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There's no incentive to make a movie if it will never make any money. Without copyright, anyone can purchase it once and give it away for free or sell each copy
by nv-vn 9y ago
There's no incentive to make a movie if it will never make any money. Without copyright, anyone can purchase it once and give it away for free or sell each copy for $0.01 and undercut all competition. Digital content takes X amount of work and then allows it to be duplicated by creating infinite copies. If someone can infinitely copy your work, you will never get paid for that X amount (or make any profit). While I don't strongly support current IP law, getting rid of it isn't the solution. It's like having an economy based on fake money, after a very short period of time the money becomes worthless (except here the money = work).
- TrinaryWorksToo 9y agoWhat's wrong with that? The price to the first person would go up astronomically and they would get all the rights to resell it. It would be the difference of getting paid 10k upfront or 10k over the course of royalties. You would have incentive to make new works.
- pluto9 9y agoThe price to the first person would go up astronomically and they would get all the rights to resell it. How would they enforce their (exclusive) right to resell it? The first person to whom they sell a copy could then give away more copies for free.
- TrinaryWorksToo 9y agoI guess I could have been clearer. there is no exclusive resale right. I meant because the lack of rights, there would be competition to drive down distribution costs. The idea is that the first purchaser pays full price to be able to know what the item is, as the idea is otherwise a secret. Consumers could then pay content creators directly to generate the content, rather than going through a publisher. There could be demand to have a distribution network that is up to date.
- chriswarbo 9y ago> There's no incentive to make a movie if it will never make any money. > Without copyright, anyone can purchase it once and give it away for free or sell each copy for $0.01 and undercut all competition. That's not a problem if the creators were paid to make the movie. The parent mentioned several mechanisms to do this. It's not hard: after all, that's how basically all industries have worked since forever. Anecdotally: half of the jobs I've had were producing private, in-house software; I got a regular wage for doing this, since the companies found such software useful. No need for copyright. The other half were paying me to produce FOSS which, once it was written, we wanted people to copy and spread for free, since that would gain us more attention (and potential customers for our related services). Again, no need for copyright (although some were strong copyleft, with network-use clauses)
- madmax96 9y agoI don't think it's wise to compare software development with other creative production. Software can provide a quantitative value through functionality to its users. Copyleft software often makes sense because it becomes possible to create a community of users that also support the project, making it cheaper and functionally superior for everyone. Media is a much different story, and transforming creators into beggars (as suggested) is not a solution. At that point, creators are competing with their ability to beg, and not their ability to create. Any person with a reasonable amount of self-respect and pride in their work would not tolerate that kind of existence.
- chriswarbo 9y agoWhy is it "begging" if, say, a screenwriter does it; but it's "customer aquisition" (or equivalent) for everyone else on the planet?
- madmax96 9y agoBecause "customer acquisition" means that a business offers something of value, reaches out to entities that might be interested in obtaining that value, and enters into an agreement to supply that value for another value. That process is totally different from asking for donations (which is literally begging -- no value is being offered, but value is expected to be received.) Kickstarter can certainly produce valuable media, but it eliminates the possibility of a small group of people taking a risk on content. That will undoubtedly have major effects on the kind of content that is produced, the question is what will that impact be?
- Zigurd 9y agoAll the big recent moneymaking movies are derived from comic books. Would you trade that for minimal copyright protection?
- gamblor956 9y agoThat's not true, but why let the facts get in the way? 6/10 highest-grossing movies last year were not comic book movies: Dunkirk - Original property Fast & Furious 8 - non-comic franchise based on original property Despicable Me - non-comic franchise based on original property It - remake Beauty and the Beast - remake Get Out - original property Star Wars Episode 8 - non-comic franchise based on original property The most profitable movie of 2017, Get Out, was an original franchise. This follows on the heels of 2016s most profitable movie, Split, a sequel to an original property (The Sixth Sense/Unbreakable universe).
- Zigurd 9y agoFast and Furious 8. I sensed no irony in "an original property." Now there's something that deserves protection until my grandchildren are old.