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Unfortunately there isn't an edit button here so as I find info, I can't combine it into one post.
Why do I add the references? Because I think some people might find them of interest. Sometimes I see some holes in these discussions and think the topics aren't quite as clearly defined as presented. Social mores, for example, is a huge topic. And it's very reasonable for me to point out that they don't hold across all groups, or across anything as big as the Internet. Even within discussion groups, what is accepted behavior in one group is not accepted behavior in others.
For example, there are people who believe that once music is played, essentially it enters into public domain and there is no need to give credit to the songwriter or the creator of the recording if they happen to use it. There are people who feel they can use graphic artwork or photos without crediting the creator. I see it done all the time, so whatever social mores are out there don't hold across all websites. In some cases people don't know they are supposed to credit the creator; in other cases they don't care; and in other cases, like with a video, they don't necessarily see a convenient place to post credits so they don't.
I've been reading about commons for three or four weeks now and how they are governed differs from group to group. Elinor Ostron won a Nobel prize in economics for her work on commons and one of her principles is that each group needs to design its own rules and ways to monitor activity. I won't bother with a citation, but I can find it if anyone wants to go that deeply into the discussion.
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Just in case people confuse me with "the entertainment industry," what I advocate is that every person, every family make their own entertainment. I think that's where it is headed, so I say embrace it. I see the "entertainment industry" as we know it disappearing. The money just isn't there to support it. I don't even see an arts middle class. Rather I see a participatory system where everyone makes art, music, video, photography. There's no money in it, but it's enriching in other ways.
Copyright isn't really a factor in the world I envision because everyone is going to be giving it all away for free anyway. So I'm more concerned with how to generate an income, not necessarily directly from arts, for everyone. I want more money invested in infrastructure, in education, in health care, in environmental protection, low cost non-polluting energy solutions, and hopefully the jobs will follow.
The fact that some of you seem to try to paint me into a copyright corner makes me think you guys are so myopic that you see anyone who has a different viewpoint as "the enemy." As I keep saying, copyright is a non-issue to me because I think the big guys are disappearing and people at the individual level don't really care all that much. These individual creators may want credit for their creations, but they aren't going to sue you if you use them. They don't have the money to sue you. They'd much rather you come up with affordable health care.
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They brought the whole world against the industry, not one corner on this world likes the entertainment industry right now, everyone hates their guts, maybe that is why you are so skeptical about social mores because in your case it won't help you at all.
But rest assured you don't need to research how people will get paid in the future, this is not in doubt, with or without laws people will find a way to get money.
I'm not talking about the entertainment industry. I'm talking about craftsmen and painters and street corner musicians who aren't making any money.
And I am very concerned because I'm not optimistic about the world economy. I don't think the average person is going to have any leftover money to buy a t-shirt or support any of the other "scarce goods" which are suggested in Techdirt as ways to make money for artists. I'm actually wondering if it is possible for people to give musicians vegetables they have grown in their gardens in exchange for entry into a concert. And I am also looking into installations that we can put into parks so that people can gather together to make music for each other for free.
I'm concerned about what was in that New Yorker article, too. That's why I have stressed that if you want copyright laws dropped, then you better pay attention to politics. The money going into the Tea Party sure as hell doesn't have dropping copyright laws as a priority.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
More:
On Facebook, Google, and Our Evolving Social Mores Online - John Battelle's Searchblog: "It's rather like attempting to design an industrialized city while living in 1200 AD. Not only has the technology not evolved (power grids, modern plumbing, automobiles, communications networks etc.), but equally importantly, the social mores have not developed as well.
... we are in the midst of a significant shift in our cultural history, one similar as our move, as a species, from a largely agrarian culture to one based on the modern city. That shift took roughly 1000 years to occur. And as it did, we renegotiated nearly every aspect of our social mores - the values that we hold as community standards. You need a new set of shared and respected rules to move from a village of 150 or so farmers, who knew each other very well, to a city of 1.5 million inhabitants, most of whom don't know each other, but live packed together in multi-story apartment buildings. ...
As we move online, we're once again making a great migration of social mores, and this time it's one not entirely tethered to physicality, location, or regional constraints....
Formation of new cultures like cities, or online communities, require that a process be, in the phrase of Kevin Kelly, a bit out of control....
This is uncharted territory, and we're very early in the instrumentation process. We're not certain, in advance of a given interaction, what's right and what's wrong, but we seem to know it when we see it."
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
Here's another piece on the same research. Yes, I have been reading about social behavior on the Internet, specifically in regard to commons. I've been primarily looking at whether or not a gift economy can support artists and in the process I've been looking at examples of gift economies. Some people believe the Internet acts as a gift economy or a knowledge commons, so I've been checking whatever papers people have been citing.
One of the big issues about commons is whether they will function for large groups.
Somewhat related, I think group behavior in terms of politics is particularly interesting because I'm seeing that some patterns of intentional misinformation are working quite well. Now, how do we stop that?
_____
In Politics, Sometimes The Facts Don't Matter : NPR: "Mr. NYHAN: Well, the problem is, you know, as human beings, we want to believe, you know, the things that we already believe. And so when you hear some information that contradicts your pre-existing views, unfortunately, what we tend to do is think of why we believed those things in the first place.
And, you know, so when, you know, we get these corrections, we tend to say I'm right, and I'm going to stick with my view. And the thing that my research, which is with Jason Reifler at Georgia State University, found is that in some cases, that corrective information can actually make the problem worse."
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Please explain in contrast to the open source movement that have millions of coders all over the world and really heavily on social mores or with the legacy news media that use social mores to take down politicians, shame corporations and so forth.
I have less faith than you do that the Internet is going to give us what we need in the upcoming elections.
How facts backfire - The Boston Globe: "In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger."
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
There's quite a bit about how commons operate, so I'm not saying anything new here. I'm just bringing some of what I am finding into this discussion. For example, here are two items:
Tragedy of the Commons: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics | Library of Economics and Liberty: "The scale of the commons (the number of people using it) also is important, as an examination of Hutterite communities reveals. These devoutly religious people in the northwestern United States live by Marx’s formula: 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.' (They give no credit to Marx, however; similar language can be found several places in the Bible.) At first glance Hutterite colonies appear to be truly unmanaged commons. But appearances are deceiving. The number of people included in the decision unit is crucial. As the size of a colony approaches 150, individual Hutterites begin to undercontribute from their abilities and overdemand for their needs. The experience of Hutterite communities indicates that below 150 people, the distribution system can be managed by shame; above that approximate number, shame loses its effectiveness."
Punishing Free-Riders: How Group Size Affects Mutual Monitoring and the Provision of Public Goods http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/20606/1/dp1337.pdf
"... our simulations and experiments suggest that the logistics of large groups may hinder the ability of mutual monitoring to discipline free riders."
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
You're saying the social mores don't factor in but your rationale seems all over the place from saying 1) it can effect smaller communities more than larger ones, 2) it barely has an effect on others
I'm still not saying anything about copyright.
I am reading about how commons work. After the group gets to about 1000 people (if I recall correctly -- I can look it up), the ability of everyone to keep track of everyone else starts to fall down. There's a definite link between social behavior and the size of the group. If social mores operated in all situations, I think we'd see more civil behavior in political discussions. Instead, it sometimes gets to be a free-for-all; a person will say something rude or untrue but gets backed up by his/her group of supporters. Then the other side counters and gets back up by his supporters. It becomes tribal behavior.
Social mores may operate within a group, but get discarded in regard to those outside the group. By all accounts someone who says something that is factually untrue should lose respect, but we're seeing that people can make untrue comments and get MORE respect WITHIN their group of followers.
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I work in academia, and publish lots of papers, books, code etc. I'm happy to put those up on the internet for everyone to copy freely, as long as they give me credit. They are free to use and build on all my ideas, as long as they properly cite my work.
I feel the same way, and I think a lot of writers, artists, musicians, etc. feel the same way. Often the copyright debate gets lumped in with this. What I hear a lot of people saying is that all they want is credit. They aren't concerned about getting paid or stopping usage of their content.
But on the opposite side I have read many defenses of people wanting to use whatever they want to use. The concept of cultural commons implies that once it is put out there, it is available for everyone to use.
Here's a common example. Someone makes a video and uses a song as background music in the video. How many people bother to credit the music somewhere in the video? Many people don't. Similarly, lets say someone performs or plays a song but doesn't bother to mention who wrote it. The audience may think the person covering the song wrote it unless told otherwise. It happens all the time.
Photographers often complain that they have seen photos they have taken turning up without credit. That's why some of them try to include their names on the photos, although those do get removed.
At any rate, if there is strong agreement here that every creator should get credit, I think you'll get a lot of support for that idea.
Actually I'm not even sure what we are talking about here.
For quite some time a publication (that will remain nameless) that is larger and more well known than us had a habit of "rewriting" stories that were found on Techdirt, as well as a few other moderately popular blogs, without any credit.
How many words are we talking about here are that are original to Techdirt and how much rewriting has been done? If it has been rewritten or even altered a little bit, does that fall into transforming it into something new? Or is the site perhaps doing people a favor by condensing it? Or by adding to it?
Does it actually fall under plagiarism, or is it merely failing to credit the original source, or what? I know that with some stories, I see it mentioned in various places. Sometimes the story originates in one place and then spreads. Other times everyone picks up on it at roughly the same time, and they didn't copy each other even if they didn't all publish it at the same time.
All I really know is that Techdirt hasn't gotten credit for something and some people have noticed; I've said that process doesn't always work that way because people don't always notice. If someone in China copies something from the US, we may not notice, so there are no social mores to shame them into stopping. It's a pretty straight forward statement if you stop and think about it. And even if people do notice, if their readers aren't your readers, then they may not care what your readers think of them.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
However-- Plagiarism is very unprofessional, and if a journalist/website *that matters* is found to be plagiarising others' work wholesale, their reputation will likely be hurt -- their competition will jump at the opportunity to use this, of course.
I don't believe in plagiarism, but Techdirt has gone to bat in defense of people who use content created by others and there's no credit given. If it is 100% the same as the original, is that plagiarism, but if it is only 95% the same is it creative license? Is there a percentage where it crosses over the line?
If you upload something on your site and don't say it is yours but also don't give anyone else credit, is that plagiarism or just lack of professional courtesy? I'm just asking because I've seen justifications for using whatever you find as part of your own work; no one has said that a song or a short video needs to include a list of credits. And there have been books where the author didn't credit her sources and it hasn't bothered people here. Seems like there have been advocates of wanting all books, music, art, etc., to enter the public domain immediately.
Let me ask, if it weren't Mike being the one not receiving credit, and it was someone you didn't like not receiving credit, would you be saying the same thing?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
I just finished this last night and it's quite interesting. It came out in 2006, but I'm just looking at it now because I have been writing about commons.
Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons. This link will take you to the entire book which you can download for free.
Chapter 2 A Short History of Capitalism is particularly relevant. Peter Barnes says that corporations act like corporations, which is to maximize profit for stockholders. "It externalizes as many costs as it possibly can, not because it wants to, but because it has to."
He talks about increasing power of corporations, the widening gap of wealth distribution, corporate influence of government, etc. Here's another quote:
___
"There’s even an economic theory explaining this: Mancur Olson’s logic of collective action. Olson, a Harvard economist, argued that unless the number of players in a group is very small, people won’t combine to pursue their common interests. For example, if the CEOs of five major airlines decide they want a $500 million government bailout, they pool their resources and hire a lobbying firm. Together they tell Congress that without the $500 million, their companies won’t survive, and the consequences of their collapse will be dire.
Who lobbies against them? No one. The reason is that, while the five airlines will gain about $100 million each, the average taxpayer will lose only $5 each. It’s thus not worth it for ordinary citizens to get off their duffs and fight."
___
As I have suggested before, I don't think copyright laws are going to change anytime soon because lawmakers don't really have much incentive. I think many of the current copyright holders (major labels, book publishers) are going to disappear, so I doubt if as many entities will be around to file lawsuits and therefore those problems will take care of themselves.
But I don't think the world economy will suddenly be transformed when IP protection becomes less important because I think a lot of other things will remain the same. The fact that you can have free access to all intellectual property does not necessarily mean that you have the wherewithal to do anything with it (which has been said lots of times here on Techdirt).
At any rate, if you guys want to expand the conversation, read the book. It's quite interesting.
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I'm really confused as to what you're trying to argue. First, you're saying "Oh hey, social mores don't seem to work." Then you're saying "It doesn't have enough effect on the internet as does copyright issues"
Who are you talking to? If you mean me, I said nothing about copyright. Saying that social mores won't always result in credit being given doesn't mean I feel copyright is or isn't the answer. I don't really care about copyright one way or the other. Most of the theorists I've been been reading lately say "Switch to a gift or P2P economy and give everyone a basic guaranteed income." The rationale: As long as everyone has their basic needs met and it doesn't matter who owns what (or you put much of it in a commons overseen by a trust which benefits everyone), then copyright becomes increasingly irrelevant. :-)
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
Suzanne you have a gift to give a long historical round up. It seems from this perspective that the ball falls out of your hand before just as you get to your last line.
I'm writing a series on gift economies, and that has led me into quite a few examinations of monetary transactions/capitalism.
One of the big differences between the two economic systems is personal interaction. Gift economies, by their nature, involve personal interaction. Monetary transactions facilitate commerce without any interpersonal interaction.
So I'm in the middle of all of this reading on free culture, communities, exchanges, and so on. The idea of social mores works when there is some sort of community with an accepted form of behavior. But when you get beyond the community, then you can't necessarily count on accepted forms of behavior other than some fairly broad universally accepted norms (e.g., "I won't shoot you, if you won't shoot me.").
So to assume that if someone claims credit for what you wrote or a joke you told, your friends will come to your defense seems to depend on these ideas:
1. That your friends know someone is claiming your stuff.
2. That your friends want to come to your defense.
3. That the people claiming your stuff will respond to your friends' complaints.
When you have a fairly tight-knit community where a person's reputation matters to the group, then you have some leverage. You can just shun the rules-breakers. But when you are dealing with an entire world where one community doesn't necessarily engage at any level with another, you may have no significant influence over what gets done outside your own community.
.And, at that point, they can make a big stink about it, draw lots of attention to the offending party, and voila, social mores still work.
But based on the responses I've seen in Techdirt, the reaction is likely to be, "Big deal. Once you put it online, it isn't yours anyway and we can do whatever we want with it."
Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
The Comedian's world technically isn't all that large. Regardless, it has social mores about copying jokes blatantly.
The gaming world has a lot of companies, but imagine if someone made a game without the permission of the gaming company (of course, they can sue)
I would consider them both small communities because it is likely that the degrees of separation from one end to the other isn't all that great. In other words, there's probably a pretty good chance that someone would spot uncredited usage.
But the Internet as a whole is hard to monitor if something doesn't happen to turn up on a search engine or you aren't looking. I know writers who have found their articles used in their entirety on other websites as if they were written by those website owners. I know photographers and graphic artists who discover their works are being used for commercial purposes in countries halfway around the world.
But if no one knows that the secondary user didn't originate the content, social mores aren't likely to factor in. And even if someone does figure out that the secondary user lifted the material, if no one in that social circle cares, then there is no pressure to give credit.
Bloggers and traditional news outlets have always raced to be first with a story, but in time people sometimes forget who broke the story first and then they just give credit to whomever is the bigger entity or whomever claims credit the loudest.
I think depending on social mores is great, but I can think of many cases where it won't apply.
There are quite a few music-themed cruises. Some are specifically built around a particular band or artist and others are built around a music genre.
Sixthman specializes in producing them. They currently have 11 cruises listed. They are essentially floating music festivals.
String Cheese Incident had enough fans following them around to various events that that the band and its management company formed a travel agency to help their fans made travel arrangements.
Roger Clyne and his band have two annual parties in at a location in Mexico. Thousands of fans go for the weekend.
I've looked into doing something like this with an artist I've worked with. We think it would be fun, but one of the things I've pondered is whether it is a good idea to have an event which is much more expensive than a show and where a good chunk of the money will go to airlines and hotels rather than the artist. Is it a good idea for a fan to spend $500 on this event and the artist doesn't get most of it? Or does it make more sense to offer shows and merchandise that don't tap out the fans and give a bigger margin to the artist?
On a smaller scale, I know bands that either own a bus or rent a bus to provide transportation to and from a show. A traveling party. Of course, there is the liability issue. The band I knew that owned its own bus didn't bother with insurance, and for that matter, didn't bother with a lot of stuff. It was pretty much a free-for-all. Ride at your own risk.
I must say that, anonymous or not, posts carry more weight with me if they provide credit or links to whatever article or information they're bringing into a discussion.
I really appreciate links to the original material (and if it isn't online, citations) and for the same reason I always provide them in my writing. It's helpful to go to the original source rather than just read an interpretation of the material. And by going to the original source, that often takes you to even more sources, so you can really pursue a topic in depth if you wish.
On the post: How Social Mores Can Deal With 'Unfair' Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright
Something to have fun with
On the post: How Social Mores Can Deal With 'Unfair' Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
Why do I add the references? Because I think some people might find them of interest. Sometimes I see some holes in these discussions and think the topics aren't quite as clearly defined as presented. Social mores, for example, is a huge topic. And it's very reasonable for me to point out that they don't hold across all groups, or across anything as big as the Internet. Even within discussion groups, what is accepted behavior in one group is not accepted behavior in others.
For example, there are people who believe that once music is played, essentially it enters into public domain and there is no need to give credit to the songwriter or the creator of the recording if they happen to use it. There are people who feel they can use graphic artwork or photos without crediting the creator. I see it done all the time, so whatever social mores are out there don't hold across all websites. In some cases people don't know they are supposed to credit the creator; in other cases they don't care; and in other cases, like with a video, they don't necessarily see a convenient place to post credits so they don't.
I've been reading about commons for three or four weeks now and how they are governed differs from group to group. Elinor Ostron won a Nobel prize in economics for her work on commons and one of her principles is that each group needs to design its own rules and ways to monitor activity. I won't bother with a citation, but I can find it if anyone wants to go that deeply into the discussion.
On the post: How Social Mores Can Deal With 'Unfair' Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
Copyright isn't really a factor in the world I envision because everyone is going to be giving it all away for free anyway. So I'm more concerned with how to generate an income, not necessarily directly from arts, for everyone. I want more money invested in infrastructure, in education, in health care, in environmental protection, low cost non-polluting energy solutions, and hopefully the jobs will follow.
The fact that some of you seem to try to paint me into a copyright corner makes me think you guys are so myopic that you see anyone who has a different viewpoint as "the enemy." As I keep saying, copyright is a non-issue to me because I think the big guys are disappearing and people at the individual level don't really care all that much. These individual creators may want credit for their creations, but they aren't going to sue you if you use them. They don't have the money to sue you. They'd much rather you come up with affordable health care.
On the post: How Social Mores Can Deal With 'Unfair' Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
But rest assured you don't need to research how people will get paid in the future, this is not in doubt, with or without laws people will find a way to get money.
I'm not talking about the entertainment industry. I'm talking about craftsmen and painters and street corner musicians who aren't making any money.
And I am very concerned because I'm not optimistic about the world economy. I don't think the average person is going to have any leftover money to buy a t-shirt or support any of the other "scarce goods" which are suggested in Techdirt as ways to make money for artists. I'm actually wondering if it is possible for people to give musicians vegetables they have grown in their gardens in exchange for entry into a concert. And I am also looking into installations that we can put into parks so that people can gather together to make music for each other for free.
I'm concerned about what was in that New Yorker article, too. That's why I have stressed that if you want copyright laws dropped, then you better pay attention to politics. The money going into the Tea Party sure as hell doesn't have dropping copyright laws as a priority.
On the post: How Social Mores Can Deal With 'Unfair' Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright
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On Facebook, Google, and Our Evolving Social Mores Online - John Battelle's Searchblog: "It's rather like attempting to design an industrialized city while living in 1200 AD. Not only has the technology not evolved (power grids, modern plumbing, automobiles, communications networks etc.), but equally importantly, the social mores have not developed as well.
... we are in the midst of a significant shift in our cultural history, one similar as our move, as a species, from a largely agrarian culture to one based on the modern city. That shift took roughly 1000 years to occur. And as it did, we renegotiated nearly every aspect of our social mores - the values that we hold as community standards. You need a new set of shared and respected rules to move from a village of 150 or so farmers, who knew each other very well, to a city of 1.5 million inhabitants, most of whom don't know each other, but live packed together in multi-story apartment buildings. ...
As we move online, we're once again making a great migration of social mores, and this time it's one not entirely tethered to physicality, location, or regional constraints....
Formation of new cultures like cities, or online communities, require that a process be, in the phrase of Kevin Kelly, a bit out of control....
This is uncharted territory, and we're very early in the instrumentation process. We're not certain, in advance of a given interaction, what's right and what's wrong, but we seem to know it when we see it."
On the post: How Social Mores Can Deal With 'Unfair' Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
One of the big issues about commons is whether they will function for large groups.
Somewhat related, I think group behavior in terms of politics is particularly interesting because I'm seeing that some patterns of intentional misinformation are working quite well. Now, how do we stop that?
_____
In Politics, Sometimes The Facts Don't Matter : NPR: "Mr. NYHAN: Well, the problem is, you know, as human beings, we want to believe, you know, the things that we already believe. And so when you hear some information that contradicts your pre-existing views, unfortunately, what we tend to do is think of why we believed those things in the first place.
And, you know, so when, you know, we get these corrections, we tend to say I'm right, and I'm going to stick with my view. And the thing that my research, which is with Jason Reifler at Georgia State University, found is that in some cases, that corrective information can actually make the problem worse."
On the post: How Social Mores Can Deal With 'Unfair' Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
I have less faith than you do that the Internet is going to give us what we need in the upcoming elections.
How facts backfire - The Boston Globe: "In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger."
On the post: How Social Mores Can Deal With 'Unfair' Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
Tragedy of the Commons: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics | Library of Economics and Liberty: "The scale of the commons (the number of people using it) also is important, as an examination of Hutterite communities reveals. These devoutly religious people in the northwestern United States live by Marx’s formula: 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.' (They give no credit to Marx, however; similar language can be found several places in the Bible.) At first glance Hutterite colonies appear to be truly unmanaged commons. But appearances are deceiving. The number of people included in the decision unit is crucial. As the size of a colony approaches 150, individual Hutterites begin to undercontribute from their abilities and overdemand for their needs. The experience of Hutterite communities indicates that below 150 people, the distribution system can be managed by shame; above that approximate number, shame loses its effectiveness."
Punishing Free-Riders: How Group Size Affects Mutual Monitoring and the Provision of Public Goods
http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/20606/1/dp1337.pdf
"... our simulations and experiments suggest that the logistics of large groups may hinder the ability of mutual monitoring to discipline free riders."
On the post: How Social Mores Can Deal With 'Unfair' Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
I'm still not saying anything about copyright.
I am reading about how commons work. After the group gets to about 1000 people (if I recall correctly -- I can look it up), the ability of everyone to keep track of everyone else starts to fall down. There's a definite link between social behavior and the size of the group. If social mores operated in all situations, I think we'd see more civil behavior in political discussions. Instead, it sometimes gets to be a free-for-all; a person will say something rude or untrue but gets backed up by his/her group of supporters. Then the other side counters and gets back up by his supporters. It becomes tribal behavior.
Social mores may operate within a group, but get discarded in regard to those outside the group. By all accounts someone who says something that is factually untrue should lose respect, but we're seeing that people can make untrue comments and get MORE respect WITHIN their group of followers.
On the post: How Social Mores Can Deal With 'Unfair' Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
I feel the same way, and I think a lot of writers, artists, musicians, etc. feel the same way. Often the copyright debate gets lumped in with this. What I hear a lot of people saying is that all they want is credit. They aren't concerned about getting paid or stopping usage of their content.
But on the opposite side I have read many defenses of people wanting to use whatever they want to use. The concept of cultural commons implies that once it is put out there, it is available for everyone to use.
Here's a common example. Someone makes a video and uses a song as background music in the video. How many people bother to credit the music somewhere in the video? Many people don't. Similarly, lets say someone performs or plays a song but doesn't bother to mention who wrote it. The audience may think the person covering the song wrote it unless told otherwise. It happens all the time.
Photographers often complain that they have seen photos they have taken turning up without credit. That's why some of them try to include their names on the photos, although those do get removed.
At any rate, if there is strong agreement here that every creator should get credit, I think you'll get a lot of support for that idea.
On the post: How Social Mores Can Deal With 'Unfair' Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright
Is it plagiarism, fair use, or remixing?
For quite some time a publication (that will remain nameless) that is larger and more well known than us had a habit of "rewriting" stories that were found on Techdirt, as well as a few other moderately popular blogs, without any credit.
How many words are we talking about here are that are original to Techdirt and how much rewriting has been done? If it has been rewritten or even altered a little bit, does that fall into transforming it into something new? Or is the site perhaps doing people a favor by condensing it? Or by adding to it?
Does it actually fall under plagiarism, or is it merely failing to credit the original source, or what? I know that with some stories, I see it mentioned in various places. Sometimes the story originates in one place and then spreads. Other times everyone picks up on it at roughly the same time, and they didn't copy each other even if they didn't all publish it at the same time.
All I really know is that Techdirt hasn't gotten credit for something and some people have noticed; I've said that process doesn't always work that way because people don't always notice. If someone in China copies something from the US, we may not notice, so there are no social mores to shame them into stopping. It's a pretty straight forward statement if you stop and think about it. And even if people do notice, if their readers aren't your readers, then they may not care what your readers think of them.
On the post: How Social Mores Can Deal With 'Unfair' Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
I don't believe in plagiarism, but Techdirt has gone to bat in defense of people who use content created by others and there's no credit given. If it is 100% the same as the original, is that plagiarism, but if it is only 95% the same is it creative license? Is there a percentage where it crosses over the line?
If you upload something on your site and don't say it is yours but also don't give anyone else credit, is that plagiarism or just lack of professional courtesy? I'm just asking because I've seen justifications for using whatever you find as part of your own work; no one has said that a song or a short video needs to include a list of credits. And there have been books where the author didn't credit her sources and it hasn't bothered people here. Seems like there have been advocates of wanting all books, music, art, etc., to enter the public domain immediately.
Let me ask, if it weren't Mike being the one not receiving credit, and it was someone you didn't like not receiving credit, would you be saying the same thing?
On the post: How Social Mores Can Deal With 'Unfair' Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons. This link will take you to the entire book which you can download for free.
http://capitalism3.com/files/Capitalism_3.0_Peter_Barnes.pdf
Chapter 2 A Short History of Capitalism is particularly relevant. Peter Barnes says that corporations act like corporations, which is to maximize profit for stockholders. "It externalizes as many costs as it possibly can, not because it wants to, but because it has to."
He talks about increasing power of corporations, the widening gap of wealth distribution, corporate influence of government, etc. Here's another quote:
___
"There’s even an economic theory explaining this: Mancur Olson’s logic of collective action. Olson, a Harvard economist, argued that unless the number of players in a group is very small, people won’t combine to pursue their common interests. For example, if the CEOs of five major airlines decide they want a $500 million government bailout, they pool their resources and hire a lobbying firm. Together they tell Congress that without the $500 million, their companies won’t survive, and the consequences of their collapse will be dire.
Who lobbies against them? No one. The reason is that, while the five airlines will gain about $100 million each, the average taxpayer will lose only $5 each. It’s thus not worth it for ordinary citizens to get off their duffs and fight."
___
As I have suggested before, I don't think copyright laws are going to change anytime soon because lawmakers don't really have much incentive. I think many of the current copyright holders (major labels, book publishers) are going to disappear, so I doubt if as many entities will be around to file lawsuits and therefore those problems will take care of themselves.
But I don't think the world economy will suddenly be transformed when IP protection becomes less important because I think a lot of other things will remain the same. The fact that you can have free access to all intellectual property does not necessarily mean that you have the wherewithal to do anything with it (which has been said lots of times here on Techdirt).
At any rate, if you guys want to expand the conversation, read the book. It's quite interesting.
On the post: How Social Mores Can Deal With 'Unfair' Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
Who are you talking to? If you mean me, I said nothing about copyright. Saying that social mores won't always result in credit being given doesn't mean I feel copyright is or isn't the answer. I don't really care about copyright one way or the other. Most of the theorists I've been been reading lately say "Switch to a gift or P2P economy and give everyone a basic guaranteed income." The rationale: As long as everyone has their basic needs met and it doesn't matter who owns what (or you put much of it in a commons overseen by a trust which benefits everyone), then copyright becomes increasingly irrelevant. :-)
On the post: How Social Mores Can Deal With 'Unfair' Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
I'm writing a series on gift economies, and that has led me into quite a few examinations of monetary transactions/capitalism.
One of the big differences between the two economic systems is personal interaction. Gift economies, by their nature, involve personal interaction. Monetary transactions facilitate commerce without any interpersonal interaction.
So I'm in the middle of all of this reading on free culture, communities, exchanges, and so on. The idea of social mores works when there is some sort of community with an accepted form of behavior. But when you get beyond the community, then you can't necessarily count on accepted forms of behavior other than some fairly broad universally accepted norms (e.g., "I won't shoot you, if you won't shoot me.").
So to assume that if someone claims credit for what you wrote or a joke you told, your friends will come to your defense seems to depend on these ideas:
1. That your friends know someone is claiming your stuff.
2. That your friends want to come to your defense.
3. That the people claiming your stuff will respond to your friends' complaints.
When you have a fairly tight-knit community where a person's reputation matters to the group, then you have some leverage. You can just shun the rules-breakers. But when you are dealing with an entire world where one community doesn't necessarily engage at any level with another, you may have no significant influence over what gets done outside your own community.
Here's some food for thought:
Plagiarism Is Not a Big Moral Deal - NYTimes.com
The Ontology of Plagiarism: Part Two - NYTimes.com
On the post: How Social Mores Can Deal With 'Unfair' Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright
Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
But based on the responses I've seen in Techdirt, the reaction is likely to be, "Big deal. Once you put it online, it isn't yours anyway and we can do whatever we want with it."
On the post: How Social Mores Can Deal With 'Unfair' Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
The gaming world has a lot of companies, but imagine if someone made a game without the permission of the gaming company (of course, they can sue)
I would consider them both small communities because it is likely that the degrees of separation from one end to the other isn't all that great. In other words, there's probably a pretty good chance that someone would spot uncredited usage.
But the Internet as a whole is hard to monitor if something doesn't happen to turn up on a search engine or you aren't looking. I know writers who have found their articles used in their entirety on other websites as if they were written by those website owners. I know photographers and graphic artists who discover their works are being used for commercial purposes in countries halfway around the world.
But if no one knows that the secondary user didn't originate the content, social mores aren't likely to factor in. And even if someone does figure out that the secondary user lifted the material, if no one in that social circle cares, then there is no pressure to give credit.
Bloggers and traditional news outlets have always raced to be first with a story, but in time people sometimes forget who broke the story first and then they just give credit to whomever is the bigger entity or whomever claims credit the loudest.
I think depending on social mores is great, but I can think of many cases where it won't apply.
On the post: How Social Mores Can Deal With 'Unfair' Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright
Re: Re: Small communities versus the entire world
My point exactly. What social mores?
On the post: Japanese Band Sells Hawaiian Vacation With The Band
A number of bands have done this
Sixthman specializes in producing them. They currently have 11 cruises listed. They are essentially floating music festivals.
String Cheese Incident had enough fans following them around to various events that that the band and its management company formed a travel agency to help their fans made travel arrangements.
Roger Clyne and his band have two annual parties in at a location in Mexico. Thousands of fans go for the weekend.
I've looked into doing something like this with an artist I've worked with. We think it would be fun, but one of the things I've pondered is whether it is a good idea to have an event which is much more expensive than a show and where a good chunk of the money will go to airlines and hotels rather than the artist. Is it a good idea for a fan to spend $500 on this event and the artist doesn't get most of it? Or does it make more sense to offer shows and merchandise that don't tap out the fans and give a bigger margin to the artist?
On a smaller scale, I know bands that either own a bus or rent a bus to provide transportation to and from a show. A traveling party. Of course, there is the liability issue. The band I knew that owned its own bus didn't bother with insurance, and for that matter, didn't bother with a lot of stuff. It was pretty much a free-for-all. Ride at your own risk.
On the post: How Social Mores Can Deal With 'Unfair' Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright
Re: Re: anonymous situations
I really appreciate links to the original material (and if it isn't online, citations) and for the same reason I always provide them in my writing. It's helpful to go to the original source rather than just read an interpretation of the material. And by going to the original source, that often takes you to even more sources, so you can really pursue a topic in depth if you wish.
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