7 ms·

>Without some form of copyright, the movie and TV industry would not exist. We don’t actually know if that is true. (Or if it would be a bad thing, heh)

• api 8y ago
  I think it would exist, but it would be even more ad and propaganda driven than it is today and the content would be even lower quality. The goal would be to achieve literally 100% ad time by transforming even ordinary content into stealth advertising. Basically today you have two models: paid content and ads. Without copyright there would be only one model.
  • naravara 8y ago
    >Basically today you have two models: paid content and ads. Without copyright there would be only one model. You also have publicly funded television. There is no reason you couldn't also have crowdfunded television. Budgets would be much lower, in all likelihood, but something would be there. It's actually hard to discuss counterfactuals like this because there is such a strong bias towards assuming that the world we got is the world we would/should have wanted. If things went differently creative outlets might have been different and our preferences would have been shaped differently.
    • ghaff 8y ago
      >You also have publicly funded television. Sort of. The accounting is complicated but public funding is something like 20% of PBS and local station revenue as I understand it. Most of it is membership, foundations, etc. So most of public TV already is crowdfunded.
    • api 8y ago
      Crowdfunding works for small scale stuff like radio shows, podcasts, and sometimes simple documentaries. Good films and TV shows are too expensive.
      • icebraining 8y ago
        Crowdfunding is already giving out in the range of $10-20M for some video games, which is enough to fund an excellent movie, and that's despite competing with the other model. If it was the only way to get new movies, I'm pretty sure people would contribute much more (though probably not nearly enough to fund at current levels).
        • EpicEng 8y ago
          People pay a lot more for a new video game than they do a lovie ticket.
      • naravara 8y ago
        Like I said. Counterfactuals with learned preferences are hard. We're accustomed to extremely high production values in television, so we think "good" TV shows are expensive. But there is no reason our definition of "good" needs to correlate to that level of production value. A different equilibrium would have just had lower production values as a norm and we'd likely would have been ok with it. For example, once upon a time it was fine to have people in all-black leotards walking around a stage production picking people up and carrying things around to simulate poltergeists. People were fine just ignoring them. Now people expect wirework in stage production to maintain the same level of suspension of disbelief. It's just about what you're used to.
• shkkmo 8y ago
  Actually, I think we can pretty conclusively say that it is false. The value of the medium of video is such that it would have been used no matter what type of copyright exists and people would have found ways to make money in that industry. A different form of copyright or a complete lack of copyright would certainly result is a significantly different move and TV industry that produced different types of content, but it would almost definitely still exist. Edit: Two clear examples of types of business models that are much less reliant on copyright are BBC and PBS.