that people want there will be a way for the creatore to be paid to create it, whatever the form that payment takes.

I disagree on one point here: We should not consider an e-book the same as a printed book, any more than we should consider television the same as a campfire story. They may seem similar on the surface, but in fact are very different entities, both of which have very different rules. The sooner we deal with e-books' differences, instead of trying to fit round things into square holes, the sooner we can work out the methods we all need to adopt to sell and profit from e-books.

Perfectly put. I agree with this statement 100%.