4 ms·

Ah, so it's two separate arguments, a moral one and an economic one. 1. I disagree. I'm curious as to the precise moral dimension you're talking about here. 2

Ah, so it's two separate arguments, a moral one and an economic one. 1. I disagree. I'm curious as to the precise moral dimension you're talking about here. 2. You're kidding yourself if you think you can stop it, or that by plugging your ears and closing your eyes you can make it all go away. Most of your argument seems to be that because artists rely on selling copies now, that it must always be so. The fact is, artistic expression predates copying technology. Art fits into the technological capabilities that exist, not the other way around. Before image copying tech, artists made paintings, drawings, and sculptures, and sold them. There were other business models as well, like private and religious patronage. In ancient times, oral poets travelled and essentially gave live concerts. Dramatists had state sponsorship. Many of these business models and even entire mediums died out as our technology changed. That's what happens. Maybe authors as we know them will figure out a way to survive, or maybe they'll die out. Same goes for filmmakers, musicians or any other artists. There's nothing special about the particular art forms we have now. I keep talking vaguely about alternative business models because we're at a transition point. They haven't been invented yet. "Nobody's going to invent an ingenious new way of making money out of music. There's live performance or there's selling intellectual property. That's it." That's the spirit! You'd better tell Amanda Palmer, though, I don't think she got that memo.

Tycho 15y ago
1. We could go on for several pages about the 'precise moral dimensions' but we both know that taking somebody's work, for nothing, against their wishes, is not cool. If you don't want to pay for it, do without it. Civilisation is built on mutual respect of rights. 2. Maybe piracy is here to stay. I just resent the sneaky suggestion that its only the lumbering, dinosaur labels with their outmoded industrial apparatus that are going to suffer. It's not true at all. The people with the most to lose are the artists themselves - especially the more intellectual ones, eg. authors. In your brave new world, The Beatles would have continued touring pub venues and only the lucky few who got to see them would realise how much they stood out from the 10,000 other bands doing the same thing. Oh and religious and aristocratic patronage as a primary 'business model' royally sucked - that's basically why the copyright model and the arts have thrived over the last few hundred years. Its why we get to watch 100MM budget movies. It's a bloody good system and it's a crying shame to throw it away just because of piracy.
- joebadmo 15y ago
  1. "we both know that taking somebody's work, for nothing, against their wishes, is not cool." I'm really not sure I agree with that. "Civilisation is built on mutual respect of rights." Which rights are you talking about in this case exactly? The only one I can detect from your position is the right to be compensated for your work, which doesn't sound like a natural right at all. 2. Well, my position is that a lot of artists are suffering now, under the thumbs of the dinosaurs (to mix metaphors) you're trying to defend. In the future, those artists (as well as those industry players) who cannot or will not adapt will suffer. "In your brave new world, The Beatles would have continued touring pub venues and only the lucky few who got to see them would realise how much they stood out from the 10,000 other bands doing the same thing." But in my brave new world, I actually get to take part in deciding who stands out and who doesn't, instead of waiting for big labels to tell me, and I can rapidly communicate my decision to many other people very quickly. I take a more direct, decentralized stake in my cultural heritage. I find this pleasing. "religious and aristocratic patronage as a primary 'business model' royally sucked" I wasn't saying it was great. I was saying that artists adapt to the circumstances. They will continue to do so. "why the copyright model and the arts have thrived over the last few hundred years" I neither grant this premise, nor understand the causal connection you present. "Its why we get to watch 100MM budget movies." I've found that by my own measure, in the last couple of decades, the quality of a movie has had a generally inversely proportional relationship with the size of its budget. My theory explaining this is that with a larger investment, you need a broader base audience and relatively "safe" content, which translates to bland, soulless, lowest common denominator fare. I'll be happy to see this die. "It's a bloody good system and it's a crying shame to throw it away just because of piracy." I really don't think it's a good system at all. Its primary purpose was to promote continued innovation and creation. I've yet to see convincing evidence that it has done so, or that innovation and creation would suffer in its absence. BTW: Thanks for indulging the argument without resorting to the ugliness that so many of these threadsd tend to devolve into. Even if neither of us convince the other, I find this exchange meaningful and clarifying of my own thoughts. I hope you feel the same.
  - Tycho 15y ago
    The copyright model and the arts have thrived for the last few centuries because copyright was such a vast improvement on what came before it. It led to an explosion of creativity and entertainment industry. Now while a fatted arts industry will always contribute a lot of bloated, formulaic works (although I think people would have to admit that even the more braindead hollywood titles have a lot going for them beyond the plot and script), it also allows big money to spent on worthwhile projects. Think of all the great movies that have been made in the last 70 years - they may not have been the most expensive for their time but they were generally still pretty damn costly to make. And even the shoe-string budget attempts probably would not have been made if the possibility for a massive pay-day did not exist (eg. Blair Witch Project). I think people have got their priorities mixed up. Accessing art is not the problem. We have limited leisure time to spend, so even if we could, we would not want to buy every album/movie/book we could. These items are cheap, though, so since price is not really a concern, our worry should be ensuring that artists and the creative industries have economically viable roles. And do we really want to live in a world where the quality of the TV and film output never rises above the level of, say, Spain?
tszyn 15y ago
It is true that artistic expression predates copyright. But isn't it the case that, before copyright, full-time artists either had wealthy patrons (Roman Catholic Church, the nobility) or lived in poverty? Copyright made it possible for an artist to make a living without having a wealthy patron. I don't think we want to go back to a world where artists are funded by rich people because in that world, the rich decide what works get created. Copyright is the only proven way of producing an abundance of art CREATED FOR THE GENERAL PUBLIC, not for the Church or some nobleman. Just look at how many books and songs we got in the 20. century. Thousands of consumers each paying a small amount is a fundamentally democratic idea. I think it should be possible for a writer, musician or developer to make money from ACTUAL creative work -- not from concerts, book signings or t-shirts. I don't see why so many people seem to wish for a world in which a hairdresser gets paid for his work, but a composer or software developer gets nothing. Do we really want a system which rewards the creation of tangible products like tables and haircuts, but not the creation of ideas? In the 21. century? Seriously? To those who ask "why create artificial scarcity?": For the same reason we have environmental regulations. Environmental regulations also create artificial scarcity. We make it artificially expensive to release CO2 into the air or to fish cod out of the sea above a certain limit. Why? Because this is necessary to ensure continued abundance. Unless someone proposes a better model which enables people to make a living by creating reproducible works, I will remain a (critical) supporter of copyright. In general, I think we should strive to create a system which rewards contributions to our society.
- joebadmo 15y ago
  "before copyright, full-time artists either had wealthy patrons (Roman Catholic Church, the nobility) or lived in poverty? Copyright made it possible for an artist to make a living without having a wealthy patron." Even if the former is true, I don't think the latter is. "I don't think we want to go back to a world where artists are funded by rich people because in that world, the rich decide what works get created." How is this not the situation now? Musicians and filmmakers work at the pleasure of large corporations, who have neither the general enrichment of the culture nor the livelihood of the artist as a priority. "I think it should be possible for a writer, musician or developer to make money from ACTUAL creative work..." That's not really the way capitalism works, though. They don't have a natural right to be compensated for the work they want to do. If they did, I'd sit at home and write essays on my blog for 40 hrs/wk instead of going to my government job. Artists have to figure out how to get paid just like the rest of us. Copyright isn't working. See Amanda Palmer for a model that's an alternative both to being owned by a corporation and to starving. It involves a lot of direct relationship with audience. (You'd think HN of all communities would get this.) Environmental regulations are not really artificial scarcity, though. It's more like trying to internalize tragedy of the commons externalities. I think of it like an insurance policy, where you charge people who are having a negative effect that won't be felt until later, so you can pay to deal with it when the time comes.

Tycho 15y ago

1. We could go on for several pages about the 'precise moral dimensions' but we both know that taking somebody's work, for nothing, against their wishes, is not cool. If you don't want to pay for it, do without it. Civilisation is built on mutual respect of rights. 2. Maybe piracy is here to stay. I just resent the sneaky suggestion that its only the lumbering, dinosaur labels with their outmoded industrial apparatus that are going to suffer. It's not true at all. The people with the most to lose are the artists themselves - especially the more intellectual ones, eg. authors. In your brave new world, The Beatles would have continued touring pub venues and only the lucky few who got to see them would realise how much they stood out from the 10,000 other bands doing the same thing. Oh and religious and aristocratic patronage as a primary 'business model' royally sucked - that's basically why the copyright model and the arts have thrived over the last few hundred years. Its why we get to watch 100MM budget movies. It's a bloody good system and it's a crying shame to throw it away just because of piracy.

joebadmo 15y ago
1. "we both know that taking somebody's work, for nothing, against their wishes, is not cool." I'm really not sure I agree with that. "Civilisation is built on mutual respect of rights." Which rights are you talking about in this case exactly? The only one I can detect from your position is the right to be compensated for your work, which doesn't sound like a natural right at all. 2. Well, my position is that a lot of artists are suffering now, under the thumbs of the dinosaurs (to mix metaphors) you're trying to defend. In the future, those artists (as well as those industry players) who cannot or will not adapt will suffer. "In your brave new world, The Beatles would have continued touring pub venues and only the lucky few who got to see them would realise how much they stood out from the 10,000 other bands doing the same thing." But in my brave new world, I actually get to take part in deciding who stands out and who doesn't, instead of waiting for big labels to tell me, and I can rapidly communicate my decision to many other people very quickly. I take a more direct, decentralized stake in my cultural heritage. I find this pleasing. "religious and aristocratic patronage as a primary 'business model' royally sucked" I wasn't saying it was great. I was saying that artists adapt to the circumstances. They will continue to do so. "why the copyright model and the arts have thrived over the last few hundred years" I neither grant this premise, nor understand the causal connection you present. "Its why we get to watch 100MM budget movies." I've found that by my own measure, in the last couple of decades, the quality of a movie has had a generally inversely proportional relationship with the size of its budget. My theory explaining this is that with a larger investment, you need a broader base audience and relatively "safe" content, which translates to bland, soulless, lowest common denominator fare. I'll be happy to see this die. "It's a bloody good system and it's a crying shame to throw it away just because of piracy." I really don't think it's a good system at all. Its primary purpose was to promote continued innovation and creation. I've yet to see convincing evidence that it has done so, or that innovation and creation would suffer in its absence. BTW: Thanks for indulging the argument without resorting to the ugliness that so many of these threadsd tend to devolve into. Even if neither of us convince the other, I find this exchange meaningful and clarifying of my own thoughts. I hope you feel the same.
- Tycho 15y ago
  The copyright model and the arts have thrived for the last few centuries because copyright was such a vast improvement on what came before it. It led to an explosion of creativity and entertainment industry. Now while a fatted arts industry will always contribute a lot of bloated, formulaic works (although I think people would have to admit that even the more braindead hollywood titles have a lot going for them beyond the plot and script), it also allows big money to spent on worthwhile projects. Think of all the great movies that have been made in the last 70 years - they may not have been the most expensive for their time but they were generally still pretty damn costly to make. And even the shoe-string budget attempts probably would not have been made if the possibility for a massive pay-day did not exist (eg. Blair Witch Project). I think people have got their priorities mixed up. Accessing art is not the problem. We have limited leisure time to spend, so even if we could, we would not want to buy every album/movie/book we could. These items are cheap, though, so since price is not really a concern, our worry should be ensuring that artists and the creative industries have economically viable roles. And do we really want to live in a world where the quality of the TV and film output never rises above the level of, say, Spain?

tszyn 15y ago

It is true that artistic expression predates copyright. But isn't it the case that, before copyright, full-time artists either had wealthy patrons (Roman Catholic Church, the nobility) or lived in poverty? Copyright made it possible for an artist to make a living without having a wealthy patron. I don't think we want to go back to a world where artists are funded by rich people because in that world, the rich decide what works get created. Copyright is the only proven way of producing an abundance of art CREATED FOR THE GENERAL PUBLIC, not for the Church or some nobleman. Just look at how many books and songs we got in the 20. century. Thousands of consumers each paying a small amount is a fundamentally democratic idea. I think it should be possible for a writer, musician or developer to make money from ACTUAL creative work -- not from concerts, book signings or t-shirts. I don't see why so many people seem to wish for a world in which a hairdresser gets paid for his work, but a composer or software developer gets nothing. Do we really want a system which rewards the creation of tangible products like tables and haircuts, but not the creation of ideas? In the 21. century? Seriously? To those who ask "why create artificial scarcity?": For the same reason we have environmental regulations. Environmental regulations also create artificial scarcity. We make it artificially expensive to release CO2 into the air or to fish cod out of the sea above a certain limit. Why? Because this is necessary to ensure continued abundance. Unless someone proposes a better model which enables people to make a living by creating reproducible works, I will remain a (critical) supporter of copyright. In general, I think we should strive to create a system which rewards contributions to our society.

joebadmo 15y ago
"before copyright, full-time artists either had wealthy patrons (Roman Catholic Church, the nobility) or lived in poverty? Copyright made it possible for an artist to make a living without having a wealthy patron." Even if the former is true, I don't think the latter is. "I don't think we want to go back to a world where artists are funded by rich people because in that world, the rich decide what works get created." How is this not the situation now? Musicians and filmmakers work at the pleasure of large corporations, who have neither the general enrichment of the culture nor the livelihood of the artist as a priority. "I think it should be possible for a writer, musician or developer to make money from ACTUAL creative work..." That's not really the way capitalism works, though. They don't have a natural right to be compensated for the work they want to do. If they did, I'd sit at home and write essays on my blog for 40 hrs/wk instead of going to my government job. Artists have to figure out how to get paid just like the rest of us. Copyright isn't working. See Amanda Palmer for a model that's an alternative both to being owned by a corporation and to starving. It involves a lot of direct relationship with audience. (You'd think HN of all communities would get this.) Environmental regulations are not really artificial scarcity, though. It's more like trying to internalize tragedy of the commons externalities. I think of it like an insurance policy, where you charge people who are having a negative effect that won't be felt until later, so you can pay to deal with it when the time comes.