There is no copyright

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by taosaur

I'm only advocating the abolition of dour, unimaginative prognostication.

Nice way of sidestepping the question.

I've seen all the fantastical and imaginative prognostication going about and it all entails artists in some way putting in extra effort, time, work or value to convince people to pay for their creative efforts. Have a chat room with special access to the author, have handwritten autographs, have some special leather bound edition, sell off characters name and personalities etc etc etc. Why should an artist be required to do any of that if someone wants to read their book?

How many people here advocating such and who trade x hours for x dollars each day to earn a living, would be happy if their boss asked them to put in extra effort, time, work or add some extra value before they were willing to pay them for their regular work efforts? Maybe your employer wants you to run a customer service chat room for them in your spare time before you get your pay each week for doing your regular hours. Sound like a good plan? Yeah, didn't think so.

Cheers,
PKFFW

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by tompe

What is the point here?

The point is it seems the only ones advocating the abolition of copyright do not earn their living from producing creative works. I wonder if their ideology would be different if they did earn any substantial part of their income from artistic endeavours.

Originally Posted by tompe

Do you mean that you are not allowed to make money on something you think is a bad idea?

Not at all and I don't see how you could even come to that conclusion from what I wrote. I didn't even imply, much less actually write, anything at all about making money from bad ideas or not.

Originally Posted by tompe

It seems a bit bad to not work for removing something bad just because you make money on it. So I do not see what your point is.

It is very easy to define something as "bad" when one does not rely upon said thing to earn ones living and when said thing means one should fork out ones hard earned cash in order to partake of the creative efforts of others.

By all means, work to remove whatever one thinks is "bad". Just be honest in ones reasons for defining said thing as "bad" in the first place.

Cheers,
PKFFW

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

It is very easy to define something as "bad" when one does not rely upon said thing to earn ones living and when said thing means one should fork out ones hard earned cash in order to partake of the creative efforts of others.

By all means, work to remove whatever one thinks is "bad". Just be honest in ones reasons for defining said thing as "bad" in the first place.

Copyright is bad mmkay.

Copyright has always been considered a temporary solution, now that publishers can create infinite equal copies they should be able to compete on more equal levels.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

Why should an artist be required to do any of that if someone wants to read their book?

Why should they have to learn IP law, learn document formatting, understand complex contracts, analyze royalty statements, go to book signings, and be active on Twitter and Facebook in order to market their book?

There is no job that doesn't come with "but I just want to do the parts I like, that I'm good at, and hand the rest over to someone else."

How many people here advocating such and who trade x hours for x dollars each day to earn a living, would be happy if their boss asked them to put in extra effort, time, work or add some extra value before they were willing to pay them for their regular work efforts?

Like, "wear a suit" and "go to the company picnic?" Neither of those affects how well one answers phones, files papers, manages accounting software, writes code, or does desktop publishing.

The vast majority of all business work can be done perfectly well in t-shirts and sweatpants, and yet most offices require employees to buy much more expensive clothes for work. Refusal to participate in office social gatherings can get a person passed over for promotion or sometimes fired.

Maybe your employer wants you to run a customer service chat room for them in your spare time before you get your pay each week for doing your regular hours. Sound like a good plan? Yeah, didn't think so.

I'm not saying the extra social-work or "bonus content" for authorized-source purchases are a good-and-reasonable substitute for copyright law; I'm saying they're possible.

When radio got popular, formerly-successful singers who had great stage presence but limited vocal talent lost their edge; performers with voices like angels but who looked like sticks holding a microphone could be successful. Remove copyright, and authors who are comfortable & skilled at interacting with their audience will have an edge over better writers who are more solitary. (It's possible that solitary writers could get someone to be their public face--a best friend or spouse could just as easily be the active presence to drive sales.)

It would push authors into being "performers" rather than "builders" who can easily keep selling what they've made; while I don't like that, I can accept that we could find a way to encourage them to keep making things. (Probably either by re-instituting something like copyright law, or coming up with a complex set of contracts about sales rights.)

Also not saying the transition would be smooth & simple; it'd probably be hell for about a decade while the current publishing & entertainment industries collapsed, with little pocket fragments surviving by latching onto some method of income that works without the support of copyright.

[djgreedo]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

It would push authors into being "performers" rather than "builders" who can easily keep selling what they've made; while I don't like that, I can accept that we could find a way to encourage them to keep making things. (Probably either by re-instituting something like copyright law, or coming up with a complex set of contracts about sales rights.)

I agree with this. Copyright is not a good or a bad thing, but it's not a workable solution in the digital age. I really don't think artists will be able to earn their living from charging for copies of their work in the way they do today. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but I believe it's inevitable.

Other ways of earning a living from intellectual property will be tried and tested until a balance is found that enables consumers and artists to get what they need and want.

The benefit will mostly go to the consumer - no DRM, freedom to copy, and cheap (if not free) content of all kinds (though most content will be produced at lower cost, so maybe no more blockbuster movies).

The artists will be forced to earn their living from secondary sources - advertising, live performances, book signings, etc.

When most people discuss this they get stuck on one side of the debate: either all IP should be free or the creators should be able to keep using an outdated business model. Both sides ignore the fact that supply and demand are symbiotic in nature.

[carld]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Copyright is bad mmkay.

Copyright has always been considered a temporary solution, now that publishers can create infinite equal copies they should be able to compete on more equal levels.

How are artists going to continue making money from their art once we eliminate copyright?

[elcreative]

The benefit will both go for and against the consumer... existing works will become more readily available and cheaper if not free but future works will be greatly diminished as authors will no longer be able to support themselves by writing...

I do enjoy meeting, talking to and seeing authors but this is a very minor peripheral thing... what I want is books from authors, they are not performing seals. As for your suggestions, I guess nice ideas but... advertising - who pays for effective ads or do all authors pray for viral (which is totally unpredictable and equally very rare in any endeavour); live performances - how many authors have you actually seen reading in public, being able to write has nothing to do with public performances and few make the grade; book signings - as we're predominantly if not totally going to be reading eBooks, they're a bit difficult to sign so now we're talking about producing a paper version for signing... a few cases maybe but most will be no... who's going to do the special job of print production as it has now been made a specialist niche operation...

Supply and demand maybe symbiotic in nature but there is also an element of parasitism as well... you may think the author as performer is great, me, I'd rather have more books to read from an author who can actually devote time to writing. Using the term artist I feel is a little ingenuous... not that authors aren't artists in the general sense but all artists aren't created equal from a public performance point of view... an author is not a musician is not a sculptor is not a painter etc. Each has particular strengths in what they do but why expect the author as dancing bear when the painter/sculptor etc is allowed to sell a physical expression of their work (and not just the original) and the musician's work is essentially about performing (as well as composition/writing)...

Originally Posted by djgreedo

The benefit will mostly go to the consumer - no DRM, freedom to copy, and cheap (if not free) content of all kinds (though most content will be produced at lower cost, so maybe no more blockbuster movies).

The artists will be forced to earn their living from secondary sources - advertising, live performances, book signings, etc.

When most people discuss this they get stuck on one side of the debate: either all IP should be free or the creators should be able to keep using an outdated business model. Both sides ignore the fact that supply and demand are symbiotic in nature.

[Leyor]

How are artists going to continue making money from their art once we eliminate copyright?

I already told you! But seriously:

1. It's not a nescessity to make money for people to write good books. Alot of things beyond money motivates people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

2. I actually think writers SHOULD be compensated financially! I think where we're in disagreement is that I think the current system benefits publishers more than authors, and keeps us tied to a restrictive market model.

3. We need the industry to add value to their product, rather than detract from it. Other industries are already looking into how they can add enough value to their product so people won't want to copy it. I just bought a collectors edition The Witcher 2 today, even though it can be copied for free from torrent sites. Baen removed drm and offered some of their works for free.

Here's the central premise: A broad fan base that didnt pay for the original product, is still capable of generating revenue and might be more capable than a narrow fanbase that paid for the original product. We've seeing it right now with a product that's given for free, and which physical representation is attractive to that base. Despite the fact that people copy picture books and cartoons and obtain them for free.

Why? History has shown us that people are willing to do it for physical products. Companies are currently generating revenue from digital products, people can obtain for free. Q.E.D.

[spellbanisher]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

The day copyright is abandoned is the day we are presented with art that is truly created for artistic purposes.

More intellectual laziness, as to be expected. You are blatantly contradicting what you have written in other threads, where you have stated that the intent of the artistic creation is irrelevant. When people have said before that copyrighted works are created with commercial purposes, you have said that they should still be "free" because the purpose of the creation does not matter, only what the user gets out of it. Now suddenly you want art that is created because of artistic purpose? There is nothing stopping people from creating things for artistic purposes. You say copyright abolition would change behavior, but if people really thought that free works was a better way they would do it, and copyright would simply become a useless relic of the legal system. You do not abolish the system and then come up with an alternative. You prove better alternatives, and eventually those alternatives simply displace the system.

[elcreative]

Slight misunderstanding of intent... I am not just interested in "one hit wonders" for authors... there will always be people who write in their spare time and do it for love of the act of writing, this is great but I also want authors with a large body of work which couldn't be produced as a part-time endeavour.

To be a full time writer doesn't mean that you are a degenerate money grubber but you seem to be getting stuck at that point... being full time as a writer means that you can put more work in to your creative productions but it also means that MONEY is necessary to live on in a reasonable fashion... damp, unheated garrets may sound unspeakably romantic as a work place but get old pretty quickly and as for stale bread...

Originally Posted by Leyor

I already told you! But seriously:

1. It's not a nescessity to make money for people to write good books. Alot of things beyond money motivates people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

[carld]

Originally Posted by Leyor

I already told you! But seriously:

I didn't find any of your answers serious or realistic.

Originally Posted by Leyor

1. It's not a nescessity to make money for people to write good books. Alot of things beyond money motivates people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

That just avoids the question.

Originally Posted by Leyor

Here's the central premise: A broad fan base that didnt pay for the original product, is still capable of generating revenue and might be more capable than a narrow fanbase that paid for the original product. We've seeing it right now with a product that's given for free, and which physical representation is attractive to that base. Despite the fact that people copy picture books and cartoons and obtain them for free.

Why? History has shown us that people are willing to do it for physical products. Companies are currently generating revenue from digital products, people can obtain for free. Q.E.D.

So it comes back to premium editions, and add ons. No, sorry, that's not an answer.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by carld

I didn't find any of your answers serious or realistic.

There's a difference between "you haven't answered this" and "I don't agree with your answers." Fine, you don't think those answers work. And the Agency 6 doesn't think Baen's methods will work for them. Shrug.

So it comes back to premium editions, and add ons. No, sorry, that's not an answer.

Maybe there'd be a right-of-sales law, that doesn't have anything to do with "copies," but only the creator & authorized agents were allowed to sell an item. Free copies would be available but other people couldn't sell--and as the torrents have shown, free copies are often going to be lower-quality.

If you can't make money selling the unauthorized version, why spend the extra time & effort making it as good? Free scanned PDFs; authorized well-formatted epubs. Unauthorized epubs--are they auto-OCR'd from the scans, or copies of the authorized versions? No way to tell. If you want to be sure, you buy the authorized one.

Removal of right-to-sale would kill the vast majority of an unauthorized paper book and theatre-movie market; those take real resources. You could make unauthorized PODs, but there'd be so many versions vying for people's attention that discerning readers would pay for the official version--if it didn't cost too much.

Free digital copies would be common, but so would low-quality ones; free paper/disk/film copies (of anything) would be much more limited. And authors and artists could release low-quality free digital versions to cover the market desire for *something*, with the high-quality version available for sale.

Low-quality art is low-res, suitable for the web but not printing. Low-quality books are harder to make--perhaps lots of "first five chapters" released free, perhaps a text-only version with asterisks & underlines instead of bold & italics, and no page breaks for chapters--palmdoc .pdb limitations, .txt limitations--so if you want the nicely-formatted version, you either make it yourself or just buy the official version. Perhaps the author releases a scanned-and-OCR'd version early so it spreads fast. A good conversion would also become available, but people would have to find it; it might be easier to just buy the official version. Or the free release is basic; the official has author's notes and prologue and a linked TOC, which could be sent around free but, again, people would have to know where to look. Or maybe they just release the full version and count on free digital versions to boost physical sales.

Maybe trademark law would remain: you still couldn't grab someone's logo and use it to imply you've got the official version. Legislators could clarify the law enough to make it obvious whether you're getting access to an authorized version or not, and with no money wasted chasing copyrights, companies could go after trademark infringements even on a small scale.

I TRUST HUMAN GREED. Both that of artists, and that of the public who are hungry for more art. Artists are not, as a category, going to starve, even if some forms of art become less financially viable. We are not, as a species, going to remove the ability of artists to make a living as artists; we like art, we want more of it, and we will FIND a way to pay them for it.

Maybe rogue hackers will infest the web with ebook-destroying viruses that seek out all unauthorized versions and destroy them, in order to drive sales to the authors' sites.

If copyright law were abolished, we'd have a massive upheaval in the creative & entertainment industries, because a lot of their protocols count on the support of copyright--but we'd *quickly* start finding other ways to pay artists. No, I can't list which ones would be long-term effective; I, like everyone else here, am hampered by a lifetime of casually expecting copyright to encourage some business formats and discourage others.

Fifty years ago, nobody could've accurately predicted what business models would work, if we got rid of the cost of phone calls & letters for communication. If we allowed instant global communication. If someone had asked, "what if you could instantly teleport your letter to someone else's desk, without a stamp or the post office, how would that change things? How could we still get packages delivered other than paying a single courier to carry them, when letters don't need to be delivered anymore?" -- Of course, that's not quite how it broke down. But fifty years ago, nobody would've been able to predict what parts of business would, and would not, be changed by email, by the removal of a former impenetrable barrier to communications.

Copyright is a barrier to communication and creativity. It's also a method of encouraging creativity and publication. If it were removed, we'd find other ways; we can suggest possibilities, but we can't know which of them would work best.

[crich70]

I haven't read every post but I have to wonder. If copyright was abolished and every creative work was free how would the artists manage to survive long enough to create their works? Would the state provide them with free housing, food, clothes, etc. because I think that's the only way it could really be done. It would be a world with similarities to Plato's Republic in some ways. If creative people were to be expected to give their works away that is. You can't have one without the other.

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Why should they have to learn IP law, learn document formatting, understand complex contracts, analyze royalty statements, go to book signings, and be active on Twitter and Facebook in order to market their book?

There is no job that doesn't come with "but I just want to do the parts I like, that I'm good at, and hand the rest over to someone else."

Because that is all part of their business.

What I'm getting at is why should they have to give you something extra to try to make you pay if you want to read their book? That's what it comes down to.

Yes there are other parts to being an author besides writing the book. However, all these value add ons, extra little do ditties and what not that are put forward as ideas of how to make money from writing in this brave new world all basically work on the premise that one wants to read the book but doesn't want to pay for it directly so they are suggesting that in order to convince them to pay, the author should have to give them something more.

Why not just pay for the damn book if you want to read the book?

(All "You"'s and other pro-nouns in the above statements are generic not personal.)

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Like, "wear a suit" and "go to the company picnic?" Neither of those affects how well one answers phones, files papers, manages accounting software, writes code, or does desktop publishing.

The vast majority of all business work can be done perfectly well in t-shirts and sweatpants, and yet most offices require employees to buy much more expensive clothes for work. Refusal to participate in office social gatherings can get a person passed over for promotion or sometimes fired.

Maybe I live in a different business world but I've never had a job where one was required to attend social functions. I don't know of anyone who has either. I'll take your word for it that one can be fired for not attending though in this day and age of unfair dismissal laws in most countries I find it difficult to believe. As for being passed over for promotion, that is different to withholding payment for work done unless the person value adds in some way.

As for being required to wear a suit, I personally see a difference between a boss asking you to dress in a manner suited to their business and one who says they will not pay you unless you give them more time, effort or something of value above and beyond your actual work.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I'm not saying the extra social-work or "bonus content" for authorized-source purchases are a good-and-reasonable substitute for copyright law; I'm saying they're possible.

Yes, just like it is possible people who want to read a book for free will actually pay for it. In the majority of cases those that don't want to pay simply wont. Just like with all these value add ons put forward. In the vast majority of cases people just want to read the book so will not be bothered to pay for all this extra stuff.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

When radio got popular, formerly-successful singers who had great stage presence but limited vocal talent lost their edge; performers with voices like angels but who looked like sticks holding a microphone could be successful. Remove copyright, and authors who are comfortable & skilled at interacting with their audience will have an edge over better writers who are more solitary. (It's possible that solitary writers could get someone to be their public face--a best friend or spouse could just as easily be the active presence to drive sales.)

Yes, times change, circumstances change and artists must change with them. I get that.

The difference here is that no one was saying to those talentless vocal performers that they would happily pay for their album so long as they agreed to come along and play at their house party for free. If people still wanted to listen to their music they went and paid for the music they didn't withhold payment until the singer "value added" enough to convince them to pay.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

It would push authors into being "performers" rather than "builders" who can easily keep selling what they've made; while I don't like that, I can accept that we could find a way to encourage them to keep making things. (Probably either by re-instituting something like copyright law, or coming up with a complex set of contracts about sales rights.)

Writing isn't like singing or acting or pretty much any other artistic endeavour. I really don't think too many people are interested in watching the author write the book. They probably wont sell out Madison Square Garden on their world tour of book writing.(yes I am being tongue in cheek there!)

Seriously though, the market for authors as performers is extremely limited now and I don't see it suddenly becoming huge with lots of people willing to pay to get to talk to the author if we suddenly did away with copyright.

As for finding a way to encourage them to keep making things...........no other way besides payment has been found yet so again I ask why it is people seem so confident some way will magically come up if only we did away with copyright?(and I'm not talking about people writing for the joy of writing, of course people will still do that. I'm talking about getting your favourite author to write another book when he has bills to pay and food to put on the table and doesn't have time to write it because no one wants to pay for it unless he gives them something extra on top of writing it)

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Also not saying the transition would be smooth & simple; it'd probably be hell for about a decade while the current publishing & entertainment industries collapsed, with little pocket fragments surviving by latching onto some method of income that works without the support of copyright.

I agree with the not being simple and smooth bit.

I'm yet to be convinced that any "method of income that works without the support of copyright" will magically appear.

Cheers,
PKFFW

[carld]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

There's a difference between "you haven't answered this" and "I don't agree with your answers." Fine, you don't think those answers work. And the Agency 6 doesn't think Baen's methods will work for them. Shrug.

You and Leyor are mixing things together. When I said "you haven't answered" I was speaking specifically to Giggleton and no one else. I could have gone through each one of the options Leyor proposed and explained why I think they wouldn't work, but honestly I was tired and I'm starting to get bored and annoyed with this conversation.

I don't have time or inclination to rebut all your many points, but most of this back and forth seems to boil down to these statements

1. Let's end copyright.
2. But how will artists continue to get paid?
3. We'll figure out something.

That's just not good enough.