5 ms·

While I agree that our current intellectual property system is doing a great deal of harm (particularly due to it being slanted in favor of monied interests), t

by jarrett 15y ago

While I agree that our current intellectual property system is doing a great deal of harm (particularly due to it being slanted in favor of monied interests), there is a protect-the-little-guy rationale for some form of copyright. Let's imagine a world without copyright. Suppose I spend a year writing a novel. This novel is great; it has the capacity to become the #1 bestseller, provided the right marketing is there. I go to my publisher and enter into a contract saying that I'll let them read my manuscript in exchange for them promising not to publish or sell it until we've worked out a deal. So far so good. Contracts keep me protected in the world without copyright. I give them the manuscript, they love it, and they publish it. All is well until a huge publishing company notices my book and starts printing and marketing it, without paying me or my publisher a dime. They manage to sell 100 times as many copies as my publisher, because mine is a small, independent operation, and the big company has a sophisticated and well-funded marketing machine. This is one area where intellectual property laws, if properly designed, would protect smaller entities against larger ones. And that's where I think the real value of (hypothetical) intellectual property laws lies.

lukeschlather 15y ago
Or nobody sells your book at all. You give it away for free on the Internet, and you make money off speaking appearances.
- benologist 15y ago
  It's very easy to say someone else should work for nothing and do additional work to earn money. Do you have a free-job that consumes most of your time, and a paid-job you fit in around it?
  - lukeschlather 15y ago
    It's sort of difficult to say whether I have a free-job or a paid-job. I certainly do a lot of volunteering.
- eropple 15y ago
  Because that's very realistic (Cory Doctorow aside, and he's a special case). It's foolish besides--speaking engagements, etc. take away time from actually producing creative works. It's the sort of miss-the-point silliness often espoused by the anti-IP sorts: "spend an incredible amount of time doing X to maybe, if you're lucky, sell a marginal number of Y, where Y is totally unrelated to X." It's silly and a misallocation of a wtiter's resources to take away from actually writing to hit the speaking circuit.
  - johnnyjustice 15y ago
    Well that's not fair, its not simply foolish. He prefaced his comment with "Or" meaning that its a possible business model. I think it would be fantastic to speak to my favorite writers and I know their time is valuable so I would pay to. But I am not stating that it is the perfect path. Though it would be nice if people considered it as a possibility.
    - eropple 15y ago
      It certainly is possible revenue source--once you have a big enough fanbase to support it. Which is probably multiple books and a number of years, during which your effective cash flow from an activity that takes up a staggering amount of time (and benefits others in the meantime) is essentially zero. It is not, in the general case, very viable. Which is why nobody takes it very seriously as a good path for all, or even most, writers. Because they have to eat, too.
      - lukeschlather 15y ago
        >Which is probably multiple books and a number of years, during which your effective cash flow from an activity that takes up a staggering amount of time (and benefits others in the meantime) is essentially zero. That's pretty much what most artists go through now, isn't it? I'm not convinced that copyright does a particularly good job of solving that problem. I'm not saying I definitely think copyright should be abolished, but it does at best a very mediocre job of rewarding artists.
conanite 15y ago
> Suppose I spend a year writing a novel. In a world without copyright, why would you even do that? The very concept of "#1 bestseller" would disappear, probably with interesting ramifications for cultural diversity.
- stonemetal 15y ago
  How so? If copyright didn't exist, books would come with point of sell contracts(think software EULAs today) that would be much worse than current copyright. Fair use would be a crazy idea invented by RMS at that point.
gnaritas 15y ago
> Let's imagine a world without copyright. Suppose I spend a year writing a novel. You'd know up front this probably isn't a profitable venture because writers would be starving artist types in such a world; novels would be written out of passion, not for income.

by jarrett 15y ago

lukeschlather 15y ago

Or nobody sells your book at all. You give it away for free on the Internet, and you make money off speaking appearances.

benologist 15y ago
It's very easy to say someone else should work for nothing and do additional work to earn money. Do you have a free-job that consumes most of your time, and a paid-job you fit in around it?
- lukeschlather 15y ago
  It's sort of difficult to say whether I have a free-job or a paid-job. I certainly do a lot of volunteering.
eropple 15y ago
Because that's very realistic (Cory Doctorow aside, and he's a special case). It's foolish besides--speaking engagements, etc. take away time from actually producing creative works. It's the sort of miss-the-point silliness often espoused by the anti-IP sorts: "spend an incredible amount of time doing X to maybe, if you're lucky, sell a marginal number of Y, where Y is totally unrelated to X." It's silly and a misallocation of a wtiter's resources to take away from actually writing to hit the speaking circuit.
- johnnyjustice 15y ago
  Well that's not fair, its not simply foolish. He prefaced his comment with "Or" meaning that its a possible business model. I think it would be fantastic to speak to my favorite writers and I know their time is valuable so I would pay to. But I am not stating that it is the perfect path. Though it would be nice if people considered it as a possibility.
  - eropple 15y ago
    It certainly is possible revenue source--once you have a big enough fanbase to support it. Which is probably multiple books and a number of years, during which your effective cash flow from an activity that takes up a staggering amount of time (and benefits others in the meantime) is essentially zero. It is not, in the general case, very viable. Which is why nobody takes it very seriously as a good path for all, or even most, writers. Because they have to eat, too.
    - lukeschlather 15y ago
      >Which is probably multiple books and a number of years, during which your effective cash flow from an activity that takes up a staggering amount of time (and benefits others in the meantime) is essentially zero. That's pretty much what most artists go through now, isn't it? I'm not convinced that copyright does a particularly good job of solving that problem. I'm not saying I definitely think copyright should be abolished, but it does at best a very mediocre job of rewarding artists.

conanite 15y ago

> Suppose I spend a year writing a novel. In a world without copyright, why would you even do that? The very concept of "#1 bestseller" would disappear, probably with interesting ramifications for cultural diversity.

stonemetal 15y ago
How so? If copyright didn't exist, books would come with point of sell contracts(think software EULAs today) that would be much worse than current copyright. Fair use would be a crazy idea invented by RMS at that point.

gnaritas 15y ago

> Let's imagine a world without copyright. Suppose I spend a year writing a novel. You'd know up front this probably isn't a profitable venture because writers would be starving artist types in such a world; novels would be written out of passion, not for income.