Copyfraud - public domain's fate?

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

The matter would be greatly simplified if the copyright law, and patent law (but not trademarks) was abandoned altogether.

People who aren't entrenched in their beliefs in copyright can find lots of good arguments for economic losses caused by those laws, and lack of proof there's anything to be gained from them, sumarized by much better minds than me in "Against Intellectual Monopoly" book ( available here: http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/genera...ainstfinal.htm , and also at Amazon, should you wish to pay homage to the copyright's golden calf ).

Yeah, this is stupid. You can find all sorts of support for stupid arguments on the internet; that lends no credibility to the argument whatsoever. And no one - including Levine - can make any sort of reasonable argument about how artists would get paid if they didn't own their copyright. In fact, he basically admits this, but claims that ripping off the artists would be better for the public at large because - paraphrasing - the public wouldn't have to pay the artist.

Look at J.K. Rowlings: her first HP book had a print run of 5,000. After the books became popular, the publisher put out many more copies, she wrote sequels, there were movies, etc.

In the copyright free world, the publisher puts out 5,000 copies (netting her, maybe, $5-10,000). Because the book is popular, anyone can now reproduce it and sell it; the largest amount of money made from HP would likely be from the printer in china who prints out $1 million copies, sells them, and gives the author nothing. This would result in lower book prices, but it is "better" for consumers in the same way that confiscating and redistributing all income over $100,000 per year is "better" for the consumer.

The fact is that there is very little incentive for JKR to produce another HP book. And making a HP movie would be very risky because you could invest years and millions in making a movie, only to see someone else come out with another movie first. The result of this would not be more consumer choice in movies; the result would be no movies from books at all because of the uncertainty and risk.

Not that there isn't room to improve IP law, but arguments for eliminating IP are economically illiterate and morally bankrupt.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Not that there isn't room to improve IP law, but arguments for eliminating IP are economically illiterate and morally bankrupt.

Books should be treated like real property; with no time limit on the "copyright".

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Books should be treated like real property; with no time limit on the "copyright".

It's amazing to me how many authors whose books are in the public domain have become known again because of Project Gutenberg and other similar groups. With the internet and e-readers, it's fairly easy and efficient to keep those parts of our culture alive. However, in comparison, books and authors from the 30's, 40's and even 50's have been mostly falling into a cultural black hole. I can't see it being any different for modern books when they fall out of vogue. For the vast majority of authors writing since copyright durations have been extending faster than time passes, they will never be republished when they have passed out of our cultural memory, and will end up being forgotten. I can't help but think of the call of perpetual money and control as a siren song drawing authors into oblivion.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by rkomar

For the vast majority of authors writing since copyright durations have been extending faster than time passes, they will never be republished when they have passed out of our cultural memory, and will end up being forgotten. I can't help but think of the call of perpetual money and control as a siren song drawing authors into oblivion.

Their loss then.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Their loss then.

I don't care about the loss of fame for (likely dead) authors. It's our cultural loss that I care about, and the part that some in the business are playing in it.

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Yeah, this is stupid. You can find all sorts of support for stupid arguments on the internet; that lends no credibility to the argument whatsoever. And no one - including Levine - can make any sort of reasonable argument about how artists would get paid if they didn't own their copyright. In fact, he basically admits this, but claims that ripping off the artists would be better for the public at large because - paraphrasing - the public wouldn't have to pay the artist.

1. What makes you think there will be any total loss of creativity resulting from public at large not paying the author?
On Internet currently there are millions of so-called "digital sharecroppers" - people devoting their time, making it their hobby, to do something useful, without getting anything in return ( see for example http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/200...recropper.html for further information on that ). I don't believe creating should be done for money, as a source of income, rather that it should be done as a hobby. Current copyright laws are blocking the flows of memes through culture, and the only reason why the stifling of creativity they're causing isn't visible is because of civil disobedience, and fair use, which causes people to take creations of others anyway, and use it in their variations, fan-fics, other rehashing of cultural material showing up on various community sites. I believe that abandoning copyright would result in jump of creativity of fans, much bigger than slump in creativity of those who restrict the access to the memes they've put together and taken off the public playground through copyright.
Levine is making argument that there are tangible losses resuling from both patent law and copyright law, and there is no evidence that removing copyright would result in any loss. Personally, I can think about thousands of people, like patent clerks, and copyright-specializing lawyers who might switch to doing something useful if IP is abandoned.

2. What makes you think that when there's no IP, there's automatically no gain for the author? People aren't stupid; they know that author who doesn't gain from the work has no incentive to work more. Since the advent of Internet it became possible to donate money directly to author, not only proportionally to the price of dead-tree book, but however much you may want to donate to help the cause of author creating more books you want to read. In middle-ages, bards travelled between cities and people paid money to hear them sing, or in reward for the stories - those bards who weren't good changed the occupation, those who were got enough money, without any copyright, to keep singing. That's not the only way to reward - people can choose to buy the work of author through the channel through which author gets the most money to keep the incentive higher as well. Finally, if the author decides to stop creating works, without IP others can take their place, and who knows, they might make better job of it.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Look at J.K. Rowlings: her first HP book had a print run of 5,000. After the books became popular, the publisher put out many more copies, she wrote sequels, there were movies, etc.

In the copyright free world, the publisher puts out 5,000 copies (netting her, maybe, $5-10,000). Because the book is popular, anyone can now reproduce it and sell it; the largest amount of money made from HP would likely be from the printer in china who prints out $1 million copies, sells them, and gives the author nothing. This would result in lower book prices, but it is "better" for consumers in the same way that confiscating and redistributing all income over $100,000 per year is "better" for the consumer.

The fact is that there is very little incentive for JKR to produce another HP book. And making a HP movie would be very risky because you could invest years and millions in making a movie, only to see someone else come out with another movie first. The result of this would not be more consumer choice in movies; the result would be no movies from books at all because of the uncertainty and risk.

You don't see the opportunities that would stem from no IP though. Let's imagine that a month after Rowling's success 5 great works show up, all very similar to Rowling's, all featuring Harry Potter, each of them a bit different, each of them a bit better than the original. Fans divide among those works, the authors become famous, the best Potter writings win. It's the Potter story who becomes famous, not Rowling, not some anonymous million-dollar company in possession of copyright. The best performers of the story are chosen by the audience. Current situation restricts the list of authors who can write Potter stories to Rowling - how do you know she's not relatively lousy performer compared to who might have written the works with no IP?
Similarly, if we had 100 home-quality movies produced by fans, one of those gaining fans' critical acclaim and millions of followers, the big-money producers would have the incentive to pick and choose that one, remake it commercially, and put it into theathers, having much better chance of getting money by being faithful to its original tried-and-true scenario than paying the money up-front, and having some random director make something up. Here the creativity happens in thousands of households with amateur directors, scenario writers and actors, competing with each other, taking best pieces from each others' works, mixing and matching. This is how Homer songs were made in ancient Greece, by singers mixing and matching and "stealing" others' tricks, not by one person writing the whole thing. All this creativity is currently overshadowed by copyright, so many unknown creators not even thinking about making better versions of known stories out of fear that copyright lawyers will go after their asses, it makes me cry.

Even now, with e-books, we're getting to the point where:
1) thousands if not millions of authors produce their works, and put them up on sites like Smashwords, with no money up-front,
2) the best works bubble-up to the top, by words of mouth of millions of fans,
3) the publishers pick those cherries from the top, and release them as printed books, no longer having to rely on hunches of single editors, and on commercials and advertising to make the books known. The choosing is now performed by readers, and the books is already known by so many when the printing presses start.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Not that there isn't room to improve IP law, but arguments for eliminating IP are economically illiterate and morally bankrupt.

This is very untrue in my opinion, and seems to contradict the facts about the world as I have them. Perhaps you have any source/book/article where this point of view is explained and reasoned, so that I might read it and possibly get persuaded by it, or it this solely your personal belief?

[Richey79]

It has to be the downloader who is responsible for following (or not) the laws of their own country.

It would be entirely a waste of time, money and effort to force sites offering PD books to implement georestriction checks on downloaders, since it takes little effort and zero cost to spoof an IP in a country that can legally download the book.

The end user has to take responsibility for their behaviour on the internet. If the site provider is held liable in every circumstance, there will be no internet as we know it.

[Doug Huffman]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Unfortunately it is most assuredly not that simple.

[ ... ]

It's this kind of thing - and every country probably has such examples - that makes it a very, very complex situation.

It may have been Bastiat that observed that complications in law are the tyrant's exceptions for his cronies. See gun control laws; it's not about guns but about control. See tax law, about economic and social control.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Yeah, this is stupid. You can find all sorts of support for stupid arguments on the internet; that lends no credibility to the argument whatsoever. And no one - including Levine - can make any sort of reasonable argument about how artists would get paid if they didn't own their copyright. In fact, he basically admits this, but claims that ripping off the artists would be better for the public at large because - paraphrasing - the public wouldn't have to pay the artist.

Look at J.K. Rowlings: her first HP book had a print run of 5,000. After the books became popular, the publisher put out many more copies, she wrote sequels, there were movies, etc.

In the copyright free world, the publisher puts out 5,000 copies (netting her, maybe, $5-10,000). Because the book is popular, anyone can now reproduce it and sell it; the largest amount of money made from HP would likely be from the printer in china who prints out $1 million copies, sells them, and gives the author nothing. This would result in lower book prices, but it is "better" for consumers in the same way that confiscating and redistributing all income over $100,000 per year is "better" for the consumer.

The fact is that there is very little incentive for JKR to produce another HP book. And making a HP movie would be very risky because you could invest years and millions in making a movie, only to see someone else come out with another movie first. The result of this would not be more consumer choice in movies; the result would be no movies from books at all because of the uncertainty and risk.

Not that there isn't room to improve IP law, but arguments for eliminating IP are economically illiterate and morally bankrupt.

Gosh, you're right. I guess that's why we didn't have authors or books before copyright and why no one made any money on books until copyright was extended world wide back in the early 1970's.

The problem is the the idea of "IP" (a term that was coined by a lawyer to make the concept that someone could own an idea more palatable to a jury) has been stretched far beyond the basic premise that artists and inventors should get just compensation. Perhaps the idea of copyright should be abandoned, and we should simply go to a model of the artist and inventor getting a share of the net revenue from the use of their work or idea rather than getting control over the use of their work or idea. That would be more inline with the stated justification of copyright and patents.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Gosh, you're right. I guess that's why we didn't have authors or books before copyright and why no one made any money on books until copyright was extended world wide back in the early 1970's.

It was the invention of the printing press which triggered the need for copyright laws. You're slightly wrong in saying that "we didn't have authors or books before copyright", but not much wrong; when books had to be copied by hand, it certainly wasn't practical to make a living from being an author. The printing press changed that.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Gosh, you're right. I guess that's why we didn't have authors or books before copyright and why no one made any money on books until copyright was extended world wide back in the early 1970's.

Yeah, there were books before copyright. Artists, too. But the artists couldn't make a living from the sale of their books; they were dependent on being independently wealthy, having a patron, or receiving a sinecure with few duties and time for writing. And very few books were printed at this time - maybe 1000 titles in English per year, with the vast majority being religious tracts and less than 20 being works of fiction. Only after copyright could authors live off of their work as authors.

The problem is the the idea of "IP" (a term that was coined by a lawyer to make the concept that someone could own an idea more palatable to a jury) has been stretched far beyond the basic premise that artists and inventors should get just compensation.

Why make stuff up? The modern use of the term "intellectual property" goes back to the Swiss Office of Intellectual Property (its patent/copyright/trademark bureau), which was established in the 1880's. It has nothing to do with juries. Switzerland doesn't even *have* juries.

Perhaps the idea of copyright should be abandoned, and we should simply go to a model of the artist and inventor getting a share of the net revenue from the use of their work or idea rather than getting control over the use of their work or idea. That would be more inline with the stated justification of copyright and patents.

I'm not sure how this would work in practice - if authors had no power to control how their work was used, they wouldn't have much negotiating power. And if you couldn't grant exclusive movie rights, for example, I think it would be risky to invest millions to make a movie.

[DMSmillie]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Gosh, you're right. I guess that's why we didn't have authors or books before copyright and why no one made any money on books until copyright was extended world wide back in the early 1970's.

Early 1970s?

From Wikipedia:

"The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, usually known as the Berne Convention, is an international agreement governing copyright, which was first accepted in Berne, Switzerland in 1886."

A tad earlier than the 1970s!

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Perhaps the idea of copyright should be abandoned, and we should simply go to a model of the artist and inventor getting a share of the net revenue from the use of their work or idea rather than getting control over the use of their work or idea.

Ummm... I rather thought that's exactly what copyright helps to ensure... without copyright, how would you ensure that authors actually received "a share of the net revenue from the use of their work"? What would there be to prevent a publisher from simply going ahead and publishing manuscripts sent to them, and keeping the revenues to themselves? At the moment, what prevents them from doing that (and remaining legal) is copyright.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

1. What makes you think there will be any total loss of creativity resulting from public at large not paying the author?
On Internet currently there are millions of so-called "digital sharecroppers" - people devoting their time, making it their hobby, to do something useful, without getting anything in return ( see for example http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/200...recropper.html for further information on that ). I don't believe creating should be done for money, as a source of income, rather that it should be done as a hobby.

If it's not done for money, it won't be done.

Current copyright laws are blocking the flows of memes through culture, and the only reason why the stifling of creativity they're causing isn't visible is because of civil disobedience, and fair use, which causes people to take creations of others anyway, and use it in their variations, fan-fics, other rehashing of cultural material showing up on various community sites. I believe that abandoning copyright would result in jump of creativity of fans, much bigger than slump in creativity of those who restrict the access to the memes they've put together and taken off the public playground through copyright.

At the expense of the person who actually created the work, of course. And I don't really think that "fan fiction" adds very much to the culture, for that matter.

Levine is making argument that there are tangible losses resuling from both patent law and copyright law, and there is no evidence that removing copyright would result in any loss. Personally, I can think about thousands of people, like patent clerks, and copyright-specializing lawyers who might switch to doing something useful if IP is abandoned.

Sure, there are expenses in maintaining copyright. There are expenses in enforcing all laws. That doesn't mean that the expenses are a bad idea, though.

2. What makes you think that when there's no IP, there's automatically no gain for the author? People aren't stupid; they know that author who doesn't gain from the work has no incentive to work more. Since the advent of Internet it became possible to donate money directly to author, not only proportionally to the price of dead-tree book, but however much you may want to donate to help the cause of author creating more books you want to read. In middle-ages, bards travelled between cities and people paid money to hear them sing, or in reward for the stories - those bards who weren't good changed the occupation, those who were got enough money, without any copyright, to keep singing. That's not the only way to reward - people can choose to buy the work of author through the channel through which author gets the most money to keep the incentive higher as well. Finally, if the author decides to stop creating works, without IP others can take their place, and who knows, they might make better job of it.

Cool. We can look forward to a copyright-free world in which authors are reduced to begging.

Bards made money from their *performance*. (Although they mostly made money from staying with wealthy patrons, not from the public at large).

You don't see the opportunities that would stem from no IP though. Let's imagine that a month after Rowling's success 5 great works show up, all very similar to Rowling's, all featuring Harry Potter, each of them a bit different, each of them a bit better than the original.

Yeah, anyone can make up any hypothetical situation to support their point. I can imagine a copyright-free world in which all authors starve to death. See, it's easy.

The fact is, it is completely *delusional* to somehow believe that there are five authors who would produce works better and more popular than HP if only they could copy HP. But since they can't copy HP, they are doomed to obscurity. HP isn't successful because it's HP. HP is successful because of the writer. If these imaginary other writers were able to produced something better than HP by copying HP, they would be able to produce something better (or as good, or nearly as good, or even half as good) by coming up with their own characters. It's not like the hundreds or thousands of Jane Austen derivatives are anything other than poorly written fan fiction or novelty vampire fiction that only sells because of the Jane Austen connection. I see no evidence in the real world that the inability to copy anything is harming creativity much.

Fans divide among those works, the authors become famous, the best Potter writings win. It's the Potter story who becomes famous, not Rowling, not some anonymous million-dollar company in possession of copyright. The best performers of the story are chosen by the audience. Current situation restricts the list of authors who can write Potter stories to Rowling - how do you know she's not relatively lousy performer compared to who might have written the works with no IP?

Because if they were such good authors, they would be able to write without copying HP.

Similarly, if we had 100 home-quality movies produced by fans, one of those gaining fans' critical acclaim and millions of followers, the big-money producers would have the incentive to pick and choose that one, remake it commercially, and put it into theathers, having much better chance of getting money by being faithful to its original tried-and-true scenario than paying the money up-front, and having some random director make something up.

Why does this only work if you violate copyright? If there is all of this talent out there, it will be able to produce something good without copying someone else.

Here the creativity happens in thousands of households with amateur directors, scenario writers and actors, competing with each other, taking best pieces from each others' works, mixing and matching. This is how Homer songs were made in ancient Greece, by singers mixing and matching and "stealing" others' tricks, not by one person writing the whole thing. All this creativity is currently overshadowed by copyright, so many unknown creators not even thinking about making better versions of known stories out of fear that copyright lawyers will go after their asses, it makes me cry.

It's only in your imagination that people can make better stories than existing novels by copying the novels, but are somehow unable to do so independently, without copying.

Yeah, Homer's great. But anyone, even today, can make a story based on historical events. Historical events aren't copyrighted. Anyone who thinks that they can write a better story about Caesar than McCollough is completely allowed to do so. They can even use most of the same characters, including Caesar, Mark Antony, Cleopatra, Crassus, etc.

Even now, with e-books, we're getting to the point where:
1) thousands if not millions of authors produce their works, and put them up on sites like Smashwords, with no money up-front,
2) the best works bubble-up to the top, by words of mouth of millions of fans,
3) the publishers pick those cherries from the top, and release them as printed books, no longer having to rely on hunches of single editors, and on commercials and advertising to make the books known. The choosing is now performed by readers, and the books is already known by so many when the printing presses start.

Yes, this sometimes happens. (Although all the indie authors put together make less money for the publisher/retailer than *one* successfuly traditionally published book, which sort of suggests that the editors do know what they are doing.) And I'm not sure how this relates to copyright; the indie authors also have copyrights, and if one indie comes up with a mystery series that, say, sells a couple of thousand copies, I don't see that it is good that all of the other indies should be able to hop on the bandwagon and *all* write sequels to that successful novel.

The fact is that 270,000 plus *titles* are published in the US *every year.* Almost that many are published in the UK. I see no evidence that copyright is interfering with the production of cultural goods; I have far more book choices than I did even 25 years ago.

This is very untrue in my opinion, and seems to contradict the facts about the world as I have them. Perhaps you have any source/book/article where this point of view is explained and reasoned, so that I might read it and possibly get persuaded by it, or it this solely your personal belief?

I'm not sure what this refers to specifically; maybe I've answered it above?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

And no one - including Levine - can make any sort of reasonable argument about how artists would get paid if they didn't own their copyright.

How do you know that? Have you checked all arguments? Including the argument that new models will appear even if we cannot predict them now?

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

If it's not done for money, it won't be done.

This one's absolutely false. I myself spend considerable amount of time daily adding value to common Internet sties, and no one's paying me a cent for it.
Also, I believe both you and me create something valuable to other readers just by discussing this topic. Is anyone paying you money for this?

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

At the expense of the person who actually created the work, of course. And I don't really think that "fan fiction" adds very much to the culture, for that matter.

I know quite a number of very good fanfics I'd put on par with the original work. I'm a bit afraid to recommned them though, if they get too well known, the author's lawyers might smeel enough money in it to sue.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Sure, there are expenses in maintaining copyright. There are expenses in enforcing all laws. That doesn't mean that the expenses are a bad idea, though.

It doesn't mean those laws are a good idea either.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Cool. We can look forward to a copyright-free world in which authors are reduced to begging.

Bards made money from their *performance*. (Although they mostly made money from staying with wealthy patrons, not from the public at large).

I don't believe the world should keep being adjusted so authors can live entirely off their works. 1. If other work pays more, they're free to do it instead. 2. It still seems to me that we're losing more than we're gaining by letting some people get a lock on different stories.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Yeah, anyone can make up any hypothetical situation to support their point. I can imagine a copyright-free world in which all authors starve to death. See, it's easy.

Only my situation looks a whole lot more plausible to me

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

The fact is, it is completely *delusional* to somehow believe that there are five authors who would produce works better and more popular than HP if only they could copy HP. But since they can't copy HP, they are doomed to obscurity. HP isn't successful because it's HP. HP is successful because of the writer. If these imaginary other writers were able to produced something better than HP by copying HP, they would be able to produce something better (or as good, or nearly as good, or even half as good) by coming up with their own characters.

Many people don't have a whole range of abilities Rowling needed to create HP. One person may be very bad with character descriptions, but write brilliant dialogue, another can't describe people, but can make places really come to life. Currently those people are forbidden from improving on single aspects of existing work, which they may have talent for, the creativity is instead restricted to having to create the whole thing. This is just an example of one of many restrictions.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

It's not like the hundreds or thousands of Jane Austen derivatives are anything other than poorly written fan fiction or novelty vampire fiction that only sells because of the Jane Austen connection.

This is the consequence of current laws. Improving on existing works is potentially dangerous because of the laws, so many good writers choose to learn exclusively on their own creations. There's also a psychological taboo added - many people are so cowed by existing viewpoint on copyright, they think anything written by another author is some kind of "property" of that author, and not a piece of shared, common culture, with rights to copying temporarily restricted by state-protected monopoly.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

I see no evidence in the real world that the inability to copy anything is harming creativity much.

I can see that; I'm not sure how to show it more clearly though

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Because if they were such good authors, they would be able to write without copying HP.

As I replied above, not everyone is good at everything - but collaboration, improvement of work done by many people, and existence of many slightly differing and competing versions of the same work would lead eventually to improvement of the work itself. An input of a single collaborator might be as small as one brilliantly written piece of dialogue, and yet the work would be improved by it.
Only, copyright law shuts down all those possibilities, in some cases makes people even unable to think of this mode of creation, chaining entire books to single persons.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Why does this only work if you violate copyright? If there is all of this talent out there, it will be able to produce something good without copying someone else.

And it does; new works get created. But I believe many more would get created, and many more people would dabble in creation if they could work on the current cultural basis made by the great ones, without worrying about potential lawsuits, and free to share their small modifications with everyone else.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

It's only in your imagination that people can make better stories than existing novels by copying the novels, but are somehow unable to do so independently, without copying.

It's only in yours that they can learn just as easy on their own, completely new creations, as they could by modifying existing works. Perhaps I see this in a bit different light, as being a computer programmer I see certain analogies between writing entirley new programs and modifying existing ones; the second activity gives one much more insight in the way they are written. Luckily for programmers, there's a big open source base of well-written code on can learn from; writers have not been so committed to sharing. Also, for good programmers, there's not such thing as "your code", there's only "code you've written".

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Yeah, Homer's great. But anyone, even today, can make a story based on historical events. Historical events aren't copyrighted. Anyone who thinks that they can write a better story about Caesar than McCollough is completely allowed to do so. They can even use most of the same characters, including Caesar, Mark Antony, Cleopatra, Crassus, etc.

It doesn't matter that those were historical events. I aimed to show that other people took the work of hypothetical Homer, and when singing it, changed it slightly, improved it in their own eyes. And then, their pupils, learning the song from them, changed it even more. And there were different versions of Homer's epic works, it was sung differently in different places, evolved independently. Only when it was written, some 400 years after is was first known to exist, the first written version became canonical. Such evolution was largely impossible in the age of written word, and now, when Internet and people's sharing once again makes it possible, copyright makes it unthinkable. It's sad.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Yes, this sometimes happens. (Although all the indie authors put together make less money for the publisher/retailer than *one* successfuly traditionally published book, which sort of suggests that the editors do know what they are doing.) And I'm not sure how this relates to copyright; the indie authors also have copyrights, and if one indie comes up with a mystery series that, say, sells a couple of thousand copies, I don't see that it is good that all of the other indies should be able to hop on the bandwagon and *all* write sequels to that successful novel.

I tried to show that at least in ebook market the readers are starting to replace the people who accept the work for publishing, with millions more eyes to read and recommend to others, and pick what they like. This market is now evolving quickly, and in 5-10 years indie authors may well make comparable amounts of money to today's bestsellers, and tomorrow's bestsellers will be chosen from tomorrow's reader rankings, all books having print runs only after they gained fame as ebooks. (at least reading J.A.Konrath's blog makes me think that).

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

The fact is that 270,000 plus *titles* are published in the US *every year.* Almost that many are published in the UK. I see no evidence that copyright is interfering with the production of cultural goods; I have far more book choices than I did even 25 years ago.

Well, the book I mentioned a few posts above describes the evidence; I see no point in quoting lots of it here. One thing worth mentioning is that in the absence of copyright the discrepancy between best-selling authors and new ones is projected to be much smaller, ie. the best-sellers aren't selling as much and gaining as much money, but many more small authors gain enough money to be encouraged to create more. Now, I wonder if J.K.Rowling is still encouraged by monetary gains to write the next book, at the level at which she's now? It looks like she has enough money to specifically prohibit sale of ebooks of Harry Potter for what seems to be mostly luddite reasons. Is this good for the society as a whole? Is copyright working as intended in her case? I believe it would be more beneficial if large percent of this money ended up naturally, in absence of copyright, in pockets of 50 not-so-well-known authors instead.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

I'm not sure what this refers to specifically; maybe I've answered it above?

I'm not persuaded, so apparently that's not it. But I see our viewpoints are more worlds apart than I initially expected