5 ms·

We've really got to stop the sob story for use case 2. Just because you produce something that doesn't mean you deserve to get paid. Ask my aunt who make pine-c

by howeyc 12y ago

We've really got to stop the sob story for use case 2. Just because you produce something that doesn't mean you deserve to get paid. Ask my aunt who make pine-cone christmas decorations. Nobody buys those, but she makes them. With the way people talk about "stealing" content you'd think she deserves to make a living because she's "working" and depends on the income. NOPE. It's quite simple for most things physical. They wont give me the object unless I pay their agreed price. Digital has a little wrinkle in that for most things, I can buy it then give it away to a friend (or millions of strangers) for free. This means the "payment" part has to be different for digital goods. To me, it looks like the best way is getting paid up front, like Kickstarter. Or maybe subscriptions to a movie studio or something (Netflix). Time will tell.

sbarre 12y ago
The problem with your rationale ("I can buy it then give it away to a friend") is that while it is certainly possible to do that, it ignores the creator's rights (both to control their creation and therefore be compensated for its use according to rules that they set, not you), and removes the incentive to create. Your aunt's pine cone example is stupid because that's a trivial task. Making a movie or an album is not a trivial task, so you can't really compare. If you aunt built homes, and then people just moved into them without paying for them, I'm no sure you'd be telling the same story. No one is asking to be paid simply for creating something, they are asking to be paid when people consume that creation, when they benefit/enjoy/use it. I'm not sure you get that.
- Karunamon 12y ago
  Sell it at a fair price in ways that don't pre-assume your audience wants to break the law, and you generally make out pretty good. Completely ignoring the legal aspect for a moment, the thing about respect for rights is a two way street. Most of the media companies out there have literally none for their audience. DRM rootkits, draconian terms, absurd prices, the lot. Why should I have the slightest bit of respect for someone that has no respect for me?
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    They have none for the producers of the content either. Content producers get screwed from all sides, but they get screwed a lot worse by the record companies if they're musicians. Actors have it a bit better.
    - ticviking 12y ago
      They're also the ones squawking loudest now that the value of their capital investment in the machines needed to copy media is essentially 0. Being forced to provide services and be a broker is SO much harder than extracting rent on a piece of equipment.
      - anigbrowl 12y ago
        Publishers generally outsource the business of media duplication and have little or no capital investment in that. The cost of physical reproduction is a small fraction of the launch cost. The marginal cost of a 35mm movie screen print is about $1000. So if you open wide (on 3000 screeens across the US, say) and tack on a bit for promo stuff in each theater (posters, cardboard cutouts of the movie stars to stand in the lobby or whatever) it costs $3-5 million. By far the largest single expense of a launch is advertising, which is typically 50-95% of the production cost. And the largest component of production cost is salaries for big-name actors, which are typically derived from a rolling average of their recent pictures by regressive analysis, and negotiated from there - in other words, the point of having big stars is because of their proven ability to attract film consumers, so their participation serves an advertising as well as an artistic function. 90% of what publishers do is services and brokerage. Your imagination is not at all anchored in reality.
        ticviking 12y ago
        It only a moderate surprise that I'm wrong on this, especially since it was a short and poorly thought out comment. Are you aware of a good source that could familiarize me with some of these things so I can be less dependant on my imagination and more dependant on facts? To summarize my thoughts from other comments here, I'm unconvinced that creators have a moral right to control the ways people use something that they've put out there, and I have a pretty strong idea(which given this comment and a few more of yours elsewhere I seem to need to review), that Publishers(which includes Studios, Labels, Producers & so on), add very little value, which I agree is in marketing and other services. My impression was that what a Publisher does is largely extract rent from various investments they have made in various kinds of connections, or physical facilities, and that they maintain this position by excluding people who don't buy into their particular way of doing things. While this isn't "bad" or "wrong", that impression makes it pretty difficult to sympathize with what I perceive to be a sudden increase of market discipline and pressure for them.
- howeyc 12y ago
  I'm talking about what's possible. You're talking about rules. I'm assuming rules are meaningless, because your rules aren't exactly stopping anything anyway. If my aunt builds a home, she can lock that shit down and not give the keys until you pay. Heck in some states she can kill you if you break in. And yes, same story. She can charge 50 milliion for a 10x10 foot box. Doesn't mean she deserves it does it? Also, even if price is "reasonable", my point does not change. I totally understand wanting to be paid, I really do. I want to be paid for everything I do too. Not likely though. The market is trying to figure out the value of movies/music/digital goods. Piracy is part of that. Maybe one day it will stop (figure out how to lock that down so can't be shared). Maybe it's here forever (cat-and-mouse continues, lawyers continue to sue individuals). In either case, the market rate is what people are willing to pay in the aggregate.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    And yet if producers try to use technology like DRM to limit access to goods people start howling about how unfair and unprincipled it is. The amount of goalpost-shifting in the pro-piracy argument is pretty laughable - it's a classic case of demanding the right to have your cake and eat it.
- click170 12y ago
  As an aside, The Creators rights are limited by First Sale doctrine unless I'm mistaken (and I sometimes am).
  - rahimnathwani 12y ago
    According to Wikipedia, the first sale doctrine applies to digital goods first sold in the EU, but not (yet?) to those sold in the US.
- ticviking 12y ago
  I'm curious, what do you believe is the origin of those rights, and why should those rights carry the enforcement of the state? I have yet to hear an explanation or argument that suggests an inherent moral right for a creator to control their work once it has been shared, and I have heard several very good ones that "Copying is not Stealing" and that we have a right to share, consume, and remix ideas and media that have come into our possession. Ideas are not material, and equating theft, which deprives the rightful owner of all use of their property, and copying, which violates a state granted monopoly, is an egregious false equivalence. When someone moves into the home of our hypothetical aunt has built she can no longer live there, lease the property, or sell it, she is deprived of the use of a specific physical thing. I am very sympathetic to the need for creators to make a living, and I am aware that there is probably some level of injustice in copying and enjoying their work without paying them. It seems to me that the loudest complainers have been producers and studios. The middle men extracting rent from the copy machines artists needed to be able to sell their work. Those who make media and sell it directly to the public, or sell tickets to live performances still seem to make a decent living, and absent those gatekeepers I can enjoy a much wider variety of music than my parents did at my age. Yes there is a small harm when artists are not paid, but it is much less than the continual erosion of our right to own things we have bought, and to participate in our own culture
lifeformed 12y ago
If I produce something and you want to consume it, and I ask for money, then I deserve to get paid. Just because someone produces something doesn't mean you deserve to consume it. Why is it so unreasonable for an artist to ask for money in exchange for his work? Are you saying that because it's digital, it not longer has any value? If I make music or a game, I wouldn't stop someone from listening to my music or playing the game (I would encourage it), but if they want to own a copy of it, it seems reasonable for me to ask for a payment. That social contract has been around for thousands of years. Now that there happens to be technology that makes it easy not to pay for it, it's suddenly ethically okay? You can consume as much media as you want for free: you can rent music, books, movies, and games at the library. But if you love it so much that want your own copy of it, shouldn't you show your appreciation to the artist by just buying it?
- greenleafjacob 12y ago
  Well if they want to get it from you then certainly they must pay, but the question is basically whether your property rights extend to someone other than you. > Are you saying that because it's digital, it not longer has any value? Well one might not go that far, but the marginal cost is zero.
  - mSparks 12y ago
    that's exactly it. digital copying is a perfectly competitive zero marginal cost game. only immoral thieves IMHO are the monopolists who want to make society worse off by trying to enforce artificial and pointless barriers to that market.
    - waterlesscloud 12y ago
      Ah yes, the people who make what you want are "immoral thieves". It's insane how people somehow arrive at that point in their thinking.
- cam_l 12y ago
  "If I produce something and you want to consume it, and I ask for money, then I deserve to get paid." This is a common misunderstanding of the payment dynamic. The reality is it is actually a power dynamic. I make something that you want and I can keep it from you until you pay me.. is more approximate to the truth. there is no inherent value in work, but only in supply and demand. Digital goods have demand, but no natural limitations in supply. Un-natural limitations (social acceptability, guilt, lawsuits, criminalising, etc) are being attempted but it seems likely they will all fail eventually. "You can consume as much media as you want for free" The corollary to this of course is, artists can make as make media as they like, but to make a decent living from it they need to show appreciation and respect to their patrons. If, on the other hand, they want to be stinking rich, or they want to bet big and spend hundreds of millions of hollywood dollars on expectation of a payout, they have to understand and manipulate that power dynamic. Just don't try and make out there is any kind of moral right to get paid.

by howeyc 12y ago

sbarre 12y ago

The problem with your rationale ("I can buy it then give it away to a friend") is that while it is certainly possible to do that, it ignores the creator's rights (both to control their creation and therefore be compensated for its use according to rules that they set, not you), and removes the incentive to create. Your aunt's pine cone example is stupid because that's a trivial task. Making a movie or an album is not a trivial task, so you can't really compare. If you aunt built homes, and then people just moved into them without paying for them, I'm no sure you'd be telling the same story. No one is asking to be paid simply for creating something, they are asking to be paid when people consume that creation, when they benefit/enjoy/use it. I'm not sure you get that.

Karunamon 12y ago
Sell it at a fair price in ways that don't pre-assume your audience wants to break the law, and you generally make out pretty good. Completely ignoring the legal aspect for a moment, the thing about respect for rights is a two way street. Most of the media companies out there have literally none for their audience. DRM rootkits, draconian terms, absurd prices, the lot. Why should I have the slightest bit of respect for someone that has no respect for me?
- jacquesm 12y ago
  They have none for the producers of the content either. Content producers get screwed from all sides, but they get screwed a lot worse by the record companies if they're musicians. Actors have it a bit better.
  - ticviking 12y ago
    They're also the ones squawking loudest now that the value of their capital investment in the machines needed to copy media is essentially 0. Being forced to provide services and be a broker is SO much harder than extracting rent on a piece of equipment.
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      Publishers generally outsource the business of media duplication and have little or no capital investment in that. The cost of physical reproduction is a small fraction of the launch cost. The marginal cost of a 35mm movie screen print is about $1000. So if you open wide (on 3000 screeens across the US, say) and tack on a bit for promo stuff in each theater (posters, cardboard cutouts of the movie stars to stand in the lobby or whatever) it costs $3-5 million. By far the largest single expense of a launch is advertising, which is typically 50-95% of the production cost. And the largest component of production cost is salaries for big-name actors, which are typically derived from a rolling average of their recent pictures by regressive analysis, and negotiated from there - in other words, the point of having big stars is because of their proven ability to attract film consumers, so their participation serves an advertising as well as an artistic function. 90% of what publishers do is services and brokerage. Your imagination is not at all anchored in reality.
      - ticviking 12y ago
        It only a moderate surprise that I'm wrong on this, especially since it was a short and poorly thought out comment. Are you aware of a good source that could familiarize me with some of these things so I can be less dependant on my imagination and more dependant on facts? To summarize my thoughts from other comments here, I'm unconvinced that creators have a moral right to control the ways people use something that they've put out there, and I have a pretty strong idea(which given this comment and a few more of yours elsewhere I seem to need to review), that Publishers(which includes Studios, Labels, Producers & so on), add very little value, which I agree is in marketing and other services. My impression was that what a Publisher does is largely extract rent from various investments they have made in various kinds of connections, or physical facilities, and that they maintain this position by excluding people who don't buy into their particular way of doing things. While this isn't "bad" or "wrong", that impression makes it pretty difficult to sympathize with what I perceive to be a sudden increase of market discipline and pressure for them.
howeyc 12y ago
I'm talking about what's possible. You're talking about rules. I'm assuming rules are meaningless, because your rules aren't exactly stopping anything anyway. If my aunt builds a home, she can lock that shit down and not give the keys until you pay. Heck in some states she can kill you if you break in. And yes, same story. She can charge 50 milliion for a 10x10 foot box. Doesn't mean she deserves it does it? Also, even if price is "reasonable", my point does not change. I totally understand wanting to be paid, I really do. I want to be paid for everything I do too. Not likely though. The market is trying to figure out the value of movies/music/digital goods. Piracy is part of that. Maybe one day it will stop (figure out how to lock that down so can't be shared). Maybe it's here forever (cat-and-mouse continues, lawyers continue to sue individuals). In either case, the market rate is what people are willing to pay in the aggregate.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  And yet if producers try to use technology like DRM to limit access to goods people start howling about how unfair and unprincipled it is. The amount of goalpost-shifting in the pro-piracy argument is pretty laughable - it's a classic case of demanding the right to have your cake and eat it.
click170 12y ago
As an aside, The Creators rights are limited by First Sale doctrine unless I'm mistaken (and I sometimes am).
- rahimnathwani 12y ago
  According to Wikipedia, the first sale doctrine applies to digital goods first sold in the EU, but not (yet?) to those sold in the US.
ticviking 12y ago
I'm curious, what do you believe is the origin of those rights, and why should those rights carry the enforcement of the state? I have yet to hear an explanation or argument that suggests an inherent moral right for a creator to control their work once it has been shared, and I have heard several very good ones that "Copying is not Stealing" and that we have a right to share, consume, and remix ideas and media that have come into our possession. Ideas are not material, and equating theft, which deprives the rightful owner of all use of their property, and copying, which violates a state granted monopoly, is an egregious false equivalence. When someone moves into the home of our hypothetical aunt has built she can no longer live there, lease the property, or sell it, she is deprived of the use of a specific physical thing. I am very sympathetic to the need for creators to make a living, and I am aware that there is probably some level of injustice in copying and enjoying their work without paying them. It seems to me that the loudest complainers have been producers and studios. The middle men extracting rent from the copy machines artists needed to be able to sell their work. Those who make media and sell it directly to the public, or sell tickets to live performances still seem to make a decent living, and absent those gatekeepers I can enjoy a much wider variety of music than my parents did at my age. Yes there is a small harm when artists are not paid, but it is much less than the continual erosion of our right to own things we have bought, and to participate in our own culture

lifeformed 12y ago

If I produce something and you want to consume it, and I ask for money, then I deserve to get paid. Just because someone produces something doesn't mean you deserve to consume it. Why is it so unreasonable for an artist to ask for money in exchange for his work? Are you saying that because it's digital, it not longer has any value? If I make music or a game, I wouldn't stop someone from listening to my music or playing the game (I would encourage it), but if they want to own a copy of it, it seems reasonable for me to ask for a payment. That social contract has been around for thousands of years. Now that there happens to be technology that makes it easy not to pay for it, it's suddenly ethically okay? You can consume as much media as you want for free: you can rent music, books, movies, and games at the library. But if you love it so much that want your own copy of it, shouldn't you show your appreciation to the artist by just buying it?

greenleafjacob 12y ago
Well if they want to get it from you then certainly they must pay, but the question is basically whether your property rights extend to someone other than you. > Are you saying that because it's digital, it not longer has any value? Well one might not go that far, but the marginal cost is zero.
- mSparks 12y ago
  that's exactly it. digital copying is a perfectly competitive zero marginal cost game. only immoral thieves IMHO are the monopolists who want to make society worse off by trying to enforce artificial and pointless barriers to that market.
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    Ah yes, the people who make what you want are "immoral thieves". It's insane how people somehow arrive at that point in their thinking.
cam_l 12y ago
"If I produce something and you want to consume it, and I ask for money, then I deserve to get paid." This is a common misunderstanding of the payment dynamic. The reality is it is actually a power dynamic. I make something that you want and I can keep it from you until you pay me.. is more approximate to the truth. there is no inherent value in work, but only in supply and demand. Digital goods have demand, but no natural limitations in supply. Un-natural limitations (social acceptability, guilt, lawsuits, criminalising, etc) are being attempted but it seems likely they will all fail eventually. "You can consume as much media as you want for free" The corollary to this of course is, artists can make as make media as they like, but to make a decent living from it they need to show appreciation and respect to their patrons. If, on the other hand, they want to be stinking rich, or they want to bet big and spend hundreds of millions of hollywood dollars on expectation of a payout, they have to understand and manipulate that power dynamic. Just don't try and make out there is any kind of moral right to get paid.