7 ms·

The quote by John Perry Barlow: "Royalties are not how most writers or musicians make their living. Musicians by and large make a living with a relationship

The quote by John Perry Barlow: "Royalties are not how most writers or musicians make their living. Musicians by and large make a living with a relationship with an audience that is economically harnessed through performance and ticket sales." leaves a lot to be desired. OK, so how do writers make their living? By giving live readings? I think not.

seabee 15y ago
> OK, so how do writers make their living? The glib answer is "most don't", and indeed you will find a lot of writers who have other jobs. Journalists are writers, and the relationship there is fairly clear. PR and marketing materials need writing too. In short, you make your living by a company renting or commissioning your talents. Musicians had only one other option before recorded music - performing - and even then that wasn't always feasible. Think of classical music and its performance demands. You joke about live readings, but the ancient poets did just that. They also complained of poverty. People really do suffer for their art.
- adsr 15y ago
  It's a basic right, if you spend a year writing a book, you are the one who have the rights to sell it and thus make money from your work. Same with software, a GPL license would be worthless without copyright.
  - gnaritas 15y ago
    You assume it to be, but that's the point of this discussion, it isn't or shouldn't be. If you spend a year doing something no one wants to pay for, you don't have a right to force them to.
    - adsr 15y ago
      Of course, but if no one wants to buy it no one is forced to either.
      - gnaritas 15y ago
        That's not the point; once released, why should people not be allowed to freely copy and share it? Why do you think you get to control what other people do with information?
        adsr 15y ago
        It's not only about copying and sharing, but also who has the right to sell and distribute. If you create software, you are copyright owner of that software, which means I can not take it, sell it and take credit for it. I don't think I get to control what other people do with information, but you should have the right to control what others do with your work.
        gnaritas 15y ago
        > If you create software, you are copyright owner of that software, which means I can not take it, sell it and take credit for it. Ug.. it's pointless to state how things currently work in a meta discussion about whether the current method makes sense. I'm asking you to justify copyright, not explain it. I repeat, why do you think you should get to control what other people do with information? > I don't think I get to control what other people do with information, but you should have the right to control what others do with your work. And I say you shouldn't, so justify your belief. You should be able to control yourself, that's it; not the products of your labor when copied. Information is not property, you don't have less of it if I copy it and you should have no say over me copying it regardless of who produced it.
        adsr 15y ago
        As I said copying is only one part of copyright. If you spend a year in production and spending a large amount of money in the process. You should be the owner of the product, or anyone could just make a copy and sell it at a heavy discount with no associated costs of production. The interesting thing is that the same argument can in fact be made for property. How can you claim to own something at all? It's related to labor, having spent x amount of time working to buy something.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    >It's a basic right Right now, it's a right, yes (what exactly does 'basic' mean?). The question is whether it should be. >Same with software, a GPL license would be worthless without copyright. The GPL is just an hack, using copyright to achieve a goal. If you were rewriting IP law, you could very well institute copyleft without copyright.
    - adsr 15y ago
      GPL is good, since it's up to the author to chose if he/she want's to license it under the terms of the license. It's the authors role of a copyright owner that makes this possible. Forcing everyone to share their work seems like a bigger violation than copyright. Lastly, a GPL license wouldn't be possible to enforce without copyright, or the concept of a copyright owner.
      - icebraining 15y ago
        You wouldn't need to force - you could just give the author the right to demand that or not. >Lastly, a GPL license wouldn't be possible to enforce without copyright, or the concept of a copyright owner. Yes for the GPL, no for copyleft. The GPL was simply a mechanism that Stallman et all found to enable copyleft without having the power to rewrite the law. If you did have the power to rewrite the law - and if you were to eliminate copyright, you would - it'd be perfectly possible to add a 'copyleft right' without relying on copyright. The problem is that in Common law all those rights are based to the Copyright concept, and that blinds people to assume that must be. Here in Europe, we have 'authorship rights' - such as attribution - and they are not based on copyright; copyright is just one of them. You could take it out without affecting other authorship rights.
  - seabee 15y ago
    That's a non sequitur. Copyright does not grant you a living; it grants you the opportunity for one. Few writers make a living from writing, not because they are denied the opportunity, but because not enough people are willing to pay for it, or even interested in it! The same is true with other artists.
Zigurd 15y ago
The way I earn a living is the same way most musicians earn a living: By working for hire or teaching (consulting). There are about 10,000 books that make any measurable money at all, at any given time, and only a small fraction of those earn the authors enough to live on. Even famous authors of widely read books often have a "day job." Books I have co-authored are "pirated," mainly in markets where wages are lower than would support a local edition at local pricing. My publisher does not use DRM on e-books, and e-books still rapidly outpaced paper books. If you do the thought experiment, lack of copyright protection or a significantly shorter term of copyright, or some other variant, like a publishers' agreement not to trespass on other publishers' author relationships for some term, would not change my direct income from book writing very much. Publishing would adapt: Books might be serialized so that subscribers get first access on a continuing basis. Or frequent editions (which you might see anyway, with e-books) might become the norm. Apart from the handful of authors of "blockbusters" the book publishing economy would not change that much. We have made, and are protecting at great expense a novel result: A small number of authors, musicians, motion-picture makers, etc. can make big money through mass-reproduction of their works. Is that an advancement of civilization worth subverting all the potential for free expression the Internet provides, or not?
- antiterra 15y ago
  What if you wrote fiction?
DrJokepu 15y ago
I vehemently disagree with this statement. I have a few musician friends who now that they're over 40 and their rockstar career is over and they are settled and have family and all that, they are making a living by composing jingles for TV commercials. More than 50% of their income comes from royalties.

seabee 15y ago

> OK, so how do writers make their living? The glib answer is "most don't", and indeed you will find a lot of writers who have other jobs. Journalists are writers, and the relationship there is fairly clear. PR and marketing materials need writing too. In short, you make your living by a company renting or commissioning your talents. Musicians had only one other option before recorded music - performing - and even then that wasn't always feasible. Think of classical music and its performance demands. You joke about live readings, but the ancient poets did just that. They also complained of poverty. People really do suffer for their art.

adsr 15y ago
It's a basic right, if you spend a year writing a book, you are the one who have the rights to sell it and thus make money from your work. Same with software, a GPL license would be worthless without copyright.
- gnaritas 15y ago
  You assume it to be, but that's the point of this discussion, it isn't or shouldn't be. If you spend a year doing something no one wants to pay for, you don't have a right to force them to.
  - adsr 15y ago
    Of course, but if no one wants to buy it no one is forced to either.
    - gnaritas 15y ago
      That's not the point; once released, why should people not be allowed to freely copy and share it? Why do you think you get to control what other people do with information?
      - adsr 15y ago
        It's not only about copying and sharing, but also who has the right to sell and distribute. If you create software, you are copyright owner of that software, which means I can not take it, sell it and take credit for it. I don't think I get to control what other people do with information, but you should have the right to control what others do with your work.
        gnaritas 15y ago
        > If you create software, you are copyright owner of that software, which means I can not take it, sell it and take credit for it. Ug.. it's pointless to state how things currently work in a meta discussion about whether the current method makes sense. I'm asking you to justify copyright, not explain it. I repeat, why do you think you should get to control what other people do with information? > I don't think I get to control what other people do with information, but you should have the right to control what others do with your work. And I say you shouldn't, so justify your belief. You should be able to control yourself, that's it; not the products of your labor when copied. Information is not property, you don't have less of it if I copy it and you should have no say over me copying it regardless of who produced it.
        adsr 15y ago
        As I said copying is only one part of copyright. If you spend a year in production and spending a large amount of money in the process. You should be the owner of the product, or anyone could just make a copy and sell it at a heavy discount with no associated costs of production. The interesting thing is that the same argument can in fact be made for property. How can you claim to own something at all? It's related to labor, having spent x amount of time working to buy something.
- icebraining 15y ago
  >It's a basic right Right now, it's a right, yes (what exactly does 'basic' mean?). The question is whether it should be. >Same with software, a GPL license would be worthless without copyright. The GPL is just an hack, using copyright to achieve a goal. If you were rewriting IP law, you could very well institute copyleft without copyright.
  - adsr 15y ago
    GPL is good, since it's up to the author to chose if he/she want's to license it under the terms of the license. It's the authors role of a copyright owner that makes this possible. Forcing everyone to share their work seems like a bigger violation than copyright. Lastly, a GPL license wouldn't be possible to enforce without copyright, or the concept of a copyright owner.
    - icebraining 15y ago
      You wouldn't need to force - you could just give the author the right to demand that or not. >Lastly, a GPL license wouldn't be possible to enforce without copyright, or the concept of a copyright owner. Yes for the GPL, no for copyleft. The GPL was simply a mechanism that Stallman et all found to enable copyleft without having the power to rewrite the law. If you did have the power to rewrite the law - and if you were to eliminate copyright, you would - it'd be perfectly possible to add a 'copyleft right' without relying on copyright. The problem is that in Common law all those rights are based to the Copyright concept, and that blinds people to assume that must be. Here in Europe, we have 'authorship rights' - such as attribution - and they are not based on copyright; copyright is just one of them. You could take it out without affecting other authorship rights.
- seabee 15y ago
  That's a non sequitur. Copyright does not grant you a living; it grants you the opportunity for one. Few writers make a living from writing, not because they are denied the opportunity, but because not enough people are willing to pay for it, or even interested in it! The same is true with other artists.

Zigurd 15y ago

The way I earn a living is the same way most musicians earn a living: By working for hire or teaching (consulting). There are about 10,000 books that make any measurable money at all, at any given time, and only a small fraction of those earn the authors enough to live on. Even famous authors of widely read books often have a "day job." Books I have co-authored are "pirated," mainly in markets where wages are lower than would support a local edition at local pricing. My publisher does not use DRM on e-books, and e-books still rapidly outpaced paper books. If you do the thought experiment, lack of copyright protection or a significantly shorter term of copyright, or some other variant, like a publishers' agreement not to trespass on other publishers' author relationships for some term, would not change my direct income from book writing very much. Publishing would adapt: Books might be serialized so that subscribers get first access on a continuing basis. Or frequent editions (which you might see anyway, with e-books) might become the norm. Apart from the handful of authors of "blockbusters" the book publishing economy would not change that much. We have made, and are protecting at great expense a novel result: A small number of authors, musicians, motion-picture makers, etc. can make big money through mass-reproduction of their works. Is that an advancement of civilization worth subverting all the potential for free expression the Internet provides, or not?

antiterra 15y ago
What if you wrote fiction?

DrJokepu 15y ago

I vehemently disagree with this statement. I have a few musician friends who now that they're over 40 and their rockstar career is over and they are settled and have family and all that, they are making a living by composing jingles for TV commercials. More than 50% of their income comes from royalties.