4 ms·

But that's not quite the argument. If I compose a poem or a play, and contract with a publisher to publish said poem and pay me a portion of the proceeds (or c

But that's not quite the argument. If I compose a poem or a play, and contract with a publisher to publish said poem and pay me a portion of the proceeds (or contract with a theater company to perform the play, and similarly pay me a portion of the proceeds), and some third party takes the poem/play and publishes/performs it without paying me, I have, in fact, been deprived of something, i.e., income. And, if my reading of history is not mistaken, it is precisely from this use case that the notion of intellectual property (in the initial form of copyright) takes its foundation.

hxa7241 15y ago
First: a third party is not bound by the contract. And if the contract cannot validly or practically secure you income, you cannot very well be said to be losing anything. Second: the big question is: why should we make the form of such a contract a general rule/law? Just assuming it is a matter of contract is just assuming away the interesting question.
slowpoke 15y ago
>And, if my reading of history is not mistaken It is. Copyright is and always was designed for distributors, not authors. It's nothing more than a myth - or rather, industry propaganda - that copyright was invented by authors. Here's a nice round-up of the entire history of copyright: http://questioncopyright.org/promise http://questioncopyright.org/promise
- antiterra 15y ago
  Even the forced slant in that "round-up" doesn't really serve to justify the conclusion in its last sentence. There is also no coherent argument that a dubious origin necessarily implies the lack of useful premise. The Internet and personal computing technology indeed add "roll-your-own" options to publishing and completing a work that did not exist beforehand. But, at this point, they certainly have not replaced the need for the (sometimes creative) work done to support the work of authors. Things like: editing, typesetting, music production, video post-processing etc. What happens when the publishing model is dead? Look at poetry. Poets still write, and some of it is decent. However, big publishers won't touch a poetry book that isn't a classic or a guaranteed sale anthology. Smaller imprints will usually only bother if the book has won a prize. In a number of cases authors pay a reading fee to enter contests, and the fee pays for the publishing of the book in a near break even scenario. In the case where poems are published on the internet, there's a small but arguable respectable audience, however there's no money changing hands whatsoever. Poets have second jobs, I know some who just gave up, who went into finance and law. I'll grant that lack of market is more of an issue as copying in this case, but publishers can help make markets. It should be easy to see how the effects are related. That is to say: What's the difference between a bitcoin and a poem? You can buy food with a bitcoin. Not everyone wants to be a sustenance farmer for a living.
Jach 15y ago
Interesting you chose the word 'deprived' instead of the more typical 'stole'. I think it's hard to justify stealing when only a copy was copied. So then 'deprived of income' in the sense of withheld income. Who is doing the withholding, and why do you think you're entitled to what they're withholding? And how much? (While the third party didn't have to write your work, they nevertheless would have to do a lot of work themselves to make a profit from it.) Here's an economic quote but I don't remember the source: "Profit is not determined by how much value you create, it is determined by how much of that value you can capture." Edit: Ah, looks like it's an Eliezer quote not from an economics text.
- michael_dorfman 15y ago
  In the example I offered, the economics are no mystery, but if it helps you to put numbers in the picture, let's go for it. Suppose I write a book of sonnets. I negotiate with a publisher whereby he has the exclusive right to print, distribute, and sell said book of sonnets for a period of five years, and I will be paid $1 per copy sold. The book proves popular, and a pirate publisher produces, distributes, and sells an identical edition, but fails to pay me the $1 per copy sold. In this case, I am being deprived of the income (by the pirate publisher) to the tune of $1 per copy that they have sold during the period in question. Clear?
  - Jach 15y ago
    Not really. Why is it $1? Suppose you make a contract with one publisher who will pay you $1 per copy sold and also negotiate with a different publisher who will pay you $2 per copy sold. How much are you deprived then, $1.50? $2? You're assuming that every copy the pirate sold could have been sold by your current publisher(s) but wasn't.
    - michael_dorfman 15y ago
      Because I stipulated that the contract was exclusive and time-limited. In other words, the assumption that every copy the pirate sold would have been sold by my current publisher is accurate-- hence the simplicity of the hypothetical.

hxa7241 15y ago

First: a third party is not bound by the contract. And if the contract cannot validly or practically secure you income, you cannot very well be said to be losing anything. Second: the big question is: why should we make the form of such a contract a general rule/law? Just assuming it is a matter of contract is just assuming away the interesting question.

slowpoke 15y ago

>And, if my reading of history is not mistaken It is. Copyright is and always was designed for distributors, not authors. It's nothing more than a myth - or rather, industry propaganda - that copyright was invented by authors. Here's a nice round-up of the entire history of copyright: http://questioncopyright.org/promise http://questioncopyright.org/promise

antiterra 15y ago
Even the forced slant in that "round-up" doesn't really serve to justify the conclusion in its last sentence. There is also no coherent argument that a dubious origin necessarily implies the lack of useful premise. The Internet and personal computing technology indeed add "roll-your-own" options to publishing and completing a work that did not exist beforehand. But, at this point, they certainly have not replaced the need for the (sometimes creative) work done to support the work of authors. Things like: editing, typesetting, music production, video post-processing etc. What happens when the publishing model is dead? Look at poetry. Poets still write, and some of it is decent. However, big publishers won't touch a poetry book that isn't a classic or a guaranteed sale anthology. Smaller imprints will usually only bother if the book has won a prize. In a number of cases authors pay a reading fee to enter contests, and the fee pays for the publishing of the book in a near break even scenario. In the case where poems are published on the internet, there's a small but arguable respectable audience, however there's no money changing hands whatsoever. Poets have second jobs, I know some who just gave up, who went into finance and law. I'll grant that lack of market is more of an issue as copying in this case, but publishers can help make markets. It should be easy to see how the effects are related. That is to say: What's the difference between a bitcoin and a poem? You can buy food with a bitcoin. Not everyone wants to be a sustenance farmer for a living.

Jach 15y ago

Interesting you chose the word 'deprived' instead of the more typical 'stole'. I think it's hard to justify stealing when only a copy was copied. So then 'deprived of income' in the sense of withheld income. Who is doing the withholding, and why do you think you're entitled to what they're withholding? And how much? (While the third party didn't have to write your work, they nevertheless would have to do a lot of work themselves to make a profit from it.) Here's an economic quote but I don't remember the source: "Profit is not determined by how much value you create, it is determined by how much of that value you can capture." Edit: Ah, looks like it's an Eliezer quote not from an economics text.

michael_dorfman 15y ago
In the example I offered, the economics are no mystery, but if it helps you to put numbers in the picture, let's go for it. Suppose I write a book of sonnets. I negotiate with a publisher whereby he has the exclusive right to print, distribute, and sell said book of sonnets for a period of five years, and I will be paid $1 per copy sold. The book proves popular, and a pirate publisher produces, distributes, and sells an identical edition, but fails to pay me the $1 per copy sold. In this case, I am being deprived of the income (by the pirate publisher) to the tune of $1 per copy that they have sold during the period in question. Clear?
- Jach 15y ago
  Not really. Why is it $1? Suppose you make a contract with one publisher who will pay you $1 per copy sold and also negotiate with a different publisher who will pay you $2 per copy sold. How much are you deprived then, $1.50? $2? You're assuming that every copy the pirate sold could have been sold by your current publisher(s) but wasn't.
  - michael_dorfman 15y ago
    Because I stipulated that the contract was exclusive and time-limited. In other words, the assumption that every copy the pirate sold would have been sold by my current publisher is accurate-- hence the simplicity of the hypothetical.