7 ms·

I firmly disagree with pretty much everything you have said. There is no evidence that intellectual property in any way increases production of works, and inde

by gdhbcc 7y ago

I firmly disagree with pretty much everything you have said. There is no evidence that intellectual property in any way increases production of works, and indeed there is plenty of evidence that inhibits it. See http://dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm http://dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm for a comprehensive look at the subject. While I dont agree with their conclusions, the data they show is solid.

chadash 7y ago
Let's take Game of Thrones, a show that I'm sure many people reading this thread watch. The final season cost $90m to make. Would this investment have been made if not for intellectual property rights that give HBO exclusive license to distribute the content? If Amazon, Google and Netflix could just take the work and distribute it for free, then would HBO have been willing to fund this? The same goes for many things that are costly to produce, such as movies or investigative journalism. Yes, there are people who are willing to work for free, but it's nonsense to argue that "there is no evidence that intellectual property in any way increases production of works". Once upon a time, you had wealthy patrons who were the principle supporters of the arts. The system worked to some extent, but even Jeff Bezos can't afford to foot the bill for every movie made today. EDIT: yes, game of thrones is heavily pirated, but as the article linked to below points out, the only reason this benefits HBO is that it leads to more subscriptions. In a world without copyright, Netflix could take GOT episodes the second they are created and put them up on its own platform, completely legally. I wonder how many people would pay HBO in that scenario. Right now, the benefit to subscribing to HBO is that you get to watch Game of Thrones legally, with a better viewing experience and you save the hassle of going through seedy torrent sites trying to find a high quality copy. The people who feel a moral obligation to pay for what they consume probably were already subscribers anyway.
- module0000 7y ago
  Erm...I don't think Game of Thrones is what the OP is talking about. You're talking about entertainment, and GP is talking about "information" in the context that "Humanity as a whole benefits from free access to it". Is humanity benefiting from watching actors enact stage combat scenes with makeup and costumes?
  - chadash 7y ago
    I tend to agree with you on this specific example, but there's also plenty of work that IS good quality in my opinion that wouldn't get funded if the entity funding it didn't get exclusive access to distribute. I would say that the New York Times (or pick your favorite paper) is a good example of this. There's a good amount of quality writing that people don't get paid for out there, but funding things like investigative pieces that take months or years to research just doesn't happen much outside of well-funded newspapers that traditionally get that funding because they are the owners of the copyright, so if you want the info, you need to pay them.
- dublinben 7y ago
  Game of Thrones is a pretty bad example to use. Year after year it is one of the most pirated shows out there, which HBO tacitly approves of. Far more people watch the show for free than actually pay for it, but HBO still indirectly benefits from this massive popularity. https://theconversation.com/game-of-thrones-for-hbo-piracy-is-better-than-an-emmy-as-it-battles-netflix-115384 https://theconversation.com/game-of-thrones-for-hbo-piracy-i...
- otakucode 7y ago
  You are entering into a much more complicated territory there. The reason things like $90m TV shows and $200m movies get made is due to history. Solving distribution, getting things from point A to point B, was the hardest and most valuable problem to solve, bar none, for a century. It built empires. It made the publishing system that we're familiar with (and growing out of) possible. You see, there is a problem with publishing media that relies upon popular reception. Popular reception is perfectly random. There aren't any trends to identify, and no element of the works themselves can be tailored to increase your chances of success with it. It's been extensively studied. The only way publishers are able to fund projects ahead of time that cost so much and still turn a profit on what is essentially a coin flip is because they control distribution. When a terrible flop hits the theaters, they can pull it immediately and replace it with another attempt. When a film finds success, they can keep it in theaters for ages, minimizing their losses and maximizing their gains. The public response to each work is still random, but since they control what is available at the box office, they can still find success. Now that distribution is so simple a clever 12 year old can do global distribution in their spare time as a hobby, and the publishers don't have control over what options the audience has any more... they are destined to fall apart. It's not the content that made $90m shows possible, and no one remembers the $90m flops. That was entirely a matter of keeping the field of options limited and exercising control over distribution channels.
  - chadash 7y ago
    This isn't correct. $90 million TV shows exist because after a studio creates that show, they have the exclusive legal right to sell it to distribute that content. Otherwise, nothing stops Netflix from just taking Game of Thrones for free and putting it on their own platform.
    - otakucode 7y ago
      I think you're side-stepping the issue. If no one is interested in watching the $90m show, it fails regardless of whether everyone or only one outlet can make it available. It has to have public popularity in order to even get to the starting line of there being some contention over which avenue through which it is distributed.
- beefield 7y ago
  > it's nonsense to argue that "there is no evidence that intellectual property in any way increases production of works" Please, offer the evidence, then. As it is nonsense to claim otherwise, it should be easy to come with unambiguous peer-reviewed research on this. (I'm not actually holding my breath here. All evidence I have ever seen reduces to assuming that IP increases production of immaterial goods. I am happy to be proven wrong here.)
  - chadash 7y ago
    Sure, I'll quote the original source linked to above from economist David Levine (who makes the case against copyright): "we find that France, where copyright is introduced, the number of composers per million increased substantially more than in other countries." I'm cherry picking this quote, but then again, this entire book cherry-picks examples that work in their favor. I'm not arguing that patent or copyright law are correct. I think the patent system in particular needs a lot of reform. And copyrights are way too long. What I am arguing is that copyright (specifically, I'm not getting into patents) helps creators profit off of their work, and that profit motive induces people to create content in the first place, at least some of the time. I'll add that from a moral perspective, I think that if you write a book, Amazon shouldn't be able to copy your book and start selling it for free without reimbursing you. Economist Grew Mankiw notes that he spoke with the authors of the book linked to above and asked (I assume jokingly) if they would mind if he made copies of the book and sold them for a profit and the authors didn't feel that that would be fair within the current system.

by gdhbcc 7y ago

chadash 7y ago

Let's take Game of Thrones, a show that I'm sure many people reading this thread watch. The final season cost $90m to make. Would this investment have been made if not for intellectual property rights that give HBO exclusive license to distribute the content? If Amazon, Google and Netflix could just take the work and distribute it for free, then would HBO have been willing to fund this? The same goes for many things that are costly to produce, such as movies or investigative journalism. Yes, there are people who are willing to work for free, but it's nonsense to argue that "there is no evidence that intellectual property in any way increases production of works". Once upon a time, you had wealthy patrons who were the principle supporters of the arts. The system worked to some extent, but even Jeff Bezos can't afford to foot the bill for every movie made today. EDIT: yes, game of thrones is heavily pirated, but as the article linked to below points out, the only reason this benefits HBO is that it leads to more subscriptions. In a world without copyright, Netflix could take GOT episodes the second they are created and put them up on its own platform, completely legally. I wonder how many people would pay HBO in that scenario. Right now, the benefit to subscribing to HBO is that you get to watch Game of Thrones legally, with a better viewing experience and you save the hassle of going through seedy torrent sites trying to find a high quality copy. The people who feel a moral obligation to pay for what they consume probably were already subscribers anyway.

module0000 7y ago
Erm...I don't think Game of Thrones is what the OP is talking about. You're talking about entertainment, and GP is talking about "information" in the context that "Humanity as a whole benefits from free access to it". Is humanity benefiting from watching actors enact stage combat scenes with makeup and costumes?
- chadash 7y ago
  I tend to agree with you on this specific example, but there's also plenty of work that IS good quality in my opinion that wouldn't get funded if the entity funding it didn't get exclusive access to distribute. I would say that the New York Times (or pick your favorite paper) is a good example of this. There's a good amount of quality writing that people don't get paid for out there, but funding things like investigative pieces that take months or years to research just doesn't happen much outside of well-funded newspapers that traditionally get that funding because they are the owners of the copyright, so if you want the info, you need to pay them.
dublinben 7y ago
Game of Thrones is a pretty bad example to use. Year after year it is one of the most pirated shows out there, which HBO tacitly approves of. Far more people watch the show for free than actually pay for it, but HBO still indirectly benefits from this massive popularity. https://theconversation.com/game-of-thrones-for-hbo-piracy-is-better-than-an-emmy-as-it-battles-netflix-115384 https://theconversation.com/game-of-thrones-for-hbo-piracy-i...
otakucode 7y ago
You are entering into a much more complicated territory there. The reason things like $90m TV shows and $200m movies get made is due to history. Solving distribution, getting things from point A to point B, was the hardest and most valuable problem to solve, bar none, for a century. It built empires. It made the publishing system that we're familiar with (and growing out of) possible. You see, there is a problem with publishing media that relies upon popular reception. Popular reception is perfectly random. There aren't any trends to identify, and no element of the works themselves can be tailored to increase your chances of success with it. It's been extensively studied. The only way publishers are able to fund projects ahead of time that cost so much and still turn a profit on what is essentially a coin flip is because they control distribution. When a terrible flop hits the theaters, they can pull it immediately and replace it with another attempt. When a film finds success, they can keep it in theaters for ages, minimizing their losses and maximizing their gains. The public response to each work is still random, but since they control what is available at the box office, they can still find success. Now that distribution is so simple a clever 12 year old can do global distribution in their spare time as a hobby, and the publishers don't have control over what options the audience has any more... they are destined to fall apart. It's not the content that made $90m shows possible, and no one remembers the $90m flops. That was entirely a matter of keeping the field of options limited and exercising control over distribution channels.
- chadash 7y ago
  This isn't correct. $90 million TV shows exist because after a studio creates that show, they have the exclusive legal right to sell it to distribute that content. Otherwise, nothing stops Netflix from just taking Game of Thrones for free and putting it on their own platform.
  - otakucode 7y ago
    I think you're side-stepping the issue. If no one is interested in watching the $90m show, it fails regardless of whether everyone or only one outlet can make it available. It has to have public popularity in order to even get to the starting line of there being some contention over which avenue through which it is distributed.
beefield 7y ago
> it's nonsense to argue that "there is no evidence that intellectual property in any way increases production of works" Please, offer the evidence, then. As it is nonsense to claim otherwise, it should be easy to come with unambiguous peer-reviewed research on this. (I'm not actually holding my breath here. All evidence I have ever seen reduces to assuming that IP increases production of immaterial goods. I am happy to be proven wrong here.)
- chadash 7y ago
  Sure, I'll quote the original source linked to above from economist David Levine (who makes the case against copyright): "we find that France, where copyright is introduced, the number of composers per million increased substantially more than in other countries." I'm cherry picking this quote, but then again, this entire book cherry-picks examples that work in their favor. I'm not arguing that patent or copyright law are correct. I think the patent system in particular needs a lot of reform. And copyrights are way too long. What I am arguing is that copyright (specifically, I'm not getting into patents) helps creators profit off of their work, and that profit motive induces people to create content in the first place, at least some of the time. I'll add that from a moral perspective, I think that if you write a book, Amazon shouldn't be able to copy your book and start selling it for free without reimbursing you. Economist Grew Mankiw notes that he spoke with the authors of the book linked to above and asked (I assume jokingly) if they would mind if he made copies of the book and sold them for a profit and the authors didn't feel that that would be fair within the current system.