3 ms·

What do you think authors feel about this? Despite many people on this site thinking we're the first generation with new technology, the issue of copyright, and

by edanm 3y ago

What do you think authors feel about this? Despite many people on this site thinking we're the first generation with new technology, the issue of copyright, and technolgie's impact on it, has been discussed for centuries. The "patronage" model is great (and I personally am a Patreon supporter of lots of creatives). But it also has a lot of flaws in it, both for the author and the public. Most authors will be happy to tell you both the good and bad of the model, in my experience. The biggest flaw for the public, btw, is that this model only supports art that "rich people" find worth supporting. This is bad, both because sometimes art isn't "deemed worthy" immediately, and because art for non-"rich" people is also very valuable.

DennisP 3y ago
Patronage was art for rich people in pre-internet days. Now we can make it easy for anyone to contribute a dollar to an artist they like. As for art that isn't "deemed worthy immediately," that doesn't immediately make money in today's system either. If the art can be freely distributed, it's more likely to find its audience.
- edanm 3y ago
  Contributing a dollar to an artist they like is beyond the ability of many people in the world. Both in technical terms (actually being able to reliably send someone a dollar), and monetarily. And very few artists are out there surviving on patrons giving them a dollar a month, I imagine. Most of them survive on larger pledges, and as far as I know, very few of them reach anywhere near the amount of money traditionally-published authors can make. > As for art that isn't "deemed worthy immediately," that doesn't immediately make money in today's system either. If the art can be freely distributed, it's more likely to find its audience. Yes, it doesn't make money immediately in today's system. But many authors collect a back-catalogue of works, which might pay out only a bit of money at a time, but over a career can be enough. If I publish a novel every year for 20 years, even if every novel only brings in a sprinkling of money per year, by year 20 I'm getting 20 sprinkling of money, which could be enough to sustain me. Very few of these "middle of the road" authors are popular enough to survive on patronage alone, I believe. --- At the end of the day, you think that "the internet" somehow made possible something that wasn't technically possible before. I think that's mostly not true - the technology was never the problem. That's why copyright exists in the first place - to make sure that, despite books being almost-zero-cost to reproduce, we put an actual limit on it in order for more books to be published. If you want a different system, that's your prerogative. But you have to grapple with the tradeoffs here. If less money flows to authors - which would happen if you abandon copyright - then there will be less books. That's almost a law of economics. If you think that somehow you can make something like patreon scale up to the same amount of money that exists in "the system" today, then a) I disagree, and b) you'd still have to content with the issues I mentioned.
didntcheck 3y ago
Exactly. Take music, for example. Increased capitalist exploitation [1] is what allowed people to spread their creativity far and wide, rather ironically for genres like punk. There's still nothing stopping people from giving away stuff for free, and indeed I do that myself with both FOSS code and CC-BY media (not music), but I'm under no illusions that I'll ever make more than beer money from it, and I do not fault anyone else for going the all rights reserved route [1] I use that term in the neutral, economic sense

by edanm 3y ago

DennisP 3y ago

Patronage was art for rich people in pre-internet days. Now we can make it easy for anyone to contribute a dollar to an artist they like. As for art that isn't "deemed worthy immediately," that doesn't immediately make money in today's system either. If the art can be freely distributed, it's more likely to find its audience.

edanm 3y ago
Contributing a dollar to an artist they like is beyond the ability of many people in the world. Both in technical terms (actually being able to reliably send someone a dollar), and monetarily. And very few artists are out there surviving on patrons giving them a dollar a month, I imagine. Most of them survive on larger pledges, and as far as I know, very few of them reach anywhere near the amount of money traditionally-published authors can make. > As for art that isn't "deemed worthy immediately," that doesn't immediately make money in today's system either. If the art can be freely distributed, it's more likely to find its audience. Yes, it doesn't make money immediately in today's system. But many authors collect a back-catalogue of works, which might pay out only a bit of money at a time, but over a career can be enough. If I publish a novel every year for 20 years, even if every novel only brings in a sprinkling of money per year, by year 20 I'm getting 20 sprinkling of money, which could be enough to sustain me. Very few of these "middle of the road" authors are popular enough to survive on patronage alone, I believe. --- At the end of the day, you think that "the internet" somehow made possible something that wasn't technically possible before. I think that's mostly not true - the technology was never the problem. That's why copyright exists in the first place - to make sure that, despite books being almost-zero-cost to reproduce, we put an actual limit on it in order for more books to be published. If you want a different system, that's your prerogative. But you have to grapple with the tradeoffs here. If less money flows to authors - which would happen if you abandon copyright - then there will be less books. That's almost a law of economics. If you think that somehow you can make something like patreon scale up to the same amount of money that exists in "the system" today, then a) I disagree, and b) you'd still have to content with the issues I mentioned.

didntcheck 3y ago

Exactly. Take music, for example. Increased capitalist exploitation [1] is what allowed people to spread their creativity far and wide, rather ironically for genres like punk. There's still nothing stopping people from giving away stuff for free, and indeed I do that myself with both FOSS code and CC-BY media (not music), but I'm under no illusions that I'll ever make more than beer money from it, and I do not fault anyone else for going the all rights reserved route [1] I use that term in the neutral, economic sense