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>> In the time of patronage, it wasn't the intellectual property that was bought and sold, rather the artist. Slavery and patronage are very related systems of

by drcube 11y ago

>> In the time of patronage, it wasn't the intellectual property that was bought and sold, rather the artist. Slavery and patronage are very related systems of organizing human capital. They're both based around primitive ideas of the relationship between labor and capital. This is absurd. Paying for expert services is not the same thing as slavery. I work as a consultant. Am I a slave? Why can billions of people go to work each day and earn a paycheck with no expectation of getting paid ever again for that day's work, but with artists, the world owes them a living based off of work they did years ago? And if they must continue to work to get paid it's tantamount to slavery? You won't win any friends with that kind of logic. Most of us earn paychecks, dude, not royalties.

williamcotton 11y ago
Firstly, an economic and societal system of patronage is completely different from an economic and societal system of expert services, so you're right to point out that it is absurd to think that the two are the same, so I agree with you on that point. I would hope that most people are striving to put themselves in a position where they can invest their savings in to equities and real estate because everyone needs to prepare for a future where their ability to labor to produce capital might not be enough to support the basic necessities of life. It might not be immediately obvious, but home ownership and 401ks are pretty much based on the idea that people will be able to keep living based off of work that they did years ago. Copyright is based on similar principles but for those people who produce intellectual works. They can't take advantage of home ownership or financial investments if they didn't have any capital to begin with. It's an interface between ideas and markets. We're not just talking about music here, we're talking about any and all ideas and how we as a lawful and orderly society decide to deal with opportunity costs. We can have the government pay for it blindly through blanket taxation, or we can have private individuals pay for it driven by various personal motivations, and in fact we can invent complex financial instruments to structure the incentives. We've used governments as executive enforcement to police marketplaces to try and create level playing fields. What's really interesting is how services like Spotify are showing how natural it is for consumer software to honor complex royalty contracts and (in a rather inefficient and tragically opaque manner) route money to rights-holders through an opt-in service. That is to say, we don't need people burning books, smashing printing presses or prosecuting individuals for circumventing digital rights management controls in order to create ways for capital to flow from consumer to creator. Royalty systems and direct licenses are the building blocks of these financial instruments and the main reason why we don't have a futures market for digital is because we've never bothered to track these things or put them on modern digital exchanges. Tracking copyright registration and transfers is a total mess right now.

by drcube 11y ago

williamcotton 11y ago

Firstly, an economic and societal system of patronage is completely different from an economic and societal system of expert services, so you're right to point out that it is absurd to think that the two are the same, so I agree with you on that point. I would hope that most people are striving to put themselves in a position where they can invest their savings in to equities and real estate because everyone needs to prepare for a future where their ability to labor to produce capital might not be enough to support the basic necessities of life. It might not be immediately obvious, but home ownership and 401ks are pretty much based on the idea that people will be able to keep living based off of work that they did years ago. Copyright is based on similar principles but for those people who produce intellectual works. They can't take advantage of home ownership or financial investments if they didn't have any capital to begin with. It's an interface between ideas and markets. We're not just talking about music here, we're talking about any and all ideas and how we as a lawful and orderly society decide to deal with opportunity costs. We can have the government pay for it blindly through blanket taxation, or we can have private individuals pay for it driven by various personal motivations, and in fact we can invent complex financial instruments to structure the incentives. We've used governments as executive enforcement to police marketplaces to try and create level playing fields. What's really interesting is how services like Spotify are showing how natural it is for consumer software to honor complex royalty contracts and (in a rather inefficient and tragically opaque manner) route money to rights-holders through an opt-in service. That is to say, we don't need people burning books, smashing printing presses or prosecuting individuals for circumventing digital rights management controls in order to create ways for capital to flow from consumer to creator. Royalty systems and direct licenses are the building blocks of these financial instruments and the main reason why we don't have a futures market for digital is because we've never bothered to track these things or put them on modern digital exchanges. Tracking copyright registration and transfers is a total mess right now.