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A radical idea: Maybe our model of intellectual property is wrong, or outdated. When IP was tied to a physical object, it made some sense to restrict and explic

A radical idea: Maybe our model of intellectual property is wrong, or outdated. When IP was tied to a physical object, it made some sense to restrict and explicitly license each reproducer. Now we have incredible machines that can reproduce intellectual property almost infinitely, distribute it anywhere on Earth, and find it almost anywhere on Earth. Wow! Maybe we should embrace that innovation, and find a model that encourages the spread, use and re-use of IP, for the betterment of society. Yes, motivating creators is a problem, but there are many possible solutions. Another radical thought: The notion of IP created from whole cloth obviously was always a fallacy; we all "stand on the shoulders of giants", "good artists borrow, great artists steal", etc. Now that our IP machines make finding, copying, and distributing IP so easy, we can expect even more of that wonderful, creative larceny. As IP creators are benefitting from these amazing IP finding/copying/distributing systems and so much of their own product is stolen, perhaps they have less claim on the profits from those things they put their names on. A third: Many creative people are motivated to do great things withhout payment. Remember, all those FOSS creators, from RMS to Linus Torvalds to Tim Berners-Lee to every little FOSS project on Github. Remember also Van Gogh and millions of other starving artists you have and haven't heard of (quick, name a poet who cashed in on their life's work). Perhaps financial renumeration, while fair, isn't entirely necessary (and perhaps we'd have less crap with less of it).

dragonwriter 11y ago
> When IP was tied to a physical object Intellectual personal property, like intangible personal property more generally, is, by nature, not generally tied to a physical object.
- Nullabillity 11y ago
  However, there used to be a significant cost involved in duplicating significant copyrightable works, and the scope of stuff that can be done with only new IP is continuously expanding.
haberman 11y ago
There are stories you could post this comment on that involve grey areas and subtlety. But this is a story about people who take other videos, strip the attribution, go viral, and get the benefits from work they had nothing to do with, while the person who actually did the work is cut out of the picture. There is nothing forward-thinking about that, it's just classless rip-off.
talon88 11y ago
"Perhaps financial renumeration, while fair, isn't entirely necessary" Is it that in your world, eating and paying the rent isn't necessary either? 'Many' creative people sounds like some programmers, which is somewhat small subset of all creatives. I'd be surprised if the majority of creative people — artists, writers, actors, and more — would happily go about saying that financial renumeration doesn't matter to them. Destin, for example, puts a lot of effort into his videos and his work. Financial renumeration not being necessarily inevitably means Destin does something else for the majority of his time and does Smarter Ever Day less (if at all). This is almost certainly the same for every other artist out there. Sure — maybe all art isn't necessary. Maybe some of it is crap. But saying that being paid to be creative isn't necessarily means that you get very little art, if at all.
- baddox 11y ago
  > Is it that in your world, eating and paying the rent isn't necessary either? Of course it is, and thus figuring out an occupation or business model that allows you to eat and pay rent is important.
  - gknoy 11y ago
    While that sounds great, I suspect that there are many people with the skill and interest to be professional artists who, if they were spending their days writing code or welding or $JOB, would be uninterested / unable to dedicate resources (time, money) towards Creating Things in the degree that they can when creating such things is their full-time job. tl;dr: There should be a way for creative people to make Creating Art the occupation that pays them money for rent/food/etc.
    - hackuser 11y ago
      Based on very limited knowledge, I believe that historically and now, most artists have had 'day jobs'. Very few have earned enough from their art. Come to think of it, to what degree does IP protect only the most successful artists, and may even be a net hinderence to most.
    - 11y ago
rubbingalcohol 11y ago
So to sum this up, your proposed solution is that everything should be free? And how does this incentivize people who have to spend a considerable amount of money creating content?
airza 11y ago
It's a little tone-deaf to suggest that people who don't make six figures in their day job are lining up to have their content stolen because our industry inadvertently built extremely good ways of doing so.
forrestthewoods 11y ago
We did embrace it. We passed laws to embrace and encourage the creation of new ideas. It's called copyright. It works pretty well when enforced. Less well when it's not. There may be choices that are even better. Policy proposals are welcome.
- quadrangle 11y ago
  Copyright has never worked well.
  - forrestthewoods 11y ago
    Sure it has. Copyright has worked reasonably well for a variety of content creators. Authors are on that list. By extension it's worked well for content consumers because those creators were enabled to create more content to be consumed. There's plenty of discussion to be had on improving copyright. Making it better. I think it's definitely been an net benefit.
    - quadrangle 11y ago
      We don't have that much to compare to, not a lot of control counter-cases. The entire premise that copyright helps authors can be actually questioned. http://questioncopyright.org/promise http://questioncopyright.org/promise
rhino369 11y ago
IP developed when things like the printing press already let us reproduce the content almost infinitely and distribute it anywhere on earth. It's actually the entire point of IP. Copying it is so easy compared to the creation of the work itself. So we legally restrict it. >A third: Many creative people are motivated to do great things withhout payment. Sure, but many aren't. Even more aren't willing to do boring, yet necessary projects. Finally, IP existing doesn't hold back FOSS at all. Also, not all types of creative work lend itself to FOSS-like material. Many require extensive capital to get working.
ggchappell 11y ago
> A radical idea: Maybe our model of intellectual property is wrong, or outdated. Honestly, that's not really radical. It seems to be pretty clear to anyone who knows anything about computers. There may be flaws your other thoughts, as other commenters have suggested, but not with the first one. The big problem -- in the U.S. anyway -- is that there are huge companies with a vested interest in maintaining something like the late-ish 20th century copyright regime. These make campaign contributions to lawmakers, who pass laws in their favor, which allow them to continue making money, which they contribute to lawmakers, etc. It appears to me that little is going to change until that cycle is broken.
- AdieuToLogic 11y ago
  > The big problem -- in the U.S. anyway -- is that there are huge companies with a vested interest in maintaining something like the late-ish 20th century copyright regime. Agreed. For a poster-child of this one need look no further than the Disney corporation. By US copyright laws existing up until 1978[1], "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" should have entered into the public domain sometime around 1993. Now? It's locked up until at least 2032 and will likely be "protected" by further copyright law modifications. 1 - http://www.ivanhoffman.com/expiration.html http://www.ivanhoffman.com/expiration.html
  - anon4 11y ago
    I'm expecting Disney to change the law to allow for authorship reassignment, so the "until death of author+70 years" effectively becomes "until dissolution of The Disney Corporation+70 years", after which we can drop the "+70 years", and expand the public domain retroactively with the works of many recently-deceased artists. That would be, on the whole, a net gain for the public domain.
    - ggchappell 11y ago
      > That would be, on the whole, a net gain for the public domain. Now that is an interesting thought. Let Disney have Mickey Mouse forever, in exchange for lots of recent stuff. However, I'm not sure it would work. Say I'm an artist. I know that my heirs will have to right to control my works until doomsday if I assign the authorship to a corporation. So I form a trust for that purpose. This sounds like a simple thing to do. It is also very reasonable, from my POV; I'm providing for my children. And if it were commonly done, then it would negate the benefits of this change in the law.
zackmorris 11y ago
The problem today is that capitalism favors the individual (or legal entity) more than it favors society. Freedom and quality of life are generally ignored if they don't impact the bottom line. It's just assumed that the free market will figure it out and everyone will benefit in the long run. So someone like Van Gogh is a perfect example of where it all breaks down. He (admirably) wasn't very interested in wealth or material things, he just wanted to be able to make a living doing what he was passionate about, and generally failed. There are millions of people throughout history who perfected their craft but since it wasn't recognized or rewarded, their potential contributions to society went largely unrecognized and unutilitized. Today underemployment, tragedies of the commons and uncounted externalities are so rampant in our economy that (to me at least) it seems that they actually underpin it. So many problems like hunger, reliance on fossil fuels, lack of access to technology, just on and on, are relatively simple to fix and would only require a handful of dedicated people to make it happen. But say someone has an idea for a new generator that runs on waste heat, he or she can't get funding for it. Corporate and government research grants are all but gone, banks don't lend money for that stuff, and the only places that pay (universities) have erected nearly impassibly barriers to entry. So here we are doing the same thing we’ve always done, toiled away our lives on generally pointless enterprises to make rent, while a few dispassionate sociopaths reap the benefits. The internet is completely broken right now in the way it ties data to its source. That’s not only likely, it’s destined, to be demolished here in the next few years. Stopping piracy is a fool’s errand, propped up by rent-seeking corporations that will go to the ends of the Earth, even undermine our legal system, to maintain the status quo. What we should really be asking is how much longer we’re willing to tolerate the smoke and mirrors rather than just solving problems on a step by step basis once and for all. If we had a non-scarcity economy that did away with IP and started using technology to meet our basic needs, we wouldn’t need copyright in the first place. The robots could tend the hydroponic gardens while the living breathing humans could work on, I dunno, little things like enlightenment.
WWKong 11y ago
"Yes, motivating creators is a problem, but there are many possible solutions." Could you outline couple of them? Let's say I want to publish an ebook. What model would ensure that I can pay my rent (similar levels of revenue to current model like Amazon Kindle publishing) while allowing free sharing of my content?
- waskosky 11y ago
  Not that this is practical yet, or well implemented yet, but my favorite model for this would be the idea behind Flattr. https://flattr.com/ https://flattr.com/ People who have money to pay for content, can designate an amount to donate per month. And then the "likes" that they place on content can cause their monthly budget to be divided up and paid to content creators each month. If Facebook implemented their own version of Flattr that could be game changing.
  - quadrangle 11y ago
    As long as the money is connected to advertising, we will retain a perverse system. Facebook can never be the best answer. A work-in-progress attempt to fund creative work without artificial restrictions or ads etc.: https://snowdrift.coop/ https://snowdrift.coop/
- icebraining 11y ago
  The current model doesn't ensure that either (it's dependant on the unknown number of sales). If you want ensurance when you publish the ebook, some kind of subsidy or patronage is the only system that can do so; Kickstarter has had a few successes: https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?category_id=18&sort=most_funded https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?category_id=18...
- PlE 11y ago
  Upsell your readers into paid consulting packages, put on live conferences, and make a private mastermind group? Certainly the more value you deliver to your readers, the more they'll pay you. The book can even be the loss leader. In highly competitive niches like weight loss, this is already the norm.
olefoo 11y ago
If you want to look at an intellectual property revenue distribution system that has some of these traits already you can look to compulsory licensing schemes like the one used for radio airplay in the US. The basic idea of a compulsory licensing scheme is that publishers are compelled to take and producers to offer a license to play any item covered by the scheme. And that publishers pay into a pool which is distributed to producers based on usage. An idea like this would be actively resisted by the large internet publishing companies ( Google and Facebook, etc. ) but would be much more fair for small producers. Unfortunately producers do not have much of a lobby in the current environment.
- quadrangle 11y ago
  ASCAP et al specifically take money out of the system and give it almost entirely to a small fraction of the most wealthy and successful. It's an absolutely corrupt and absurd way to fund art. Also, heard about Payola? Back in the 1950's record label paid to get their stuff on the radio, just like people pay for sponsored content today. Attention is the scarce resource here. The only issues with the Facebook and YouTube things here today are: they are undemocratic, show ads, and support plagiarism. Sharing of cultural works with credit and without ads is perfectly fine and is promotion for artists.
guscost 11y ago
OK, I'll bite. As someone who could reasonably be called a creative person, I've happily shared work for free or cheap. This is great as you say, but all indications are that I'd have to work worse hours, live rougher, and probably risk burning out several more times to have any chance of supporting myself full-time doing this. So I work a day job doing, well, rather less exciting enterprise work, and I make a comfortable income. Thankfully I'm also able to enjoy lots of free time and spend some of that continuing work on free/cheap creative projects. But the reality is that with the incentives as they are, or as you seem to be in favor of them being, the choice to put much more time into these projects is not one I'm willing to make. In all probability the "invisible hand" or what have you is indicating that my time spent doing the day job is much more valuable, and I'm completely fine with that. In my own tortured estimation the creative stuff is pretty much all "crap" by your definition ;) and there is not much of it. But I suspect it is not the situation you're in favor of. For reference here are links to some of the creative work, which has all been great fun doing, so again, compensation is not at all an issue. A comedy arcade game about fracking in space (use Firefox or Chrome plz): http://guscost.github.io/spacefrack http://guscost.github.io/spacefrack An amusing Arduino project: http://guscost.com/2015/02/26/fun-with-tailgaters/ http://guscost.com/2015/02/26/fun-with-tailgaters/ A small tutorial on complex numbers (the most successful content I've made): http://guscost.com/2012/08/06/degrees-and-freedom/ http://guscost.com/2012/08/06/degrees-and-freedom/ A library for wrapping Kendo UI widgets in React components (not as artsy but useful): https://github.com/guscost/kendo-react-wrappers https://github.com/guscost/kendo-react-wrappers A music game for iOS (had to renew my developer subscription but it should be up tomorrow): https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mixball/id578469049?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mixball/id578469049?mt=8 A cover which needs a lot of work and a professional mastering job: https://soundcloud.com/guscost/i-get-carried-away-semi-rough https://soundcloud.com/guscost/i-get-carried-away-semi-rough
- hackuser 11y ago
  Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that anyone's creative work is 'crap' or that I'm in position to judge it. I was referring to the'art' created only for the large payoff, such as a lot of pop music. But even that's an unfair stereotype.
nemothekid 11y ago
I always wince when I see statements like these. The implication that artists should be unpaid is completely absurd. How about, YOU, quick name a television/book/movie you enjoyed , where every artist went unpaid. There is a reason Netflix PAID people to create content. There is a reason that today YouTube still pays people to make content for YouTube. Quality content comes from smart people who if not paid to make media, will gladly take their talent somewhere else. In your "solution" the outcome isn't that Destin makes content for free, its that he continues his dayjob as a missile engineer and the world misses out on great content like Smarter Everyday. We get great content when artists don't have to starve to produce it. How about you work entirely for free in your day job (Hey the kernel your program for was built for free, why should you get paid before Linus?), and see how long you last. We are already seeing the print industry go this way - with cheap, easily churnable content listicles and articles that may-or-may-not be written by PR firms at corporations. I don't know about you, but I vastly prefer the content on HBO than to cheap formulaic YouTube shorts and corporate pr films. We should be thinking about how we funnel the billions of dollars of the media industry to the best content creators and out of the hands of RIAA execs, not wiping it all away because "lol artists who needs to pay them?"
- GhotiFish 11y ago
  That post is stating that the way out society functions around the concept of data is incorrect. You're right in that some works do require significant budgets to complete. Is there absolutely no other possible way that such works could get funded without an individual person buying only one individual copy of that work to post-hoc fund it in aggregate? "No! Nothing but this system could ever possibly work. It's pointless to even speculate on anything else existing." I don't think that's your position, but you sure couch it in those terms. You sure ended that dialog in those terms. Did you mean to? I'd like to see real discussion around this topic, but before it even gets off the ground, the mere existence of such systems are assumed impossible and the seed of such a conversation is accused of what you accused the grandparent. I want to entertain the notion.
  - nemothekid 11y ago
    >Is there absolutely no other possible way that such works could get funded without an individual person buying only one individual copy of that work to post-hoc fund it in aggregate? That has very little to do with the matter described in the article - the "system" that exists today that the channel in the OP used doesn't require an individual person buying one copy - users can already watch the content for free on YouTube. The "system" that you are assuming "the mere existence of such systems are assumed impossible" already exists, its called YouTube (at least in one version). What the poster was advocating is relinquishing IP, which is very different from "an individual person buying only one individual copy of that work". Consider that FOSS ecosystem is held together by licenses. Would it make sense if a movie exec came along and said "we are going to use his software, not give any credit, nor contribute changes because software developer's notion of IP is outdated?"
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paulhauggis 11y ago
"Now we have incredible machines that can reproduce intellectual property almost infinitely" I think the main problem with this line of thinking is that it takes nothing to reproduce IP, but creating it takes thousands (and sometimes more) man-hours. "A third: Many creative people are motivated to do great things withhout payment. Remember, all those FOSS creators, from RMS to Linus Torvalds to Tim Berners-Lee to every little FOSS project on Github." https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=linus+torvald+net+worth https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=linus+torvald+net+worth Linus has a net worth of ~$150 million. So I'm not sure if this is a good example of someone creating FOSS out of the kindness of his heart. RMS makes money through autographs, donations from big organizations, and winning prizes likes this: http://tech.mit.edu/V121/N59/59stallman.59n.html http://tech.mit.edu/V121/N59/59stallman.59n.html Again, he's making a very good living by pretty much anyone's standard. "Remember also Van Gogh and millions of other starving artists you have and haven't heard of (quick, name a poet who cashed in on their life's work). Perhaps financial renumeration, while fair, isn't entirely necessary (and perhaps we'd have less crap with less of it)." 10 years ago, I remember many people saying the exact same thing that you are saying now. The result has been less developers actually being hired. With so much free software out there, why would a business want to hire an actual engineer when they can hire a software mechanic (at a much lower wage)? Since the engineered parts are given away for free with so much free sofware, it makes the choice pretty easy. Intellectual property has made it so with basically a computer/tablet/phone/very little startup capital, anyone has a real chance at making a living. Why are we actively trying to take away a very good way for social mobility? It already happened in the music industry. Before the explosion of piracy, an indy artist could make a living selling music. Because of piracy, music is pretty much seen as worthless, which is what piracy does: It's not stealing, it's counterfeiting. Which completely devalues the item being counterfeited.
- hackuser 11y ago
  There are strong points, but I feel like they sharpen the details and don't address the main argument. For example, it's true there are exceptions regarding income but many haven't cashed in and I doubt Torvalds and Stallman did their creative work, at least initially, looking for a big payoff. And there are many more examples, most scientists for instance. > With so much free software out there, why would a business want to hire an actual engineer when they can hire a software mechanic (at a much lower wage)? ... Why are we actively trying to take away a very good way for social mobility? On one hand, that's a very good point. On the other, it's hypocritical for our industry to complain about jobs lost to efficiencies; much of what the IT industry does is replace human labor with computers or 'disrupt' whole industries. That's the 'creative destruction' of the free market, finding more productive solutions and shifting now-unneeded resources to something new. Should we maintain IP barriers so that engineers can be paid to create something that already exists? > It already happened in the music industry. Before the explosion of piracy, an indy artist could make a living selling music. Agreed, but before the explosion of recording technology, indie artists made money from performances. The technology changed then, now has changed again, and will change yet again. The business model built on last generation's tech isn't sacrosanct. I don't mean to be callous about people's jobs or suggest I have the answers, but I think we can do much better than graft the old IP system onto the new technology.
morgante 11y ago
Intellectual property is existed literally to protect intellectual property. Nobody cares about the IP of a rare gemstone because it's just plain old property. IP was existed literally to protect the fact that it's very expensive to produce an original idea/work/poem/video/etc. but very cheap to reproduce it. Reproduction getting cheaper only makes IP even more necessary.
- quadrangle 11y ago
  > Reproduction getting cheaper only makes IP even more necessary. Insanity. Cheap reproduction means "IP" is that much more destructive. Mechanisms to stop plagiarism need to be entirely separated from laws against copying and sharing. Are you one of those people who thinks we shouldn't have public libraries?? Freely distributed and shared ideas are a social good, period.
  - morgante 11y ago
    > Are you one of those people who thinks we shouldn't have public libraries?? Every copy of a book in a library was bought, not randomly stolen from the author's personal library or illegally printed.
    - quadrangle 11y ago
      There's no similarity in this debate between accessing something private (that the owner didn't want published) and distributing/sharing new copies (or the same copy) of something published. Every video copied to Facebook in the discussion here was originally a legitimate video uploaded to YouTube for public viewing. If you want to continue the actual discussion about the place of the public library versus online sharing of ideas, you'll find only one reasonable distinction: the library isn't for-profit and putting ads on things. Facebook is awful here, but not because videos are being copied and shared — they are awful for their ads and tracking of people and their enabling of plagiarism (which is when someone makes fraudulent claims of authorship and has nothing to do with whether or not copies are made).
JacobJans 11y ago
Here's another radical thought: Steal intellectual property for one reason and one reason alone: Make as much money as possible. That's what happened in this case. Not very radical, really. "Criminal" seems more apt. > good artists borrow, great artists steal In what deranged interpretation of reality could the stealing pointed out in this article be considered art? Please, do tell.
acomjean 11y ago
How about this: We let people who do the creating decide if the want to give what they created away for free, or try to make some financial gain from it as permitted by our society's IP protecting statutes?
- azakai 11y ago
  Well, that's legally where we are right now. But we are living in times where IP laws are facing technological problems. For example, no one can copyright a joke and expect to make a fortune off of it, because anyone can hear a joke and repeat it their friends. The joke might reach millions of people, but no one can profit from it. It's unenforceable to limit a joke's distribution. And no one expects to, nor to make a fortune off of a joke. Humans are too good at making copies of jokes. The same is happening to other media. Anyone can see a clip on YouTube and share it with their friends anywhere else, including Facebook, the topic of this article. With wearable tech, this will get even easier - as easy as repeating a joke, or even easier - just tell your device "record", "stop", and "share". And you've made a copy of anything you can see or hear. When humans are too good at making copies of anything they can see or hear, the way they already are too good at making copies of jokes, IP law will have to change.
  - acomjean 11y ago
    IP protection laws were a reaction to the invention of cheap printable works if I remember correctly. The idea is to encourage creation in a world where a copy costs nothing to make. Youtube clip sharing/embedding is what Youtube is designed to do. You can turn it off on clips you upload. I think the problem here is duplication and passing off someones work as your own for clicks amd/or profit. Corporations do a lot of "clearing" clips that appear in documentaries so owners are compensated and not to be sued. You are right, Individuals now empowered with their computers have their own duplication and distribution system and love free (who doesn't love free). Thus Napster. DRM makes purchasing less appealing than pirating, gone from music now, maybe someday from video. Attempts to make individuals responsible for "sharing" was a PR disaster with fines and laws set in the pre-computer days. Even when the media companies won huge settlements from individuals they lost. This will get more interesting when those 3d printers get better and cheaper and people start trading design files. I'm waiting for a R2D2 design to be shared...
pjc50 11y ago
It's possible to argue that it's not necessary to make money from art. It's quite easy to argue against harsh enforcement against p2p noncommercial copying. But if someone is making money from the material, then the creators should get a cut.
afro88 11y ago
> Yes, motivating creators is a problem, but there are many possible solutions. As a creator with a day job, money isn't a motivator. But having my name tied to my works certainly is. And for all the programmers you listed it is as well. The video freebooted by Zoo is a perfect example. They stripped his name and branding from the video and it went more viral as a Zoo video. If this happens regularly, there's literally no incentive to create content and distribute it. In fact it's a big de-motivator. In the case of the FOSS creators you mentioned, I wonder how motivated they would be if their work could have so easily been entirely re-apropriated by someone else (in total violation of their licenses). If Linus' name and source code wasn't attached to every linux and linux based distribution on earth he would have moved on a long time ago. No one in their right mind would just freely write code and let others take all the credit for it (with no monetary incentive). So I ask, could you please elaborate on your "many possible solutions"?
- quadrangle 11y ago
  Plagiarism is a real issue. But there's no good reason to connect it to copyright, it's just how things have been done, unfortunately. Plagiarism concern apply equally to public domain works, you know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPtH2KPuQbs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPtH2KPuQbs

dragonwriter 11y ago

> When IP was tied to a physical object Intellectual personal property, like intangible personal property more generally, is, by nature, not generally tied to a physical object.

Nullabillity 11y ago
However, there used to be a significant cost involved in duplicating significant copyrightable works, and the scope of stuff that can be done with only new IP is continuously expanding.

haberman 11y ago

There are stories you could post this comment on that involve grey areas and subtlety. But this is a story about people who take other videos, strip the attribution, go viral, and get the benefits from work they had nothing to do with, while the person who actually did the work is cut out of the picture. There is nothing forward-thinking about that, it's just classless rip-off.

talon88 11y ago

"Perhaps financial renumeration, while fair, isn't entirely necessary" Is it that in your world, eating and paying the rent isn't necessary either? 'Many' creative people sounds like some programmers, which is somewhat small subset of all creatives. I'd be surprised if the majority of creative people — artists, writers, actors, and more — would happily go about saying that financial renumeration doesn't matter to them. Destin, for example, puts a lot of effort into his videos and his work. Financial renumeration not being necessarily inevitably means Destin does something else for the majority of his time and does Smarter Ever Day less (if at all). This is almost certainly the same for every other artist out there. Sure — maybe all art isn't necessary. Maybe some of it is crap. But saying that being paid to be creative isn't necessarily means that you get very little art, if at all.

baddox 11y ago
> Is it that in your world, eating and paying the rent isn't necessary either? Of course it is, and thus figuring out an occupation or business model that allows you to eat and pay rent is important.
- gknoy 11y ago
  While that sounds great, I suspect that there are many people with the skill and interest to be professional artists who, if they were spending their days writing code or welding or $JOB, would be uninterested / unable to dedicate resources (time, money) towards Creating Things in the degree that they can when creating such things is their full-time job. tl;dr: There should be a way for creative people to make Creating Art the occupation that pays them money for rent/food/etc.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    Based on very limited knowledge, I believe that historically and now, most artists have had 'day jobs'. Very few have earned enough from their art. Come to think of it, to what degree does IP protect only the most successful artists, and may even be a net hinderence to most.
  - 11y ago

rubbingalcohol 11y ago

So to sum this up, your proposed solution is that everything should be free? And how does this incentivize people who have to spend a considerable amount of money creating content?

airza 11y ago

It's a little tone-deaf to suggest that people who don't make six figures in their day job are lining up to have their content stolen because our industry inadvertently built extremely good ways of doing so.

forrestthewoods 11y ago

We did embrace it. We passed laws to embrace and encourage the creation of new ideas. It's called copyright. It works pretty well when enforced. Less well when it's not. There may be choices that are even better. Policy proposals are welcome.

quadrangle 11y ago
Copyright has never worked well.
- forrestthewoods 11y ago
  Sure it has. Copyright has worked reasonably well for a variety of content creators. Authors are on that list. By extension it's worked well for content consumers because those creators were enabled to create more content to be consumed. There's plenty of discussion to be had on improving copyright. Making it better. I think it's definitely been an net benefit.
  - quadrangle 11y ago
    We don't have that much to compare to, not a lot of control counter-cases. The entire premise that copyright helps authors can be actually questioned. http://questioncopyright.org/promise http://questioncopyright.org/promise

rhino369 11y ago

IP developed when things like the printing press already let us reproduce the content almost infinitely and distribute it anywhere on earth. It's actually the entire point of IP. Copying it is so easy compared to the creation of the work itself. So we legally restrict it. >A third: Many creative people are motivated to do great things withhout payment. Sure, but many aren't. Even more aren't willing to do boring, yet necessary projects. Finally, IP existing doesn't hold back FOSS at all. Also, not all types of creative work lend itself to FOSS-like material. Many require extensive capital to get working.

ggchappell 11y ago

> A radical idea: Maybe our model of intellectual property is wrong, or outdated. Honestly, that's not really radical. It seems to be pretty clear to anyone who knows anything about computers. There may be flaws your other thoughts, as other commenters have suggested, but not with the first one. The big problem -- in the U.S. anyway -- is that there are huge companies with a vested interest in maintaining something like the late-ish 20th century copyright regime. These make campaign contributions to lawmakers, who pass laws in their favor, which allow them to continue making money, which they contribute to lawmakers, etc. It appears to me that little is going to change until that cycle is broken.

AdieuToLogic 11y ago
> The big problem -- in the U.S. anyway -- is that there are huge companies with a vested interest in maintaining something like the late-ish 20th century copyright regime. Agreed. For a poster-child of this one need look no further than the Disney corporation. By US copyright laws existing up until 1978[1], "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" should have entered into the public domain sometime around 1993. Now? It's locked up until at least 2032 and will likely be "protected" by further copyright law modifications. 1 - http://www.ivanhoffman.com/expiration.html http://www.ivanhoffman.com/expiration.html
- anon4 11y ago
  I'm expecting Disney to change the law to allow for authorship reassignment, so the "until death of author+70 years" effectively becomes "until dissolution of The Disney Corporation+70 years", after which we can drop the "+70 years", and expand the public domain retroactively with the works of many recently-deceased artists. That would be, on the whole, a net gain for the public domain.
  - ggchappell 11y ago
    > That would be, on the whole, a net gain for the public domain. Now that is an interesting thought. Let Disney have Mickey Mouse forever, in exchange for lots of recent stuff. However, I'm not sure it would work. Say I'm an artist. I know that my heirs will have to right to control my works until doomsday if I assign the authorship to a corporation. So I form a trust for that purpose. This sounds like a simple thing to do. It is also very reasonable, from my POV; I'm providing for my children. And if it were commonly done, then it would negate the benefits of this change in the law.

zackmorris 11y ago

The problem today is that capitalism favors the individual (or legal entity) more than it favors society. Freedom and quality of life are generally ignored if they don't impact the bottom line. It's just assumed that the free market will figure it out and everyone will benefit in the long run. So someone like Van Gogh is a perfect example of where it all breaks down. He (admirably) wasn't very interested in wealth or material things, he just wanted to be able to make a living doing what he was passionate about, and generally failed. There are millions of people throughout history who perfected their craft but since it wasn't recognized or rewarded, their potential contributions to society went largely unrecognized and unutilitized. Today underemployment, tragedies of the commons and uncounted externalities are so rampant in our economy that (to me at least) it seems that they actually underpin it. So many problems like hunger, reliance on fossil fuels, lack of access to technology, just on and on, are relatively simple to fix and would only require a handful of dedicated people to make it happen. But say someone has an idea for a new generator that runs on waste heat, he or she can't get funding for it. Corporate and government research grants are all but gone, banks don't lend money for that stuff, and the only places that pay (universities) have erected nearly impassibly barriers to entry. So here we are doing the same thing we’ve always done, toiled away our lives on generally pointless enterprises to make rent, while a few dispassionate sociopaths reap the benefits. The internet is completely broken right now in the way it ties data to its source. That’s not only likely, it’s destined, to be demolished here in the next few years. Stopping piracy is a fool’s errand, propped up by rent-seeking corporations that will go to the ends of the Earth, even undermine our legal system, to maintain the status quo. What we should really be asking is how much longer we’re willing to tolerate the smoke and mirrors rather than just solving problems on a step by step basis once and for all. If we had a non-scarcity economy that did away with IP and started using technology to meet our basic needs, we wouldn’t need copyright in the first place. The robots could tend the hydroponic gardens while the living breathing humans could work on, I dunno, little things like enlightenment.

WWKong 11y ago

"Yes, motivating creators is a problem, but there are many possible solutions." Could you outline couple of them? Let's say I want to publish an ebook. What model would ensure that I can pay my rent (similar levels of revenue to current model like Amazon Kindle publishing) while allowing free sharing of my content?

waskosky 11y ago
Not that this is practical yet, or well implemented yet, but my favorite model for this would be the idea behind Flattr. https://flattr.com/ https://flattr.com/ People who have money to pay for content, can designate an amount to donate per month. And then the "likes" that they place on content can cause their monthly budget to be divided up and paid to content creators each month. If Facebook implemented their own version of Flattr that could be game changing.
- quadrangle 11y ago
  As long as the money is connected to advertising, we will retain a perverse system. Facebook can never be the best answer. A work-in-progress attempt to fund creative work without artificial restrictions or ads etc.: https://snowdrift.coop/ https://snowdrift.coop/
icebraining 11y ago
The current model doesn't ensure that either (it's dependant on the unknown number of sales). If you want ensurance when you publish the ebook, some kind of subsidy or patronage is the only system that can do so; Kickstarter has had a few successes: https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?category_id=18&sort=most_funded https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?category_id=18...
PlE 11y ago
Upsell your readers into paid consulting packages, put on live conferences, and make a private mastermind group? Certainly the more value you deliver to your readers, the more they'll pay you. The book can even be the loss leader. In highly competitive niches like weight loss, this is already the norm.

olefoo 11y ago

If you want to look at an intellectual property revenue distribution system that has some of these traits already you can look to compulsory licensing schemes like the one used for radio airplay in the US. The basic idea of a compulsory licensing scheme is that publishers are compelled to take and producers to offer a license to play any item covered by the scheme. And that publishers pay into a pool which is distributed to producers based on usage. An idea like this would be actively resisted by the large internet publishing companies ( Google and Facebook, etc. ) but would be much more fair for small producers. Unfortunately producers do not have much of a lobby in the current environment.

quadrangle 11y ago
ASCAP et al specifically take money out of the system and give it almost entirely to a small fraction of the most wealthy and successful. It's an absolutely corrupt and absurd way to fund art. Also, heard about Payola? Back in the 1950's record label paid to get their stuff on the radio, just like people pay for sponsored content today. Attention is the scarce resource here. The only issues with the Facebook and YouTube things here today are: they are undemocratic, show ads, and support plagiarism. Sharing of cultural works with credit and without ads is perfectly fine and is promotion for artists.

guscost 11y ago

OK, I'll bite. As someone who could reasonably be called a creative person, I've happily shared work for free or cheap. This is great as you say, but all indications are that I'd have to work worse hours, live rougher, and probably risk burning out several more times to have any chance of supporting myself full-time doing this. So I work a day job doing, well, rather less exciting enterprise work, and I make a comfortable income. Thankfully I'm also able to enjoy lots of free time and spend some of that continuing work on free/cheap creative projects. But the reality is that with the incentives as they are, or as you seem to be in favor of them being, the choice to put much more time into these projects is not one I'm willing to make. In all probability the "invisible hand" or what have you is indicating that my time spent doing the day job is much more valuable, and I'm completely fine with that. In my own tortured estimation the creative stuff is pretty much all "crap" by your definition ;) and there is not much of it. But I suspect it is not the situation you're in favor of. For reference here are links to some of the creative work, which has all been great fun doing, so again, compensation is not at all an issue. A comedy arcade game about fracking in space (use Firefox or Chrome plz): http://guscost.github.io/spacefrack http://guscost.github.io/spacefrack An amusing Arduino project: http://guscost.com/2015/02/26/fun-with-tailgaters/ http://guscost.com/2015/02/26/fun-with-tailgaters/ A small tutorial on complex numbers (the most successful content I've made): http://guscost.com/2012/08/06/degrees-and-freedom/ http://guscost.com/2012/08/06/degrees-and-freedom/ A library for wrapping Kendo UI widgets in React components (not as artsy but useful): https://github.com/guscost/kendo-react-wrappers https://github.com/guscost/kendo-react-wrappers A music game for iOS (had to renew my developer subscription but it should be up tomorrow): https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mixball/id578469049?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mixball/id578469049?mt=8 A cover which needs a lot of work and a professional mastering job: https://soundcloud.com/guscost/i-get-carried-away-semi-rough https://soundcloud.com/guscost/i-get-carried-away-semi-rough

hackuser 11y ago
Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that anyone's creative work is 'crap' or that I'm in position to judge it. I was referring to the'art' created only for the large payoff, such as a lot of pop music. But even that's an unfair stereotype.

nemothekid 11y ago

I always wince when I see statements like these. The implication that artists should be unpaid is completely absurd. How about, YOU, quick name a television/book/movie you enjoyed , where every artist went unpaid. There is a reason Netflix PAID people to create content. There is a reason that today YouTube still pays people to make content for YouTube. Quality content comes from smart people who if not paid to make media, will gladly take their talent somewhere else. In your "solution" the outcome isn't that Destin makes content for free, its that he continues his dayjob as a missile engineer and the world misses out on great content like Smarter Everyday. We get great content when artists don't have to starve to produce it. How about you work entirely for free in your day job (Hey the kernel your program for was built for free, why should you get paid before Linus?), and see how long you last. We are already seeing the print industry go this way - with cheap, easily churnable content listicles and articles that may-or-may-not be written by PR firms at corporations. I don't know about you, but I vastly prefer the content on HBO than to cheap formulaic YouTube shorts and corporate pr films. We should be thinking about how we funnel the billions of dollars of the media industry to the best content creators and out of the hands of RIAA execs, not wiping it all away because "lol artists who needs to pay them?"

GhotiFish 11y ago
That post is stating that the way out society functions around the concept of data is incorrect. You're right in that some works do require significant budgets to complete. Is there absolutely no other possible way that such works could get funded without an individual person buying only one individual copy of that work to post-hoc fund it in aggregate? "No! Nothing but this system could ever possibly work. It's pointless to even speculate on anything else existing." I don't think that's your position, but you sure couch it in those terms. You sure ended that dialog in those terms. Did you mean to? I'd like to see real discussion around this topic, but before it even gets off the ground, the mere existence of such systems are assumed impossible and the seed of such a conversation is accused of what you accused the grandparent. I want to entertain the notion.
- nemothekid 11y ago
  >Is there absolutely no other possible way that such works could get funded without an individual person buying only one individual copy of that work to post-hoc fund it in aggregate? That has very little to do with the matter described in the article - the "system" that exists today that the channel in the OP used doesn't require an individual person buying one copy - users can already watch the content for free on YouTube. The "system" that you are assuming "the mere existence of such systems are assumed impossible" already exists, its called YouTube (at least in one version). What the poster was advocating is relinquishing IP, which is very different from "an individual person buying only one individual copy of that work". Consider that FOSS ecosystem is held together by licenses. Would it make sense if a movie exec came along and said "we are going to use his software, not give any credit, nor contribute changes because software developer's notion of IP is outdated?"

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paulhauggis 11y ago

"Now we have incredible machines that can reproduce intellectual property almost infinitely" I think the main problem with this line of thinking is that it takes nothing to reproduce IP, but creating it takes thousands (and sometimes more) man-hours. "A third: Many creative people are motivated to do great things withhout payment. Remember, all those FOSS creators, from RMS to Linus Torvalds to Tim Berners-Lee to every little FOSS project on Github." https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=linus+torvald+net+worth https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=linus+torvald+net+worth Linus has a net worth of ~$150 million. So I'm not sure if this is a good example of someone creating FOSS out of the kindness of his heart. RMS makes money through autographs, donations from big organizations, and winning prizes likes this: http://tech.mit.edu/V121/N59/59stallman.59n.html http://tech.mit.edu/V121/N59/59stallman.59n.html Again, he's making a very good living by pretty much anyone's standard. "Remember also Van Gogh and millions of other starving artists you have and haven't heard of (quick, name a poet who cashed in on their life's work). Perhaps financial renumeration, while fair, isn't entirely necessary (and perhaps we'd have less crap with less of it)." 10 years ago, I remember many people saying the exact same thing that you are saying now. The result has been less developers actually being hired. With so much free software out there, why would a business want to hire an actual engineer when they can hire a software mechanic (at a much lower wage)? Since the engineered parts are given away for free with so much free sofware, it makes the choice pretty easy. Intellectual property has made it so with basically a computer/tablet/phone/very little startup capital, anyone has a real chance at making a living. Why are we actively trying to take away a very good way for social mobility? It already happened in the music industry. Before the explosion of piracy, an indy artist could make a living selling music. Because of piracy, music is pretty much seen as worthless, which is what piracy does: It's not stealing, it's counterfeiting. Which completely devalues the item being counterfeited.

hackuser 11y ago
There are strong points, but I feel like they sharpen the details and don't address the main argument. For example, it's true there are exceptions regarding income but many haven't cashed in and I doubt Torvalds and Stallman did their creative work, at least initially, looking for a big payoff. And there are many more examples, most scientists for instance. > With so much free software out there, why would a business want to hire an actual engineer when they can hire a software mechanic (at a much lower wage)? ... Why are we actively trying to take away a very good way for social mobility? On one hand, that's a very good point. On the other, it's hypocritical for our industry to complain about jobs lost to efficiencies; much of what the IT industry does is replace human labor with computers or 'disrupt' whole industries. That's the 'creative destruction' of the free market, finding more productive solutions and shifting now-unneeded resources to something new. Should we maintain IP barriers so that engineers can be paid to create something that already exists? > It already happened in the music industry. Before the explosion of piracy, an indy artist could make a living selling music. Agreed, but before the explosion of recording technology, indie artists made money from performances. The technology changed then, now has changed again, and will change yet again. The business model built on last generation's tech isn't sacrosanct. I don't mean to be callous about people's jobs or suggest I have the answers, but I think we can do much better than graft the old IP system onto the new technology.

morgante 11y ago

Intellectual property is existed literally to protect intellectual property. Nobody cares about the IP of a rare gemstone because it's just plain old property. IP was existed literally to protect the fact that it's very expensive to produce an original idea/work/poem/video/etc. but very cheap to reproduce it. Reproduction getting cheaper only makes IP even more necessary.

quadrangle 11y ago
> Reproduction getting cheaper only makes IP even more necessary. Insanity. Cheap reproduction means "IP" is that much more destructive. Mechanisms to stop plagiarism need to be entirely separated from laws against copying and sharing. Are you one of those people who thinks we shouldn't have public libraries?? Freely distributed and shared ideas are a social good, period.
- morgante 11y ago
  > Are you one of those people who thinks we shouldn't have public libraries?? Every copy of a book in a library was bought, not randomly stolen from the author's personal library or illegally printed.
  - quadrangle 11y ago
    There's no similarity in this debate between accessing something private (that the owner didn't want published) and distributing/sharing new copies (or the same copy) of something published. Every video copied to Facebook in the discussion here was originally a legitimate video uploaded to YouTube for public viewing. If you want to continue the actual discussion about the place of the public library versus online sharing of ideas, you'll find only one reasonable distinction: the library isn't for-profit and putting ads on things. Facebook is awful here, but not because videos are being copied and shared — they are awful for their ads and tracking of people and their enabling of plagiarism (which is when someone makes fraudulent claims of authorship and has nothing to do with whether or not copies are made).

JacobJans 11y ago

Here's another radical thought: Steal intellectual property for one reason and one reason alone: Make as much money as possible. That's what happened in this case. Not very radical, really. "Criminal" seems more apt. > good artists borrow, great artists steal In what deranged interpretation of reality could the stealing pointed out in this article be considered art? Please, do tell.

acomjean 11y ago

How about this: We let people who do the creating decide if the want to give what they created away for free, or try to make some financial gain from it as permitted by our society's IP protecting statutes?

azakai 11y ago
Well, that's legally where we are right now. But we are living in times where IP laws are facing technological problems. For example, no one can copyright a joke and expect to make a fortune off of it, because anyone can hear a joke and repeat it their friends. The joke might reach millions of people, but no one can profit from it. It's unenforceable to limit a joke's distribution. And no one expects to, nor to make a fortune off of a joke. Humans are too good at making copies of jokes. The same is happening to other media. Anyone can see a clip on YouTube and share it with their friends anywhere else, including Facebook, the topic of this article. With wearable tech, this will get even easier - as easy as repeating a joke, or even easier - just tell your device "record", "stop", and "share". And you've made a copy of anything you can see or hear. When humans are too good at making copies of anything they can see or hear, the way they already are too good at making copies of jokes, IP law will have to change.
- acomjean 11y ago
  IP protection laws were a reaction to the invention of cheap printable works if I remember correctly. The idea is to encourage creation in a world where a copy costs nothing to make. Youtube clip sharing/embedding is what Youtube is designed to do. You can turn it off on clips you upload. I think the problem here is duplication and passing off someones work as your own for clicks amd/or profit. Corporations do a lot of "clearing" clips that appear in documentaries so owners are compensated and not to be sued. You are right, Individuals now empowered with their computers have their own duplication and distribution system and love free (who doesn't love free). Thus Napster. DRM makes purchasing less appealing than pirating, gone from music now, maybe someday from video. Attempts to make individuals responsible for "sharing" was a PR disaster with fines and laws set in the pre-computer days. Even when the media companies won huge settlements from individuals they lost. This will get more interesting when those 3d printers get better and cheaper and people start trading design files. I'm waiting for a R2D2 design to be shared...

pjc50 11y ago

It's possible to argue that it's not necessary to make money from art. It's quite easy to argue against harsh enforcement against p2p noncommercial copying. But if someone is making money from the material, then the creators should get a cut.

afro88 11y ago

> Yes, motivating creators is a problem, but there are many possible solutions. As a creator with a day job, money isn't a motivator. But having my name tied to my works certainly is. And for all the programmers you listed it is as well. The video freebooted by Zoo is a perfect example. They stripped his name and branding from the video and it went more viral as a Zoo video. If this happens regularly, there's literally no incentive to create content and distribute it. In fact it's a big de-motivator. In the case of the FOSS creators you mentioned, I wonder how motivated they would be if their work could have so easily been entirely re-apropriated by someone else (in total violation of their licenses). If Linus' name and source code wasn't attached to every linux and linux based distribution on earth he would have moved on a long time ago. No one in their right mind would just freely write code and let others take all the credit for it (with no monetary incentive). So I ask, could you please elaborate on your "many possible solutions"?

quadrangle 11y ago
Plagiarism is a real issue. But there's no good reason to connect it to copyright, it's just how things have been done, unfortunately. Plagiarism concern apply equally to public domain works, you know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPtH2KPuQbs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPtH2KPuQbs