4 ms·

I guess this is another nail in the coffin for the "economic argument" in favour of monopolistic copyright law. People will continue making good content even if

I guess this is another nail in the coffin for the "economic argument" in favour of monopolistic copyright law. People will continue making good content even if it is freely available, and sales may even increase rather than decrease.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
macintux 6y ago
I don’t follow your logic. Without copyright, someone else could take the author’s books and give them away or sell them without attribution. How would he benefit from that?
- Thorentis 6y ago
  I am not opposed to copyright law that makes it illegal to sell somebody else's work for profit. But what's the difference between me giving you a copy of the book for free (with attribution) and the author giving you a copy of the book? I am opposed to copyright that stops people from copying works they have purchased (or obtained elsewhere) and distributing them. And my argument was that, as shown by the post, giving copies away for free can actually increase overall sales rather than decrease them.
  - macintux 6y ago
    This is weak evidence for that conclusion. LeanPub makes it possible to buy a free book, so everyone who came for the free copy had an opportunity to immediately “tip” the author.
    - Thorentis 6y ago
      I'm not saying one anecdote along is sufficient evidence. But I've seen a fair few cases where content creators who previously had little audience or readership suddenly gained one by giving away their content for free. In the digital age, it is so easy to copy books, films, TV shows. The arguments against making it legal, is that film studios will make less money. But what percentage of people are currently not pirating content because it's illegal? I'd say a very very small handful. I would much rather have the option to obtain a copy for free, and donate to the author if I thought it was worth it. Patreon works exactly like this.
  - TylerE 6y ago
    As a (hypothetical) author, one of my most obvious objections is that I can make sure I'm giving out the most recent, error-corrected version. I do not expect random 3rd parties to give much of a shit about such things.
    - livueta 6y ago
      If anything, that's one of the reasons brought up in _opposition_ to monopolistic copyright laws: piracy is going to happen, legal or not. If you don't release your stuff freely, people will google "___ full PDF" and end up with some badly-OCR'd out-of-date version of your text. If you distribute it freely yourself, you're cutting the middleman out in a way, since by doing that you assure that there's a well-known, authoritative, up-to-date and free source of your work.
chii 6y ago
> People will continue making good content even if it is freely available, and sales may even increase rather than decrease. but it isn't a "sale" if the content was given away freely. I would call that a donation. So do you see a patreon-like system work for a majority of content producers?
- Thorentis 6y ago
  I definitely think there is potential for a patreon-like system to work for more people. I just don't think it has been tried yet. I also think the bigger issue here is the copyright law that prevents giving copies to friends. Even if a content producer only sells their work - if I buy a copy of it, I should be able to do what I like with it, short of selling it for a profit. Telling me that I can't copy a file is telling me that I can't arrange my hard disk in a particular pattern, because somebody else did it first. Copyright actually infringes on physical property rights when you consider it this way. I have no issue with preventing people from profiting off another's work. But preventing people from using their own physical property in a certain way, because somebody else used it that way first is absurd. Imagine being told when you buy a notepad and pen, that you can only write words on there that aren't in the same order that somebody else has already written them in. Even if you don't intend to sell a piece of paper with those words on it, writing them down in that order is illegal if they exist in that order in a copyrighted work. It is a ridiculous notion.
kelnos 6y ago
Some people will, sure. But the overall volume of content will decrease by many orders of magnitude, since very few people will be able to make a primary living off of it. You might view this as a good thing (under the idea that most stuff out there is crap), but I can think of quite a few things that I expect would not exist without copyright, and I'd miss them. Our current copyright regime is horrendously broken, but abolishing copyright is just going to create other problems.
- Thorentis 6y ago
  Which type of content do you think will disappear if works can be freely distributed by anybody? Most content producers I know either produce content because they love it, and make money from advertisements and donations (e.g. YouTube), or they have a dedicated following that will buy content from them (rather than pirate it) to support them.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    I expect that most of the TV shows and movies I like to watch, many of which cost millions of dollars to produce, would not get made if the norm was to share it all for free, and if there was no legal restriction against doing so.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

macintux 6y ago

I don’t follow your logic. Without copyright, someone else could take the author’s books and give them away or sell them without attribution. How would he benefit from that?

Thorentis 6y ago
I am not opposed to copyright law that makes it illegal to sell somebody else's work for profit. But what's the difference between me giving you a copy of the book for free (with attribution) and the author giving you a copy of the book? I am opposed to copyright that stops people from copying works they have purchased (or obtained elsewhere) and distributing them. And my argument was that, as shown by the post, giving copies away for free can actually increase overall sales rather than decrease them.
- macintux 6y ago
  This is weak evidence for that conclusion. LeanPub makes it possible to buy a free book, so everyone who came for the free copy had an opportunity to immediately “tip” the author.
  - Thorentis 6y ago
    I'm not saying one anecdote along is sufficient evidence. But I've seen a fair few cases where content creators who previously had little audience or readership suddenly gained one by giving away their content for free. In the digital age, it is so easy to copy books, films, TV shows. The arguments against making it legal, is that film studios will make less money. But what percentage of people are currently not pirating content because it's illegal? I'd say a very very small handful. I would much rather have the option to obtain a copy for free, and donate to the author if I thought it was worth it. Patreon works exactly like this.
- TylerE 6y ago
  As a (hypothetical) author, one of my most obvious objections is that I can make sure I'm giving out the most recent, error-corrected version. I do not expect random 3rd parties to give much of a shit about such things.
  - livueta 6y ago
    If anything, that's one of the reasons brought up in _opposition_ to monopolistic copyright laws: piracy is going to happen, legal or not. If you don't release your stuff freely, people will google "___ full PDF" and end up with some badly-OCR'd out-of-date version of your text. If you distribute it freely yourself, you're cutting the middleman out in a way, since by doing that you assure that there's a well-known, authoritative, up-to-date and free source of your work.

chii 6y ago

> People will continue making good content even if it is freely available, and sales may even increase rather than decrease. but it isn't a "sale" if the content was given away freely. I would call that a donation. So do you see a patreon-like system work for a majority of content producers?

Thorentis 6y ago
I definitely think there is potential for a patreon-like system to work for more people. I just don't think it has been tried yet. I also think the bigger issue here is the copyright law that prevents giving copies to friends. Even if a content producer only sells their work - if I buy a copy of it, I should be able to do what I like with it, short of selling it for a profit. Telling me that I can't copy a file is telling me that I can't arrange my hard disk in a particular pattern, because somebody else did it first. Copyright actually infringes on physical property rights when you consider it this way. I have no issue with preventing people from profiting off another's work. But preventing people from using their own physical property in a certain way, because somebody else used it that way first is absurd. Imagine being told when you buy a notepad and pen, that you can only write words on there that aren't in the same order that somebody else has already written them in. Even if you don't intend to sell a piece of paper with those words on it, writing them down in that order is illegal if they exist in that order in a copyrighted work. It is a ridiculous notion.

kelnos 6y ago

Some people will, sure. But the overall volume of content will decrease by many orders of magnitude, since very few people will be able to make a primary living off of it. You might view this as a good thing (under the idea that most stuff out there is crap), but I can think of quite a few things that I expect would not exist without copyright, and I'd miss them. Our current copyright regime is horrendously broken, but abolishing copyright is just going to create other problems.

Thorentis 6y ago
Which type of content do you think will disappear if works can be freely distributed by anybody? Most content producers I know either produce content because they love it, and make money from advertisements and donations (e.g. YouTube), or they have a dedicated following that will buy content from them (rather than pirate it) to support them.
- kelnos 6y ago
  I expect that most of the TV shows and movies I like to watch, many of which cost millions of dollars to produce, would not get made if the norm was to share it all for free, and if there was no legal restriction against doing so.