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"When a builder builds a house he gets paid for his work. If he wants more money, he has to do more building. He can't just sit back and take a payment every ti

"When a builder builds a house he gets paid for his work. If he wants more money, he has to do more building. He can't just sit back and take a payment every time someone enters that building for the rest of his life." A builder: - is hired by a single client - to build a house for many months - and is compensated throughout the engagement with an hourly/daily/monthly wage or salary, which is pretty much guaranteed (unless being let off for typically external reasons). An author/actor/game developer: - also takes many months to complete a book/movie/game but - he is not hired by any single client - his income is directly related to the reception of the end product by the audience. I'd be interested to know how do you think should the creative professional be compensated if not by the actual people who benefit from it.

demetrius 14y ago
I believe they should’t really be compensated, because the demand for new games, films and books is created arificially, through advertisement. In fact, the older games are not less fun to play, they’re just not fashionable anymore; old films are not less fun to watch; old books are not less fun to read. We need new software, because: a) old software is unavailable anymore (due to copyright), b) everyone else uses the new one (due to advertising), so we need it for interoperation, c) old software doesn’t recieve bug fixes, and copyright prevents people from disassembling and modifying software themselves (luckily some countries like Belarus and Russia have better laws and allow this, but previous points still apply). If the companies stopped producing new software because of lack of money, it wouldn’t stop innovations — if something is really useful, people will still impement it at least because it’s useful for themselves. If we were allowed to copy information freely, the old software would suffice for most tasks (with occasional bugfixes that could be made by users themselves).
vidarh 14y ago
But this distinction is historically new. It came about because of copyright. There's no inherent difference. Before that, authors/actors/composers etc. were compensated either through commissions for the creation of the work (with the expectation that it might be copied by others) or for performances of the works, or by benefactors. Or, as the vast majority of authors today, who expend the effort to create works without getting their work published for profit (or at all), they were often not compensated for their work at all. In fact, like with vanity publishing today, any number of authors would have encountered substantial expensive in getting their own works spread, with no hope of recouping those expenses. Modern copyright did not start until the Statue of Anne in 1710, and did not extend to the majority of the world until much later. Whether or not returning to that state is desirable or not is certainly open to debate, but history does give us plenty of examples of possible ways of doing so.

demetrius 14y ago

I believe they should’t really be compensated, because the demand for new games, films and books is created arificially, through advertisement. In fact, the older games are not less fun to play, they’re just not fashionable anymore; old films are not less fun to watch; old books are not less fun to read. We need new software, because: a) old software is unavailable anymore (due to copyright), b) everyone else uses the new one (due to advertising), so we need it for interoperation, c) old software doesn’t recieve bug fixes, and copyright prevents people from disassembling and modifying software themselves (luckily some countries like Belarus and Russia have better laws and allow this, but previous points still apply). If the companies stopped producing new software because of lack of money, it wouldn’t stop innovations — if something is really useful, people will still impement it at least because it’s useful for themselves. If we were allowed to copy information freely, the old software would suffice for most tasks (with occasional bugfixes that could be made by users themselves).

vidarh 14y ago

But this distinction is historically new. It came about because of copyright. There's no inherent difference. Before that, authors/actors/composers etc. were compensated either through commissions for the creation of the work (with the expectation that it might be copied by others) or for performances of the works, or by benefactors. Or, as the vast majority of authors today, who expend the effort to create works without getting their work published for profit (or at all), they were often not compensated for their work at all. In fact, like with vanity publishing today, any number of authors would have encountered substantial expensive in getting their own works spread, with no hope of recouping those expenses. Modern copyright did not start until the Statue of Anne in 1710, and did not extend to the majority of the world until much later. Whether or not returning to that state is desirable or not is certainly open to debate, but history does give us plenty of examples of possible ways of doing so.