5 ms·

I know a lot of folks who don't love that they have to choose between charging for their work and starving. You seem to suggest that the first of those options

I know a lot of folks who don't love that they have to choose between charging for their work and starving. You seem to suggest that the first of those options should be foreclosed and replaced with "beg for patronage". Which is pretty cool, because all else equal, that forces people to keep creating, lest they lose for lack of output whatever patronage they've managed to obtain. Like, it's fine to say ars gratia artis, but you need to come up with a way for that actually to happen. What you've described here is much more ars gratia affluentium. What ends up getting made is, and is only, what people want to pay for, which at best is no improvement over the status quo, and probably isn't even as good as that.

Thorentis 6y ago
I fail to see how copyright law as it exists now, removes the need to "beg for patronage". If anything, being able to freely access an authors work may generate more interest for lesser known authors. I think, as with many industries, there is an unfair wealth divide amongst creative professionals. I don't think JK Rowling is such a better writer than most other writers alive today, that she deserves to have made billions of dollars for her work. The only reason she has made that much is because of copyright law. If anything, copyright law increases the divide between the lucky authors, and the much more talented but much more unlucky ones.
- throwanem 6y ago
  I tend to think the eight-movie deal had something to do with the money. Would it have failed to happen without copyright law? Your analysis should account for that, and it doesn't. It also doesn't account for how, when there's no option to do anything but give it away, the people who succeed aren't those doing the best work, but those doing the best marketing. What's to stop them from simply finding good work by "talented but unlucky" people, representing it as their own, and getting rich on the back of it?

Thorentis 6y ago

I fail to see how copyright law as it exists now, removes the need to "beg for patronage". If anything, being able to freely access an authors work may generate more interest for lesser known authors. I think, as with many industries, there is an unfair wealth divide amongst creative professionals. I don't think JK Rowling is such a better writer than most other writers alive today, that she deserves to have made billions of dollars for her work. The only reason she has made that much is because of copyright law. If anything, copyright law increases the divide between the lucky authors, and the much more talented but much more unlucky ones.

throwanem 6y ago
I tend to think the eight-movie deal had something to do with the money. Would it have failed to happen without copyright law? Your analysis should account for that, and it doesn't. It also doesn't account for how, when there's no option to do anything but give it away, the people who succeed aren't those doing the best work, but those doing the best marketing. What's to stop them from simply finding good work by "talented but unlucky" people, representing it as their own, and getting rich on the back of it?