8 ms·

I'm a left of center guy, but this kind of thinking is a very ugly slippery slope. Its not that anyone should always expect to pay for things that are benefici

• Blahah 13y ago
  quandrangle didn't say don't pay anyone. They said just because something is good, doesn't mean we have to pay every time we consume it. There are other conceivable ways of funding these things. Like crowd-funding, micropayments, whatever. If everyone followed quadrangle's logic, people who wanted to produce movies would find another way to fund them.
  • johndavidback 13y ago
    Please explain how crowd-funding a movie even makes sense? There are plenty of movies with actors I love that are terrible. Have you seen RED (or worse, RED 2)? For the same reason your boss doesn't pay you for the month you haven't worked yet, you shouldn't expect people to produce movies without any reliable way of getting paid.
    • vilhelm_s 13y ago
      But there are lots of crowdfunding successes for videogames, even though they present the same problem that you don't know in advance how good it will be. So I don't think the situation is hopeless. Another idea which I think has promise is payment by social conventions. Tipping culture in the US is like this: you are not legally required to pay waitstaff, but everyone does because they would be considered assholes if they didn't. People joke that it's ridiculous that rock bands and web cartoonists make most of their money selling t-shirts, but actually if we are aiming for social pressure t-shirts are the ideal currency---everyone you interact with in your daily life can see that you bought one. So if we got a convention going that "if you regularly read a webcomic you oughta buy the t-shirt", then it would be easy to ostracize the people who violate it.
    • butterfi 13y ago
      Ironically, the crowd-funded 'Veronica Mars' opens this week and is getting favorable reviews by fans: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2771372/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2771372/
      • r00fus 13y ago
        Just for context: Veronica Mars (2014) Ratings: 8.0/10 from 312 users ... User Reviews: Review this title » ie, no reviews. How is this "favorable"? Sounds like insiders gaming the score for the moment.
    • Blahah 13y ago
      My boss pays me three months in advance. And you're talking about a very new funding model. I'm not saying there are necessarily lots of examples of great movies already produced with this model. I'm saying they could easily be. A good number of projects have raised millions on kickstarter [1], including two movies [2, 3]. There's no reason the movie industry couldn't move to a pre-funding model. Or some other model nobody has thought of yet. [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/most-funded https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/most-funded [2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1869987317/wish-i-was-here-1 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1869987317/wish-i-was-h... [3] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spikelee/the-newest-hottest-spike-lee-joint https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spikelee/the-newest-hot...
      • Fando 13y ago
        Their model already exists and they have moved to it - movie theaters and netflix. The movie industry is nice an healthy, they make more money each year then the previous. The reason they fight against piracy is simple - they want more money. If there's a chance to get more money, why not try? In reality, piracy is negligible and is not worth the policing effort. More importantly, eliminating piracy altogether will not convert all pirates to movie goers. That's absurd! A pirate is a person who will either steal a movie or not watch it. Either way they are not paying for it. Only a small percentage of pirates will switch to paying customers in a perfect scenario. So in reality, the industry will enjoy a negligible profit increase - that's all. Considering their current ever increasing profits from year to year, the industry is booming. They only reason they are chasing after pirates is because they are driven by they greed and incorrect perception of 'opportunity cost'. They see a huge chunk of potential pie because they imagine that once they are able to police movie watching completely, then every pirate will be paying them royalties. This is of course far from the truth. Greedy and dimwitted they persist to believe that illusion. I wonder what positive effects move piracy has on the industry that the industry is benefiting from but are not aware of? Perhaps free word of mouth advertising on an enormous scale? I think more people pirate movies than pay which means that a immense audience is functioning as free word of mouth advertisers. What impact would eliminating this group have on the industry? Worth to think about.
• JulianMorrison 13y ago
  I suggest that the answer to the conundrum is to tear up the concepts "money" "paying" "salary".
• smokeyj 13y ago
  Did you know walking is the leading cause of taxi cab unemployment? You should really consider the ugly nature of walking next time you decide not to cab it up. Taxis cost money, and their kids eat food.
  • freyr 13y ago
    If you hopped in the taxi cab, rode to your destination, and jumped out without paying the posted fare, you'd have a point.
    • steveklabnik 13y ago
      While infinite other people are able to also use the same taxi.
      • freyr 13y ago
        Sure, and infinite other people screw the driver. Oh, I suppose some people will pay the posted fare for their ride. As long as it doesn't have to be us, right?
        • a8000 13y ago
          The point is that digital copies cost (almost) nothing, so by standard market principles you would not expect to pay something.
          • freyr 13y ago
            I understand the reasoning, but I believe it is flawed for two reasons: First, you're confusing the cost of distribution with the total cost of creating media. While digitization has driven down distribution costs, it doesn't affect the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars that a typical movie costs to produce. Just because you can download a movie from a server to your laptop for free, does the cost suddenly cost nothing to produce? Of course not. Second, the scenario we're discussing does not reflect traditional free markets. Conventionally, a seller offers a product or service, and if the seller and a buyer agree on a price, there's an exchange. Basic supply and demand. Technology now allows buyers to set the price of certain services to zero against the wishes of the seller, and the seller is powerless to stop the transaction. Clearly, this is not a conventional free market scenario, and we may need new principles.
• tymski 13y ago
  If a movie looks good, ill go to see it. That's how Hollywood makes money. Unfortunately the majority of blockbusters are trash. That's what projects like this are for.
  • gareim 13y ago
    If they're worth spending the effort of creating an application like this, then they're worth something. And yet this offers nothing for that something.
  • tymski 13y ago
    Except you're being scammed by Hollywood. I had numerous friends who went to school for film and went elsewhere due to finding out that the purpose behind it is to turn a profit, not to create something of worth. Every blockbuster movie contains the same boilerplate concept, the masses are too hypnotized to realize their money is being drained.
    • g4m8i7 13y ago
      Because all entertainment must also be high art?
  • antiterra 13y ago
    If it's trash then wouldn't it make sense to just not watch it at all? Why is it that we somehow 'deserve' to watch a film at whatever price we think is reasonable, when the whole thing is optional anyway?
    • colmvp 13y ago
      Exactly. I don't have HBO so I don't watch Game of Thrones. It's not like my life suffers immensely because I can't consume it. There are plenty of other forms of culture and entertainment in the world that I use to occupy my time.
• angryasian 13y ago
  > we wouldn't have 12 Years A Slave. We may still have 12 years a slave but maybe not at the same level of quality.
• tymski 13y ago
  I guess you're unaware of independent films. 12 Years a Slave would absolutely be made, regardless of a non-blockbuster budget. There are always going to be people trying to make art or assist in doing so, without the intention of making an absurd amount of money. Why do these actors even need millions for a movie? Its an absurd amount that is more than necessary.
  • chrismcb 13y ago
    That is a different argument. Why do actors "need" millions? Because the movie makes millions. Perhaps the problem is the cost of the individual ticket is too high? While there are some good independent films, many aren't very good. Generally (at least to me) a high quality hollywood blockbuster is more entertaining (and more polished) than a low budget film. I'd be fairly disappointed if we lost the blockbusters and only had low budget amateur films left.
• ds9 13y ago
  "Its not that anyone should always expect to pay for things that are beneficial, its the fact that people who very recently WORKED to create the very thing you are benefiting from should be PAID for their work." Why did the camera, props, lighting and other workers contribute to the movie, if they weren't getting paid? How could they afford to? In reality, of course, only the movie companies, some writers and a few big stars rely on percentages - the rest work for wages or get up-front money. So your argument comes down to the special case where A puts out a recorded work, counting on royalties to pay for it, then B makes unauthorized copies - then A suffers, in some sense, a loss of the hypothetical revenue. But wait, did B agree to pay? If there was no contract between A and B, then the supposed moral/ethical case for making B pay is reduced to "because the legislators said so". And if tomorrow the legislators grant a private monopoly on air to Monsanto, then by your reasoning we all suddenly become thieves. There is a natural-rights case for copyright, but it extends only to the actual creators, and covers basically only correct attribution (as per some European laws [1]). 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights
  • daigoba66 13y ago
    Those wages and up-front monies likely come from capital investments. It's usually financed through producers or production houses with the expectation that the investment will be made back with profit from the box office and all of the residual royalties of video, TV, online streaming, etc. Making a movie or music record, at least at the small scale, is probably not that different than a software startup.
  • chrismcb 13y ago
    While B didn't agree to pay, B wanted to watch the works, (and C and D and and and) If B and C and D don't pay, then next time A won't make anything, and everyone loses.
    • gabriel34 13y ago
      Except A haven't stopped making things in spite of B's and C's and D's refusal to pay, because Z pays. Plus, from the get go, if there was a price tag attached to it, C and D wouldn't consume, only B and Z. So the loss is only of B's copy. C and D convinced X that A's product is good and X pays, offsetting B and more value is generated because more people watched the movie. I used to believe this was only theoretical and the both sides didn't offset; but piracy has not killed industries so...
• SimpleXYZ 13y ago
  The problem is digital isn't "real". For example, imagine I create a product called a "pet rock". Let's say this product is simply... a rock. Anyone who has access to outside can basically make their own copy. Is it their fault for "copying" without paying? Or is it my fault for making a product that is extremely easy to copy? U.S. IP law is so outdated and in need of major reforms.
• a8000 13y ago
  The alternative is to ask people to fund the movie in advance. Either in forms of a mandatory fee (like in Germany where each household has to pay ~20 Euro for public television) or in some other way. Since digital copies are free, their price should be close to zero.
• quadrangle 13y ago
  I never said that people who make movies shouldn't be paid. The point is simple: however we figure out funding movie creation, doing so by making sure nobody ever benefits without paying is definitely the wrong approach.
• deleted 13y ago
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