3 ms·

> As I've noted several times here recently,[2] the $9 billion in annual bookstore sales[3] could be met with a $5.25 per month fee for a typical U.S. household

> As I've noted several times here recently,[2] the $9 billion in annual bookstore sales[3] could be met with a $5.25 per month fee for a typical U.S. household, or an 0.1% income tax basis (say, rolled into your broadband access charge). > This would provide compensation equal to all current book sales How would this money be distributed?

freeplay 4y ago
And herein lies the problem with socialism...
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  The method would strongly resemble how present broadcast and mechanical royalties operate in music radio, broadcast television, and even print publication circulation audits. The idea being that content is aggregated and total consumption is reasonably estimated, rather than precisely extracted via hugely inefficient direct-sales mechanisms. There's no such thing as a free lunch-monetisation system.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dredmorbius 4y ago
See for example: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Fox_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Fox_Agency> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Society_of_Composers,_Authors_and_Publishers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Society_of_Composers,...> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical-Copyright_Protection_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical-Copyright_Protectio...> Mechanical royalties based on exposures and prevalence are already well-established. I'd suggest a combination of a basic income plus some level of extraordinary royalties, given that writing's reward is exceedingly uneven, both in distribution amongst authors and over time. Present "tentpole" revenues in publishing (and television, film, and music) reflect this within a market context, where blockbusters support far smaller, often much higher-quality (from a literary, cinemographic, or musical sense) works. A replacement scheme should offer a similar mechanism. Alternatively, a bidding system in which tranches of works are offered differing levels of compensation, based on various quality-criteria assessments, genres, and classes of works, might be used. Meme-generation and investigative journalism, for example, should arguably not be compensated equivalently. RMS's "Internet Sharing" proposal (2012) suggests a popularity-based mechanism: I propose instead to pay each artist according to the cube root of his or her popularity. More precisely, the system could ascertain the popularity of each work, divide that among the work's artists to get a figure for each artist, then compute the cube root of that figure, and set the artist's share in proportion to that cube root. The effect of the cube root stage would be to increase the shares of moderately popular artists by reducing the shares of superstars. Each individual superstar would still get more than an individual non-superstar, even several times as much, but not hundreds or thousands of times as much. Shifting the funds towards moderately popular artists means that a given total sum will adequately support a larger number of artists. Furthermore, the money will do more good for the arts because it will go to the artists who really need it. <https://stallman.org/articles/internet-sharing-license.en.html https://stallman.org/articles/internet-sharing-license.en.ht...>

freeplay 4y ago

And herein lies the problem with socialism...

dredmorbius 4y ago
The method would strongly resemble how present broadcast and mechanical royalties operate in music radio, broadcast television, and even print publication circulation audits. The idea being that content is aggregated and total consumption is reasonably estimated, rather than precisely extracted via hugely inefficient direct-sales mechanisms. There's no such thing as a free lunch-monetisation system.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

dredmorbius 4y ago

See for example: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Fox_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Fox_Agency> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Society_of_Composers,_Authors_and_Publishers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Society_of_Composers,...> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical-Copyright_Protection_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical-Copyright_Protectio...> Mechanical royalties based on exposures and prevalence are already well-established. I'd suggest a combination of a basic income plus some level of extraordinary royalties, given that writing's reward is exceedingly uneven, both in distribution amongst authors and over time. Present "tentpole" revenues in publishing (and television, film, and music) reflect this within a market context, where blockbusters support far smaller, often much higher-quality (from a literary, cinemographic, or musical sense) works. A replacement scheme should offer a similar mechanism. Alternatively, a bidding system in which tranches of works are offered differing levels of compensation, based on various quality-criteria assessments, genres, and classes of works, might be used. Meme-generation and investigative journalism, for example, should arguably not be compensated equivalently. RMS's "Internet Sharing" proposal (2012) suggests a popularity-based mechanism: I propose instead to pay each artist according to the cube root of his or her popularity. More precisely, the system could ascertain the popularity of each work, divide that among the work's artists to get a figure for each artist, then compute the cube root of that figure, and set the artist's share in proportion to that cube root. The effect of the cube root stage would be to increase the shares of moderately popular artists by reducing the shares of superstars. Each individual superstar would still get more than an individual non-superstar, even several times as much, but not hundreds or thousands of times as much. Shifting the funds towards moderately popular artists means that a given total sum will adequately support a larger number of artists. Furthermore, the money will do more good for the arts because it will go to the artists who really need it. <https://stallman.org/articles/internet-sharing-license.en.html https://stallman.org/articles/internet-sharing-license.en.ht...>