Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
You mean to pay authors in terms of the reviews they have?
It is better because it is a system that can work in the long run. The current system will soon collapse.
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I don't know if "pay by reviews" would work (especially if that's online reviews... I would expect a surge in review-writing bot programs), but there are ways to measure popularity--TV manages to do *something* with Nielsen ratings.
I expect that, if we moved to (or added) "arts/progress tax + pay by popularity" for paying authors/ artists/ scientists/ programmers/ etc., we'd have some bumpy years of trying to figure out how to do that fairly, followed by a long run of, well, more-or-less effective payment methods. If that's how we decide to pay them, we'll sort out methods that encourage them to produce good works.
Some artists would absolutely thrive on that arrangement. Some would very likely fall apart under it--there might be great works that just aren't appreciated in the artist's lifetime, or artists who just can't get inspired if they don't have to compete with the sales of other works. But that's not much different from now--we're losing access to some great works due to obscurity, and others because the authors can't afford to spend the time finishing & releasing their works.
I don't think the current payment methods are bad, as much as not likely to effectively survive the next surge in computer/internet activity. And we do need to find something that works; books, unlike songs, can't be performed in person at concerts that make it okay to distribute free copies.
I don't know if popularity ratings are the way to go, or a gov't tax/subsidy. But I've no doubt that we'll find *something* that works. People have been producing creative works for money for several thousand years, in drastically different economic climates, with drastically different technology. Creativity isn't going to be stifled by widespread copying. Authors, as a group, aren't going to starve or vanish--although some specific authors may no longer be able to make a living. Authors who work *well* with the system we've had for the last 100 years or so may not be able to manage to switch to whatever new system we find, but books aren't going to stop being produced because of that.