4 ms·

All copyright prohibitions are "fake." In our current society, all supply shortages of media are artificial.

• dhimes 9y ago
  The interesting question here is, are the shortages necessary to have high quality media? I would love to have an HN-filtered list of reading on the arguments- both sides. I personally only have an ill-informed, therefore worthless, opinion.
  • hinkley 9y ago
    Patents and copyrights are, as discussed in much earlier incarnations, a form of barter (bribery?) by the state to ensure a steady supply of novel ideas. I give you something, you give me something. We (or at least, policy makers) agreed that this was the cost of high quality media/inventions. And it was sure as hell a lot better than the old guild systems where everyone in a given trade colluded to maintain trade secrets, under threat of ostracism or worse. A lot of the weirdness people attach to either concept looks ridiculous if you can get past all of the emotionally loaded crap and keep telling yourself they are a quid pro quo arrangement, and not to be conflated with property rights.
  • zanny 9y ago
    I get most of my entertainment nowadays from artists (musical, artistic, etc) that I fund on Patreon, via Paypal, or on Kickstarters. So... no. Not at all. The reason we are not seeing 150M budget movies coming out of crowdfunding is that right now the market is too small. Its a fledgling industry to directly patronize your entertainers without the profit seeking middleman in between (or at least in the case of Patreon et al that middle man is minimized). As it grows projects like the Blender Open Movie project or all the software being crowdfunded will become more common and more culturally accepted. On top of that, there is very little organization in crowdfunding right now. Almost exclusively because of the newness of it all - it is untested, and for anyone who is just making a living off patronage now taking a huge risk partnering with other artists to combine efforts to make more complicated media is a huge gamble. That being said, there are no logistical barriers to it. It is only a matter of time. But for patronage models to take over media production - which they will inevitably do, on the simple premise that the middle men profiteers in between creators and consumers of media only existed when the logistics of distribution required not just money but influence in the industry to even get your product blessed to be sold in limited theaters or stores and are now redundant - will require a substantial cultural shift for consumers. And those kinds of shifts take generations. I think those under 30 are fairly receptive to the idea, but to make it pervasive may require fresh minds open to the idea that need to grow with constant exposure to the concept early on. Otherwise its just a "neat thing" rather than the cultural revolution it will need to be to finalize the model - abolishing obsoleted IP concepts alongside the cultural expectation to "put money where your mouth is" on the things you want to see made, rather than for the things that already exist and are being artificially restricted by the government.
    • brianjoseff 9y ago
      For the most part, I agree with you. However, the profiteering middlemen do add value in that they actively curate and package content in ways that are "consumable" and desirable. They are sourcing the steady drip-feed of content that we passively consume. Shunning passive feeds, and actively seeking out content that fits your preferences, as you do, requires effort. Any product the consumption of which requires effort is inevitably displaced by service providers who deliver said thing frictionlessly....eliminating the effort. Agreed that there will always be a slice of the market that actively shuns passively-fed products and ascribes a priceable value to goods that don't fit that friction-eliminating model (e.g., craft beers). But, as long as we remain purely, animalistically, and perhaps irrationally susceptible to simple stimuli-- a large slice of the market will be kow-towed to frictionlessly delivered, externally curated products. Simply put, some people don't want to go express their preferences for certain products. They just want the market to deliver them something stimulating and to a certain degree they don't care what it is. But let's move towards your world! On balance it is better, richer, and more full of vibrant, distinctly human creativity.
• stcredzero 9y ago
  In our current society, all supply shortages of media are artificial If you take supply shortages of media as being caused by a long term lack of profitable remuneration/funding for media, then there is nothing artificial about it. It's the funding model which is broken. I wish there was something like Patreon, but which would take some monthly subscription amount and automatically distribute it to the creators I like, in proportion to the enjoyment they've provided.
  • Swizec 9y ago
    > something like Patreon, but which would take some monthly subscription amount and automatically distribute it to the creators I like, in proportion to the enjoyment they've provided. Like Spotify, radio, broadcadt TV and such? They pay artists based on airtime and they allot airtime based on viewership/listenership,
• BurningFrog 9y ago
  True. Then again, all the protected creations are also artificial constructs.