6 ms·

> I'd like to put the question to those HN members who work in tech: How would you feel if someone took your output without permission, whether it's designs or

by RNCTX 6y ago

> I'd like to put the question to those HN members who work in tech: How would you feel if someone took your output without permission, whether it's designs or code or something else unique and hard to make? How would you feel if people cheered this on, or called for your demise, suggesting that the world would be a better place without your work? As someone with a humanities education (literature specifically) I feel like I've studied more than the average reader here about the particulars of famous printed works from the past. And that background says "bullshit" in response to your questions. Throughout history publishers have exploited authors mercilessly in an effort to keep ALL of the profit from their writing. In short, the answer to your hypothetical question is quite simple. All of these people you're addressing have code, and have original ideas. You on the other hand are just a publisher, you don't have any original work at all. You're nothing but a middle man. There are no more middle managers at toaster and television distributors in the developed world, sitting at desks filling out reports by hand and ordering fresh stocks of paperclips and staples. We got rid of those people when we modernized supply chains and in the process cut the prices of microwaves and televisions so that they're not luxury items anymore. Similarly, there's not going to be any room for publishing middle men for very long either. If I were you I'd find a new line of work.

Mindwipe 6y ago
> There are no more middle managers at toaster and television distributors in the developed world This is a joke right? There is absolutely a place for publishers, which is why they still exist fifteen years after anti-copyright campaigners said they'd be done in five. If authors decide not to go to publishers and publish directly you'll have a point. Broadly, they don't.
k__ 6y ago
This. I made five figures by selling my book via a small publisher. I know authors who sold their books via big publishers and they made magnitudes less money than me while selling magnitudes more copies than me. To me this sounds like a broken system.
- RNCTX 6y ago
  A more valid hypothetical would be the expectation that developers working for Google and Microsoft would be expected to work for free, creating entire codebases for no money, with the only contribution from the publisher (Google and Microsoft) being an editor to glance at and reject ideas they thought unprofitable after the developers had spent countless hours / months / years creating them. If the occasional developer working for free finds a profitable idea, the Google or Microsoft would pay them well under what that person requires to survive for one year, plus a small (less than 10%) residual royalty only after the developer has "paid back" the less-than-one-year amount which the Google or Microsoft called an advance rather than payment for the original work. The only way the working-for-free developer could survive would be to teach other developers who also aspire to work for free, and in so doing suppress their urge to tell those students to go do quite literally anything else more productive, because succumbing to that moral urge would result in less students, which is the only way the developer can pay for rent and groceries.
  - SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
    Okay, but this is not about whether publishers should exist...
    - RNCTX 6y ago
      > Okay, but this is not about whether publishers should exist... Publisher denotes a person, who presumably has power over another person in this context. The assumption present in the definition of the term is that a content creator, artist, whatever you want to call them cannot communicate with their audience unless a person between audience and artist assumes control/ownership of its distribution. Publishing, as a verb not a noun, is another matter entirely. No one is arguing that publishing will cease to exist. Even extended in context to include marketing people, I'm sure the vast majority of people here will concede that marketing people serve a viable role in their business. But the vocation of publishing is the only one remaining from the medieval/ancient world in which publishers demand ownership of the material being published, under highly dubious terms. We do not give ownership of car factories to car salesmen, simply because they sell cars. Nor do we give ownership of parks and streets to politicians, simply because they write laws governing their use and levy taxes to maintain them. What stopped print publishers from selling devices like the Kindle before Amazon did? Nothing. What stopped newspaper publishers from building nationwide advertising networks before AOL and Google did? Nothing. What stopped the RIAA from building iTunes or Napster before Apple or Napster did? Nothing. What stopped the MPAA from building Netflix before Netflix did? Nothing. Mere decades ago, all of those publishing consortiums had infinitely more resources available to them to assert dominance over these new markets than those upstarts who have since supplanted them. If your contribution to the livelihood of your own business has been a steady stream of nothings for about 30-40 years, you tend to get in fiscal trouble in this day and age...
SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
How is that relevant to what Internet Archive is doing? As I understand it, the Internet Archive has decided that it will freely distribute even self-published authorship.

by RNCTX 6y ago

Mindwipe 6y ago

> There are no more middle managers at toaster and television distributors in the developed world This is a joke right? There is absolutely a place for publishers, which is why they still exist fifteen years after anti-copyright campaigners said they'd be done in five. If authors decide not to go to publishers and publish directly you'll have a point. Broadly, they don't.

k__ 6y ago

This. I made five figures by selling my book via a small publisher. I know authors who sold their books via big publishers and they made magnitudes less money than me while selling magnitudes more copies than me. To me this sounds like a broken system.

RNCTX 6y ago
A more valid hypothetical would be the expectation that developers working for Google and Microsoft would be expected to work for free, creating entire codebases for no money, with the only contribution from the publisher (Google and Microsoft) being an editor to glance at and reject ideas they thought unprofitable after the developers had spent countless hours / months / years creating them. If the occasional developer working for free finds a profitable idea, the Google or Microsoft would pay them well under what that person requires to survive for one year, plus a small (less than 10%) residual royalty only after the developer has "paid back" the less-than-one-year amount which the Google or Microsoft called an advance rather than payment for the original work. The only way the working-for-free developer could survive would be to teach other developers who also aspire to work for free, and in so doing suppress their urge to tell those students to go do quite literally anything else more productive, because succumbing to that moral urge would result in less students, which is the only way the developer can pay for rent and groceries.
- SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
  Okay, but this is not about whether publishers should exist...
  - RNCTX 6y ago
    > Okay, but this is not about whether publishers should exist... Publisher denotes a person, who presumably has power over another person in this context. The assumption present in the definition of the term is that a content creator, artist, whatever you want to call them cannot communicate with their audience unless a person between audience and artist assumes control/ownership of its distribution. Publishing, as a verb not a noun, is another matter entirely. No one is arguing that publishing will cease to exist. Even extended in context to include marketing people, I'm sure the vast majority of people here will concede that marketing people serve a viable role in their business. But the vocation of publishing is the only one remaining from the medieval/ancient world in which publishers demand ownership of the material being published, under highly dubious terms. We do not give ownership of car factories to car salesmen, simply because they sell cars. Nor do we give ownership of parks and streets to politicians, simply because they write laws governing their use and levy taxes to maintain them. What stopped print publishers from selling devices like the Kindle before Amazon did? Nothing. What stopped newspaper publishers from building nationwide advertising networks before AOL and Google did? Nothing. What stopped the RIAA from building iTunes or Napster before Apple or Napster did? Nothing. What stopped the MPAA from building Netflix before Netflix did? Nothing. Mere decades ago, all of those publishing consortiums had infinitely more resources available to them to assert dominance over these new markets than those upstarts who have since supplanted them. If your contribution to the livelihood of your own business has been a steady stream of nothings for about 30-40 years, you tend to get in fiscal trouble in this day and age...

SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago

How is that relevant to what Internet Archive is doing? As I understand it, the Internet Archive has decided that it will freely distribute even self-published authorship.