A Modest Proposal - Eternal Copyright

[speakingtohe]

Whether right or wrong, money is a form of recognition and validation of self worth in many societies as well as a means of making a living.

Not paying the author/creator is denying them a social pride in their work.

Granted some don't deserve to be paid and a fortunate few are paid more than they deserve, but life is not always fair.

An author/artist won't create after death, but many continue creating pretty well up to the moment of death.

The desire (instinct?) to leave behind a legacy/inheritance is a strong motivating factor for much of humanity. Take that away and it would be a much different world. No pensions/insurance policies/inheritance/workers compensation etc. The breadwinner dies and you are out on the street.

The world in western society does not work that way. Your spouse and dependants can collect your pensions in most cases after you die. Not for 50-75 years but still they can collect. They get to keep your assets(after taxes) forever if they do not dispose of them or die themselves.

Perhaps inheritance is wrong in general, but how should the deceased persons assets be disposed of. Taxes, lottery, squatters rights? Only the truly poor are free of these concerns as they do not stand to inherit anything or bequeath anything.

Bottom line IMO is that those of us who can afford internet access, technological equipment to use it , can either choose to pay for the work/creation or wait for a librarycopy. Sure you want to save those dollars to dine out or drink coffee, but why not make it equal and steal at least half of your food and coffee.

Oops forgot about the police and sirens.

Helen

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

And folks who work in jobs that stop paying the moment they stop working don't?

Generally speaking those who work in jobs that stop paying when they stop working do in fact get paid for their time though. Many, if not most, authors do not get paid anything at all unless their book sells a bunch. They are not swapping one hours time for one hours pay like the wage earner. This is why the analogies comparing authors to the average wage earner fail.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

Generally speaking those who work in jobs that stop paying when they stop working do in fact get paid for their time though. Many, if not most, authors do not get paid anything at all unless their book sells a bunch. They are not swapping one hours time for one hours pay like the wage earner. This is why the analogies comparing authors to the average wage earner fail.

Nor do the millions of self employed.

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by wodin

Nor do the millions of self employed.

That is still not analogous to selling books.

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by wodin

Nor do the millions of self employed.

Very true.

However, if successful, they build a business that keeps producing money after they die which they can bequeath to their heirs if that is their desire. On the other hand, if they could not bequeath said business to their heirs there would be very little incentive for anyone to bother building a business when the odds favour them dying before they could reap much benefit from it.(ie: if they are old or infirm etc)

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

Would anyone have bothered to publish them if there was no way to make money off of them?

--
Bill

Yes.

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

The desire (instinct?) to leave behind a legacy/inheritance is a strong motivating factor for much of humanity. Take that away and it would be a much different world.

Perhaps inheritance is wrong in general, but how should the deceased persons assets be disposed of. Taxes, lottery, squatters rights? Only the truly poor are free of these concerns as they do not stand to inherit anything or bequeath anything.

Bottom line IMO is that those of us who can afford internet access, technological equipment to use it , can either choose to pay for the work/creation or wait for a librarycopy. Sure you want to save those dollars to dine out or drink coffee, but why not make it equal and steal at least half of your food and coffee.

Oops forgot about the police and sirens.

Helen

Money is a bit strange, what if when someone dies all their money is just erased from the system? Just an idea, it probably needs some work.

You are definitely right about food, why is the most nutritious food also the most expensive?? (at least in the supermarket).

What if I told you that I had a time machine that is magically set to take me to the exact moment when my librarycopy that I have placed on hold is ready to be sent to my ereader? You might be asking why would I have to use a timemachine to get ebooks, its crazy I know, but I think you understand what I mean.

Is the purpose of a library hold to increase publisher profits??

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Yes.



Money is a bit strange, what if when someone dies all their money is just erased from the system? Just an idea, it probably needs some work.

You are definitely right about food, why is the most nutritious food also the most expensive?? (at least in the supermarket).

What if I told you that I had a time machine that is magically set to take me to the exact moment when my librarycopy that I have placed on hold is ready to be sent to my ereader? You might be asking why would I have to use a timemachine to get ebooks, its crazy I know, but I think you understand what I mean.

Is the purpose of a library hold to increase publisher profits??

To start again at the end: The purpose of the library hold has nothing to do with profits. It is an effort to be fair to all. It is like waiting in a line for a bus. The first person in line gets the book first. If only it worked that way on the buses The libray buys the book and gives everyone a chance to read it. Some have to wait, but in a fair way. No one can take their place in the line by force or theft.

If you had the time machine that could only do that which you describe, I would trade it in for a few magic beans. Reminds me of a story I read in which a time machine inventor invented a time machine that went back 100 years to the same place. He figured it was a failure while his wife used it daily to go back in time and buy groceries at a much cheaper price. If instant library holds is the best use you can find for a time machine then you are either unhealthily obsessed with ebook reading or have a very limited imagination. Time to get a life IMO.

And why erase the money from the system? Can you erase the property they own from the system, Will it just dissapear from reality? Will the house that they own be split into chunks and be distributed equally to the rest of the world and a great gaping hole replace it?

You can't just arbitrarily erase random amounts of money and expect society to function. So guy A dies and owes a kazillion bucks. Guy B dies and is owed a kazillion bucks. The guys who owe guy B are happy and the guys who are owed by guy A are starving. Simplistic I know, but why have money if you can erase it. Oh well I am sure you know what I mean.


Helen

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Yes.

No. If the author cannot write them, the books will not be written. If the author has to squeeze writing around their day job, a whole lot less works will be written. Dickens was able to write because he could make a living by writing. You would silence the voice of people who had to make a living. What you would be left with would be those who had inherited wealth and were able to write as a full time hobby. There's nothing wrong with such books, but they shouldn't be the only books.

Money is a bit strange, what if when someone dies all their money is just erased from the system? Just an idea, it probably needs some work.

People then would have no reason to trust that their money would have any value, and the economy would quickly collapse. The instant people got some money, they would exchange it for something else: precious metals, jewels or anything that retains value. That is assuming that anyone would take this worthless money in the first place. It's an idea that needs scrapping.

You are definitely right about food, why is the most nutritious food also the most expensive?? (at least in the supermarket).

It's simply not true. Processed foods can be very expensive. A box of macaroni and cheese is just a couple cents worth of macaroni and some cheap "cheese" powder. A package of beans and rice has a few cents worth of rice and beans and a few spices. I could make that myself for cheaper. If you buy that macaroni yourself, it's much cheaper. You can put together a very nutritious meal quite cheaply. Processed foods save time rather than money and require no knowledge or skill to prepare.

What if I told you that I had a time machine that is magically set to take me to the exact moment when my librarycopy that I have placed on hold is ready to be sent to my ereader? You might be asking why would I have to use a timemachine to get ebooks, its crazy I know, but I think you understand what I mean.

And even if you had a time machine... so what?

Is the purpose of a library hold to increase publisher profits??

The purpose of the library is to provide books to people in order to have a more educated populace. The means by which they do this is buy BUYING books.

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Yes.

And you are sure of this because?

Lets keep in mind that we are talking about publishing in the era before computers. Publishing books in the 19th century was not nearly as easy as uploading a file to a POD printer.

If printers weren't sure they could make money, it would have been questionable whether they would have taken the chance.

--
Bill

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

The libray buys the book and gives everyone a chance to read it. Some have to wait, but in a fair way. No one can take their place in the line by force or theft.

Why have money if you can erase it.?

Helen

So you imagine that the library is not actually purchasing a copy of the ebook but rather a license (for an individual viewer at an individual time?) The reason I get so upset about library holds is that there is no need for them when we are dealing with ebooks. The founding fathers would be outraged if they had to wait for an ebook IMO.

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

And you are sure of this because?

Lets keep in mind that we are talking about publishing in the era before computers. Publishing books in the 19th century was not nearly as easy as uploading a file to a POD printer.

If printers weren't sure they could make money, it would have been questionable whether they would have taken the chance.

--
Bill

I doubt they were ever sure they were going to make money on a book, but I agree that the costs for printing were very high back then. Anyway, today printing/uploading is easy once you pay for the tech to do so and making copies is simple.

A million monkeys uploading to a million different sites will eventually upload the works of Shakespeare or something.

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

So you imagine that the library is not actually purchasing a copy of the ebook but rather a license (for an individual viewer at an individual time?) The reason I get so upset about library holds is that there is no need for them when we are dealing with ebooks. The founding fathers would be outraged if they had to wait for an ebook IMO.

I can say with certainty that they would not be upset by this at all by libraries only being able to loan out one copy of a book at a time. They are the ones who put copyright into the Constitution. Copyright came about in the first place because of how much easier it had become to copy books with the printing press. There is no way that they would be persuaded that making books even easier to copy would mean they would be OK with copying them as much as you wanted.

A library handing out as many copies at a time as they wished is no different than printing up as many copies as you wish on a printing press. The Founding Fathers are on record as being opposed to people being able to make copies without paying the author - during the period of copyright, of course.

What's next? George Washington opposing false teeth? Sam Adams opposing beer? Ben Franklin opposing kites?

I doubt they were ever sure they were going to make money on a book, but I agree that the costs for printing were very high back then. Anyway, today printing/uploading is easy once you pay for the tech to do so and making copies is simple.

They couldn't be sure they were going to make money on a book, but if you had your way, they could be sure they would NOT make any money on a book. The cost of printing doesn't have anything to do with authors being paid. It doesn't make any sense to say "The costs of printing are now eliminated, therefore authors shouldn't be paid."

A million monkeys uploading to a million different sites will eventually upload the works of Shakespeare or something.

Not unless they already had it to upload.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

I can say with certainty that they would not be upset by this at all by libraries only being able to loan out one copy of a book at a time. They are the ones who put copyright into the Constitution. Copyright came about in the first place because of how much easier it had become to copy books with the printing press. There is no way that they would be persuaded that making books even easier to copy would mean they would be OK with copying them as much as you wanted.

It's a bit hard to say what copyright was put into the constitution for, Most back room politico dealings aren't written down into the history books.

At any rate, If I was to go back in time and ask Mr. Franklin (Using my time machine of course) about copyright and whether it should still have a place in the world of the internet, I think he might have to think about it for awhile.

And then I would try to explain internet 2.0 to him, I don't know if he would understand, but if he did I am fairly sure he would see that in a world where no one has to copy anything since everything is merely accessed, and all uploads and downloads are tracked, that copyright is now an impediment to the spread of knowledge rather than an incentive.

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

It's a bit hard to say what copyright was put into the constitution for, Most back room politico dealings aren't written down into the history books.

No, it isn't. It's extremely well documented.

At any rate, If I was to go back in time and ask Mr. Franklin (Using my time machine of course) about copyright and whether it should still have a place in the world of the internet, I think he might have to think about it for awhile.

I can say with total certainty that he would not. Copyright was instituted in response to how easy copying had become. If he was presented with a future where copying was even easier, it utterly defies reason that he would oppose copyright. The ease of copying makes copyright more important, not less.

And then I would try to explain internet 2.0 to him, I don't know if he would understand, but if he did I am fairly sure he would see that in a world where no one has to copy anything since everything is merely accessed, and all uploads and downloads are tracked, that copyright is now an impediment to the spread of knowledge rather than an incentive.

No, he wouldn't. He's see that your distinction between accessing and copying is nonsense.

[Rob Lister]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

It's a bit hard to say what copyright was put into the constitution for, Most back room politico dealings aren't written down into the history books.

Yea, the constitution and history books are really vague on that. Some think that it might of been to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts. I think that's just crazy talk.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

At least in the United States I will go with the Constitution where at least one of the purposes of copyright is to provide an incentive to authors to create and publish more works.

My search if the US Constitution failed to find the text "copyright", please cite the article/amendment you are referring to.