3 ms·

You're probably right, but this doesn't solve the fundamental problem. People who do intellectual labor, such as writing books, must be paid because everyone m

by api 6y ago

You're probably right, but this doesn't solve the fundamental problem. People who do intellectual labor, such as writing books, must be paid because everyone must be paid. Nothing is free. There are two options: (1) Copyright law, which allows them to erect toll booths and charge readers and users for their work. (2) A socialist type of system where writers and other intellectual laborers are supported publicly. The cyber-libertarian crowd is unhappy with both these options. They want everything to be free in all ways. Since intellectual labor is not free, Jeff Goldblum's Law (from Jurassic Park) comes into play: life finds a way. The way to support oneself in the cyber-libertarian everything-is-free world is by either overt advertising or whoring oneself out as a propagandist (covert advertising). A third variation also exists that combines aspects of both: surveillance capitalism. In surveillance capitalism all the free stuff is placed on a platform that spies on its users and the data is used to drive both overt and covert advertising. This is why a simple news web site is 20+ megabytes of trackers, ads, and surveillance crap, and why every platform seems user-hostile. It's also why an increasing amount of intellectual product whether it be books, news, podcasts, etc. is actually political or other forms of propaganda. You can make money by shilling for political parties or political agendas. You can't make money by being balanced and honest and level headed. The work will be much higher quality but nobody will pay for it.

syshum 6y ago
no it is not the default that " intellectual labor" must be paid for in currency (which is the assumption of your post) my comment here for example is " intellectual labor" but i am not paid for it There are all kinds of labor that people do with out being paid in currency for it, they derive other value from that labor. You then present a false dilemma in that it is either copyright law or socialism (public funding), there are a whole host of funding models that have been proven to work over and over again that require neither. Open Source is a ripe with examples, YouTube also provides for some, but there are many others (including complete creative Commons books that are funding voluntarily, and voluntary "Pay what you want" systems)
- api 6y ago
  You are really comparing a Hacker News comment that took 1-2 minutes to write with the content of libraries? It's hard for me to write a civil rebuttal to this. It takes years to write a good book. Years. It's not something you just whip out. The same applies to any non-trivial piece of music, art, software, engineering, design, or any other form of intellectual labor. People spend years and years on that stuff but only after they spend years and years getting good enough at their craft to actually produce it. I guess there's another option beyond the two I cited above: (3) Everything is low effort shit. Open Source is almost entirely funded by large companies. Pick a popular FOSS project and look at who's committing to it. They're people being paid by large companies to do the work because the company has some vested interest in supporting it. The counter-examples are either SaaS driven (meaning they're not really open) or dual licensed (meaning they're using copyright law). This sort of philanthropy has limits. In particular it doesn't work for consumer items, only for stuff that companies use directly. I really don't think you want to bring up YouTube as it actually proves my point. YouTube is a cesspool of propaganda and divisive trolling. That's the kind of content you get when it's "free" and creators must find roundabout ways to get paid for it, such as by stoking society's divisions for attention to monetize ad views.
  - jimhefferon 6y ago
    Your point is very good. However I do want to mention a very limited exception. I am an academic and I write texts that are Free. I figure that a (I hope!) good text raises the profile of my institution and that students come to study at an institution because it has a good reputation. So while, as you say, > It takes years to write a good book. Years. It's not something you just whip out. nonetheless these works are freely available. However, despite perhaps a few exceptions here and there (Kahn Academy is another), overall I very much agree. People have to be be paid. And while Patreon-type stuff is a great idea as far as it goes, it is not sufficient.
  - mcguire 6y ago
    How are you defining "good book"? Successful in the marketplace? No one gets paid to "spend years and years getting good enough at their craft" of writing. Very few people get paid reasonably to "spend years and years on" writing a good book.
mcguire 6y ago
I'd just like to jump in here to point out that most intellectual laborers in the modern world are not paid, at least in terms of a livable wage. Even those intellectual laborers who are paid specifically for intellectual labor, are not paid for writing, for example; they are paid for some other activity with writing as a required side-project.
- api 6y ago
  I'm quite aware that intellectual laborers are underpaid. I'm pointing out that abolishing copyright without any replacement system would make the situation far worse, effectively eliminating many careers. If this work didn't have much value that would be one thing, but it clearly does. Otherwise people would not be clamoring for access to it. Nobody cares if crap is freely available. People really want this stuff. They just don't want to pay for it either directly or via any public method. Meanwhile they spend the cost of a median price book or album in 1-2 visits to Starbucks without thinking about it.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    The replacement system for copyright is the system that was around pre-copyright: direct funding of works by people who have some interest in their production. Now applicable on a far larger scale via crowdfunding, as showcased by e.g. Kickstarter and IndieGogo (and used successfully to produce a sizeable amount of high-quality, free and open works).
marcus_holmes 6y ago
The third option, which works very well, is just by people donating to writers they want to. The maths works out pretty well if you look at it as a marketing funnel for the author. In the "traditional" model the author/publisher has to persuade a potential reader to part with money before reading the book, which has huge friction and costs lots of marketing money to persuade people that the book is good enough to buy before they read it - no "one month free trials" here. Using standard marketing funnel maths, they have to get the title in front of 10,000 people to get one sale (assuming a 1% conversion rate for the 2-step funnel). The net profit of this model is lower (for the author) because so much money is spent on marketing. In the donation model, the author gives the book for free, and then asks for a donation afterwards. They only need to get 100 people to read the book (assuming a 1% conversion rate of people who have read it and want to donate). The cool thing is that those 100 people have read the book, and know it, will talk about it, will recognise the author when their next book comes out, etc.
- Zonulet 6y ago
  I think your maths is off. A literary novel is a success if it sells 10,000 copies in hardback. I'm pretty sure that doesn't entail getting the book in front of a hundred million people.
  - marcus_holmes 6y ago
    no, the conversion funnel is "people see ad -> people click on ad/notice book -> people buy book". Getting the advert in front of 100mm people to sell 10K copies seems reasonable.
    - Nemo_bis 6y ago
      Indeed, given a rather typical conversion rate of 2 % you need a lot of people at the beginning to get thousands of sales. https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/03/17/what-is-a-good-conversion-rate https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/03/17/what-is-a-good...

by api 6y ago

syshum 6y ago

no it is not the default that " intellectual labor" must be paid for in currency (which is the assumption of your post) my comment here for example is " intellectual labor" but i am not paid for it There are all kinds of labor that people do with out being paid in currency for it, they derive other value from that labor. You then present a false dilemma in that it is either copyright law or socialism (public funding), there are a whole host of funding models that have been proven to work over and over again that require neither. Open Source is a ripe with examples, YouTube also provides for some, but there are many others (including complete creative Commons books that are funding voluntarily, and voluntary "Pay what you want" systems)

api 6y ago
You are really comparing a Hacker News comment that took 1-2 minutes to write with the content of libraries? It's hard for me to write a civil rebuttal to this. It takes years to write a good book. Years. It's not something you just whip out. The same applies to any non-trivial piece of music, art, software, engineering, design, or any other form of intellectual labor. People spend years and years on that stuff but only after they spend years and years getting good enough at their craft to actually produce it. I guess there's another option beyond the two I cited above: (3) Everything is low effort shit. Open Source is almost entirely funded by large companies. Pick a popular FOSS project and look at who's committing to it. They're people being paid by large companies to do the work because the company has some vested interest in supporting it. The counter-examples are either SaaS driven (meaning they're not really open) or dual licensed (meaning they're using copyright law). This sort of philanthropy has limits. In particular it doesn't work for consumer items, only for stuff that companies use directly. I really don't think you want to bring up YouTube as it actually proves my point. YouTube is a cesspool of propaganda and divisive trolling. That's the kind of content you get when it's "free" and creators must find roundabout ways to get paid for it, such as by stoking society's divisions for attention to monetize ad views.
- jimhefferon 6y ago
  Your point is very good. However I do want to mention a very limited exception. I am an academic and I write texts that are Free. I figure that a (I hope!) good text raises the profile of my institution and that students come to study at an institution because it has a good reputation. So while, as you say, > It takes years to write a good book. Years. It's not something you just whip out. nonetheless these works are freely available. However, despite perhaps a few exceptions here and there (Kahn Academy is another), overall I very much agree. People have to be be paid. And while Patreon-type stuff is a great idea as far as it goes, it is not sufficient.
- mcguire 6y ago
  How are you defining "good book"? Successful in the marketplace? No one gets paid to "spend years and years getting good enough at their craft" of writing. Very few people get paid reasonably to "spend years and years on" writing a good book.

mcguire 6y ago

I'd just like to jump in here to point out that most intellectual laborers in the modern world are not paid, at least in terms of a livable wage. Even those intellectual laborers who are paid specifically for intellectual labor, are not paid for writing, for example; they are paid for some other activity with writing as a required side-project.

api 6y ago
I'm quite aware that intellectual laborers are underpaid. I'm pointing out that abolishing copyright without any replacement system would make the situation far worse, effectively eliminating many careers. If this work didn't have much value that would be one thing, but it clearly does. Otherwise people would not be clamoring for access to it. Nobody cares if crap is freely available. People really want this stuff. They just don't want to pay for it either directly or via any public method. Meanwhile they spend the cost of a median price book or album in 1-2 visits to Starbucks without thinking about it.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  The replacement system for copyright is the system that was around pre-copyright: direct funding of works by people who have some interest in their production. Now applicable on a far larger scale via crowdfunding, as showcased by e.g. Kickstarter and IndieGogo (and used successfully to produce a sizeable amount of high-quality, free and open works).

marcus_holmes 6y ago

The third option, which works very well, is just by people donating to writers they want to. The maths works out pretty well if you look at it as a marketing funnel for the author. In the "traditional" model the author/publisher has to persuade a potential reader to part with money before reading the book, which has huge friction and costs lots of marketing money to persuade people that the book is good enough to buy before they read it - no "one month free trials" here. Using standard marketing funnel maths, they have to get the title in front of 10,000 people to get one sale (assuming a 1% conversion rate for the 2-step funnel). The net profit of this model is lower (for the author) because so much money is spent on marketing. In the donation model, the author gives the book for free, and then asks for a donation afterwards. They only need to get 100 people to read the book (assuming a 1% conversion rate of people who have read it and want to donate). The cool thing is that those 100 people have read the book, and know it, will talk about it, will recognise the author when their next book comes out, etc.

Zonulet 6y ago
I think your maths is off. A literary novel is a success if it sells 10,000 copies in hardback. I'm pretty sure that doesn't entail getting the book in front of a hundred million people.
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  no, the conversion funnel is "people see ad -> people click on ad/notice book -> people buy book". Getting the advert in front of 100mm people to sell 10K copies seems reasonable.
  - Nemo_bis 6y ago
    Indeed, given a rather typical conversion rate of 2 % you need a lot of people at the beginning to get thousands of sales. https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/03/17/what-is-a-good-conversion-rate https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/03/17/what-is-a-good...