4 ms·

Bluntly, this argument (which is tiresomely familiar to me at this point) strikes me as nothing so much as self-fulfilling justification. Thing X doesn't pay,

by jarcane 12y ago

Bluntly, this argument (which is tiresomely familiar to me at this point) strikes me as nothing so much as self-fulfilling justification. Thing X doesn't pay, therefore I don't have to pay you for Thing X, you should've gone into something else if you wanted money. Baloney. I can think of no other field where the kinds of man-hours involved are as devalued. Yes, supply is generous, but so is demand, at unprecedented levels in human history. We are a culture grown fat and rich off its own cultural products, yet which routinely refuses to actually pay for any of them. Labor isn't free in almost any other market, so why should you get to demand someone work 80+ hours a week for nothing? Explain to me how that fits any sane market theory.

teddyh 12y ago
If you want to get paid, then you’d better do something which makes money. It’s as simple as that. In the current technological world, digital goods cannot make money by using the method which was, in the past, used to make money for the things which are now digital. (This is not to say that they cannot make money some other way.) You comment looks like a sweat-of-the-brow argument. Like, if I spend a lot of effort and time doing something, and then as a result have a product which the world doesn’t value, why should I still get paid? > We are a culture grown fat and rich off its own cultural products, yet which routinely refuses to actually pay for any of them. If this could be shown and quantified, then we would have the data necessary to create some system to use this effect to national advantage. But we don’t, so we can’t. Also, I think you are arguing disingenuously when you say that I “demand someone work 80+ hours a week for nothing”. I do not. People are free to do whatever they want, and will get compensated according to what they can get paid from other people.
- jarcane 12y ago
  People have been refusing to pay artists for longer than there has been digital copying.
  - ForHackernews 12y ago
    And yet we still have artists making art. Why?
  - teddyh 12y ago
    No more than people have been refusing to pay for work in general. With digital copying, the situation changes fundamentally.
anon4 12y ago
We are a culture grown fat and rich off its own cultural products Not really, you can't actually make new works of art based on old works of art, since copyright forbids that. Technically you can, but they have to have been released before 1920 and that date will never change. You will never, ever be able to use Mickey Mouse in your own cartoon and you will never ever be able to take a sample from an earlier song and put it in yours without paying to whoever happens to own the license for it.
threatofrain 12y ago
I would pose another similar question. Let's say that artists don't work to satisfy the entitlement of others. For what reason, then, do they continue to work? It must be because given the cards they were dealt, they decided to make what play they could. The entitlement explanation to behavior probably isn't the right one here. I would also argue that artists can't make money off of art because it isn't simply art that sells. There's a whole marketing and visibility and polish machine that could be exploited, if you had enough money and power. I would argue that for many profitable art works, it's companies and investors who win -- those who have power and money. Artists are just employees unless they make it huge, and that only really happens in the music world. And on this tangent of the music world, I would note, as a curiosity, that most people wouldn't be able to identify the artist of some popular visual art as readily as the artist of some song. Artists are just living in a world where most means of discovery have been capitalized upon by other businesses into a pipeline that you must pay to use. People like Macklemore are just rare exceptions.

by jarcane 12y ago

teddyh 12y ago

If you want to get paid, then you’d better do something which makes money. It’s as simple as that. In the current technological world, digital goods cannot make money by using the method which was, in the past, used to make money for the things which are now digital. (This is not to say that they cannot make money some other way.) You comment looks like a sweat-of-the-brow argument. Like, if I spend a lot of effort and time doing something, and then as a result have a product which the world doesn’t value, why should I still get paid? > We are a culture grown fat and rich off its own cultural products, yet which routinely refuses to actually pay for any of them. If this could be shown and quantified, then we would have the data necessary to create some system to use this effect to national advantage. But we don’t, so we can’t. Also, I think you are arguing disingenuously when you say that I “demand someone work 80+ hours a week for nothing”. I do not. People are free to do whatever they want, and will get compensated according to what they can get paid from other people.

jarcane 12y ago
People have been refusing to pay artists for longer than there has been digital copying.
- ForHackernews 12y ago
  And yet we still have artists making art. Why?
- teddyh 12y ago
  No more than people have been refusing to pay for work in general. With digital copying, the situation changes fundamentally.

anon4 12y ago

We are a culture grown fat and rich off its own cultural products Not really, you can't actually make new works of art based on old works of art, since copyright forbids that. Technically you can, but they have to have been released before 1920 and that date will never change. You will never, ever be able to use Mickey Mouse in your own cartoon and you will never ever be able to take a sample from an earlier song and put it in yours without paying to whoever happens to own the license for it.

threatofrain 12y ago

I would pose another similar question. Let's say that artists don't work to satisfy the entitlement of others. For what reason, then, do they continue to work? It must be because given the cards they were dealt, they decided to make what play they could. The entitlement explanation to behavior probably isn't the right one here. I would also argue that artists can't make money off of art because it isn't simply art that sells. There's a whole marketing and visibility and polish machine that could be exploited, if you had enough money and power. I would argue that for many profitable art works, it's companies and investors who win -- those who have power and money. Artists are just employees unless they make it huge, and that only really happens in the music world. And on this tangent of the music world, I would note, as a curiosity, that most people wouldn't be able to identify the artist of some popular visual art as readily as the artist of some song. Artists are just living in a world where most means of discovery have been capitalized upon by other businesses into a pipeline that you must pay to use. People like Macklemore are just rare exceptions.