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In response to #3 - isn't it very very strange to you that J.K. Rowling is able to have a billion dollar Harry Potter empire? I don't think this defense of copy

by yelsgib 15y ago

In response to #3 - isn't it very very strange to you that J.K. Rowling is able to have a billion dollar Harry Potter empire? I don't think this defense of copyright actually stands up to any rigorous examination. Why do people need to be able to make billions of dollars from children's books? From software? From art? What would people spend their money on if everything like this was essentially free?

yungchin 15y ago
When there are network effects in play (ie my neighbour, or my classmate, or my facebook friend, or some columnist in a newspaper can recommend a book to me, and I will then be more likely to read that particular book), I think you should always expect "outliers" like J.K. Rowling. Note that I'm putting "outliers" in quotes, because she probably fits in with some power-law description of this recommendation network - I'd say it's almost inevitable that a highly-connected world produces some very big winners. But do you think it's fair to model the law on these few exceptional cases, when most of the copyright-holders in this world will never be billionaires?
- vannevar 15y ago
  ...do you think it's fair to model the law on these few exceptional cases, when most of the copyright-holders in this world will never be billionaires? I agree, but only because your argument actually cuts the other way. J. K. Rowlings' billions don't come out of nowhere, they come out of the pockets of other children's book authors whose works can't get shelf space because monster marketing behemoths like Harry Potter dominate the retail channels. Copyright isn't even incentivizing distribution anymore, it's incentivizing pure marketing. Is that really what we want to do as a society?
  - yungchin 15y ago
    > Copyright isn't even incentivizing distribution anymore, it's incentivizing pure marketing. That's a very interesting point, I'd never seen that clearly before. Thanks. > J. K. Rowlings' billions don't come out of nowhere, they come out of the pockets of other children's book authors whose works can't get shelf space because monster marketing behemoths like Harry Potter dominate the retail channels. It seems to me that that can only be true if we could propose some other legislative system, under which readers would have spent the same billions, but now more evenly distributed among all the other authors. I can think of many systems with a weaker form of copyright, in which J.K. Rowling would have been less wealthy, but all the other authors would have earned less money as well.

by yelsgib 15y ago

yungchin 15y ago

When there are network effects in play (ie my neighbour, or my classmate, or my facebook friend, or some columnist in a newspaper can recommend a book to me, and I will then be more likely to read that particular book), I think you should always expect "outliers" like J.K. Rowling. Note that I'm putting "outliers" in quotes, because she probably fits in with some power-law description of this recommendation network - I'd say it's almost inevitable that a highly-connected world produces some very big winners. But do you think it's fair to model the law on these few exceptional cases, when most of the copyright-holders in this world will never be billionaires?

vannevar 15y ago
...do you think it's fair to model the law on these few exceptional cases, when most of the copyright-holders in this world will never be billionaires? I agree, but only because your argument actually cuts the other way. J. K. Rowlings' billions don't come out of nowhere, they come out of the pockets of other children's book authors whose works can't get shelf space because monster marketing behemoths like Harry Potter dominate the retail channels. Copyright isn't even incentivizing distribution anymore, it's incentivizing pure marketing. Is that really what we want to do as a society?
- yungchin 15y ago
  > Copyright isn't even incentivizing distribution anymore, it's incentivizing pure marketing. That's a very interesting point, I'd never seen that clearly before. Thanks. > J. K. Rowlings' billions don't come out of nowhere, they come out of the pockets of other children's book authors whose works can't get shelf space because monster marketing behemoths like Harry Potter dominate the retail channels. It seems to me that that can only be true if we could propose some other legislative system, under which readers would have spent the same billions, but now more evenly distributed among all the other authors. I can think of many systems with a weaker form of copyright, in which J.K. Rowling would have been less wealthy, but all the other authors would have earned less money as well.