Control may be power, but it doesn't build an audience
Copyright was always about control of the press, and preventing competition in the sale of copies. It was never necessary to enable artists to be paid by their audience.
With copyright ineffective, and a free and dwindling market in copies that people can now make themselves for nothing, the market that's left is for journalists, their views and news, and the money of those in their audience who would incentivise them to continue producing it.
But, the elephant in the room that proponents of paywalls ignore is "Why does a journalist want to keep their audience small, simply so their publisher can charge admission to those tiny few that will jump through hoops to read them?"
Even in 1701 Defoe was happy to embrace pirates selling copies of his work - if they would at least ensure those copies were accurate:
Had I wrote it for the Gain of the Press, I should have been concern’d at its being Printed again and again, by Pyrates, as they call them, and Paragraph-Men: But would they but do it Justice, and print it True, according to the Copy, they are welcome to sell it for a Penny, if they please.
If he was in the business of selling copies (or charging for access via a paywall) he would be concerned at the competition, but he's not, he's writing to be read, by those who would read him.
Writers are not in the business of selling copies, they're in the business of selling their words and ideas. Copyright was created for the press, not authors (despite the press pretending otherwise).
Given a choice between a sheltered life as a circus freak, and straddling the world's stage as a literary colossus, one shouldn't be surprised if such captive authors as Saul Friedman seek to escape the circus to the freedom of the world's free press aka the world wide web.
You never know, they might even have a thousand true fans waiting for them that throw them a few pennies to persuade them to keep up their good work.
From the prohibition of copying parochial newspapers, to the liberty of the world's free press. And there's no law preventing journalists being paid by those who would pay them to write - yet.
Mike, don't forget that $500k is just what the publishers pass on. There may well be $5-50m that this suspension of cultural liberty is costing society (let alone external costs due to litigation), and that's after the raw materials of paper and printing have been removed.
People are either paying this money or they are doing without the liberty to read, share or build upon these works.
The bulk of revenue obtained via copyright is through braking cultural progress, not from incentivising it.
It's like putting a very inefficient dynamo on a normal car to power an electric motor that supposedly increases the car's acceleration. The motor is happy (sometimes) and is indeed contributing to the vehicle's progress. The dynamo loves all the energy it's getting and will zap anyone that tries to remove it. But the car is burning a heck of a lot of fuel to obtain the same amount of progress it would without that Heath Robinson junk dragging it back. It's one big con.
I'm talking about paying the author for their work. The author is the one whose work the state has granted a reproduction monopoly over, and that's the fundamental issue here, not the costs of reproducing, distributing and retailing paperback versions of it.
If anyone reckons they can add value to an author's work (paid for by their audience) and sell it (possibly at a profit) then they should be welcome to it, e.g. WikiTravelPress printing books from WikiTravel.
If we pay the author their dues for their intellectual work, then it's a free market for anyone else to print it, whether in softback or hardback. No-one needs a monopoly. No-one ever has, but they're very lucrative if you can get them.
The problem with copyright is that it is no longer an effective monopoly, so it's not even lucrative. You can only look forward to a smug feeling when you bankrupt each random family for infringing it.
So what you are saying is that you will pay a writer or musician's full year salary so you can enjoy their latest work?
Yes, me and the rest of the interested audience, though more likely on a per work basis rather than a per annum one.
Who else do you think has been paying publishers a 10,000% mark-up?
If an audience of 10,000 each pay a publisher $10 for a copy that the publisher pays the artist a royalty of 10¢ for, what happens if you cut out the publisher? The artist either needs only 10¢ from each member of their audience, or $10 from only 1% of it.
Having paid the artist for their work I'll make my own copies. It's time producers of copies competed in a free market. Given their 10,000% mark-ups it's not surprising it's actually the publisher who's squawking, and the artist who's realised things aren't quite as bad as the publisher has tried to kid them. The artist still has their market, their audience. The publisher has no market, well, at least not one that will tolerate monopoly inflated prices.
Having freedom to share and build upon published works does not mean that artists must work for nothing.
It means that publishers can no longer expect to sell copies at monopoly protected prices if people assert their natural right to make copies and derivatives of their own.
Copies costing nothing to make is completely different to art costing nothing to make.
If your business is producing copies your monopoly has ended, so you're going to have to add value.
If your business is producing art, it's business as usual.
The market for art is as strong as it's ever been, but the artist's customer is no longer the producer of copies, but their audience.
Admittedly there are some misguided artists who think that means they must now sell copies directly to their audience. Nope, the artist must sell their art to their audience, just as they previously sold it to a publisher.
The market for copies has ended. The market for intellectual work continues.
Yup, moral rights are based on natural rights, primarily the natural right to truth.
Authorship is a matter of fact, not a privilege to be sold. However, being given credit is not a right. Authors have a natural right against misattribution, but that doesn't mean they can demand their names in lights any time their work is used.
Similarly with reputation. The right is against falsehood, not to deny others the liberty to express their negative opinions.
Again with integrity. The right is against an edited work misrepresented as original or authorised. It is not the right to veto any modification of one's work.
The problem with much moral rights legislation is that it has become contaminated by copyright inspired overreach. However, at least moral rights have a natural, ethically sound foundation. Copyright on the other hand is pure, unadulterated commercial privilege, unnatural and unethical.
News is an entirely different animal to newspapers. Just as music is different from CDs, and movies from DVDs.
The incumbents are busy trying to figure out how to sell copies, or 'pay to view'/'pay to listen', but they really need to sell what the customer can't easily do/make and hasn't got. The customers can view, listen, and copy, so it's a bit stupid trying to sell them that.
Producers of the news should sell their product, i.e. the news. Just as musicians should sell their music.
The days of selling copies have ended. The market for copies has ended. The market for intellectual work continues.
It's all actually pretty straightforward.
1) Material property can be sold or lent.
2) A copyright holder can provide transferable or non-transferable licenses to people permitting them to make copies in certain conditions.
That's all there is to it.
You buy a material copy, you can use it to prop up a table, burn it, or sell it. Copyright doesn't impact any of that.
All copyright does is prohibit anyone apart from the copyright holder (or their licensees) from making copies.
Copyright does not grant the copyright holder with any power, e.g. to prohibit anything "You may not use this copy as a paperweight". Copyright prohibits copying. The copyright holder simply gets to permit copying. A license is about giving permission - not taking anything away from a recipient or binding the poor mug to surrender their first born.
When I buy an AutoCAD CD I buy a piece of plastic representing an authorised copy. I NEVER need to sign any contract to use this copy that is now my property, nor can some spectral force reach out and bind me to terms of its choosing. The only thing I can't do (legally) is make copies of it. A license may be provided, that permits certain copies on certain conditions, but I can always ignore that license, especially if I never want to make any copies. Even if I do make copies, I can still ignore the license and possibly infringe copyright as a consequence. Simply making a copy doesn't trigger the spectre to leap out of the license claiming that the copy signifies my agreement where none was given. I know what I agree to or don't agree to.
Copyright may be incredibly complex, but that's no reason to start getting superstitious about it.
It still sounds like the judge has drunk some of the koolaid. Right of first sale was never about selling the license to a book you purchased (given books rarely came with licenses), but about selling the book: paper, ink and words. The same applies to software: acetate, pits, and machine code.
I am actually a very calm pro-GPL person, but I'm also against the abuse of the weapon that is copyright - the temptation to use rather than neutralise its power, even for apparently good ends. It may seem cool to be able to force a monopolistic corporation to surrender their source code with the threat of million dollar fines, but I'm concerned that people will then turn a blind eye when this weapon is then directed at an individual.
Compare this with the misanthropy that copyright has become today. Few really cared about printers having monopolies, and so few were too concerned when copyright started being used to protect monopolies against individuals. "You have to hurt a few to teach the rest a lesson"
The publishing industry and their legal departments have gradually fooled people into believing that privileges are rights, and that if all 'rights' must be protected, their monopolies must be protected too.
What is most important to protect are the natural rights of the individual. The unnatural privileges of copyright and patent should be abolished. The corporations should be relegated as regulated financial instruments (instead of being regarded as equivalent to human beings).
If you see the GPL as a neutralisation of copyright, then upon the abolition of copyright the loss of the GPL is not a loss of liberty, but the redundancy of a mechanism that restored it.
When liberty is restored through the abolition of the privilege that suspended it, it is important to recognise that the public's liberty naturally ends at the front door of each of its members' private domain. Liberty grants no sanction to sequester private source code (though many are confused into believing it does).
How many binaries currently published secretly rely upon GPL source code? Does anyone actually care? Does the prospect of being sued dissuade anyone from publishing a binary derivative without source?
In any case, without copyright who in their right minds is going to pay any money for a binary? If you're paying someone to produce some software for you then you're going to damn well make sure you get the source code or no deal.
Lastly, the natural right to privacy prevents you bashing someone's door down because you suspect the binary you've found was written by them and you want the fricking source code. It could be a poor student who's just chucked out a cool demo. Are you going to sue them for millions because they've published a binary derivative without source?
Re: " . . . to promote the useful arts and sciences. . ."
That's mostly the problem. People don't notice any art that has been impeded because it doesn't see the light of day.
How can people compare the progress we've made whilst being prohibited from standing upon the shoulders of our fellows, with that which would have occurred given the liberty to do so?
No-one sees the loss of what could have been, and instead comforts themselves with the perverted delusion that without monopoly we would have gained nothing.
Piracy is the ethical assertion of the individual's natural right to liberty. An ethical infringement of an unethical privilege.
I don't think people make a purchase decision based upon whether or not a work is copyrighted, but upon whether the holder of that privilege would use it to prosecute the purchaser should they share or build upon it.
People might not care whether one publisher sues another for infringing their monopoly, but they sure as hell care if they are going to be in the firing line, e.g. for umpteen court appearances, invasive discovery searches, and a fine of around $2,000,000.
The idea that a corporation such as Disney or Sony should be able to bankrupt a family for doing what comes naturally, sharing mankind's culture, should be properly recognised as abhorrent, let alone an injustice.
It's a mystery as to why so many seem to think that bankrupting families as part of an educational campaign to persuade people not to share music is reasonable, measured and proportionate. What people miss is the fact that people should be free to share music in the first place - there is no cause to fine them even a penny.
Hence the rise of 'free software' and 'free culture', artists and audiences who realise that the privilege of copyright is an unethical anachronism wholly unsuited to protecting a printer's reproduction monopoly in the information age.
Indeed, it would perverse if after people's cultural liberty to share and build upon published works had been restored through the abolition of copyright and patent, that people then petitioned for the resuspension of that liberty in order that the GPL could once again restore it...
I suspect they will erect paywalls but they will have so many promotional offers: "Sign up today and get the first 12 months free", "Buy X at shop Y and get a year's free subscription", etc. that only the very gullible/wealthy (time poor/money rich) will actually pay anything. It'll be like supermarket loyalty cards - they'll kid you that you're getting something valuable for no outlay in order to persuade you not to look elsewhere.
I wouldn't be surprised if they also reward good comments with credits toward free subscription renewals.
It's all going to be one big community of happy families playing in blissful ignorance within a walled garden (topped with razorwire). Eventually people will realise that such happy smiley holiday camps soon turn into stagnant ghettoes.
You know, once upon a time 'amateur' was the preserve of the wealthy (and supposedly intellectual) elite and so to be an 'amateur' was an aspiration of the lowly professional (one forced through predicament to have to work simply to survive). Hence some clubs would exclude 'professionals' as being too uncouth.
I wonder if we're to see an inversion again between the cachet attached to amateur vs professional.
It was the sort of comment that an overly fastidious moderator would reject as frivolous, hence me wondering if you were raising the quality bar for commenters.
I'd simply parodied a hypothetical tutor's welcome to their students highlighting the irony of their effective self-deselection from the necessary attributes of entrepreneurship (implying that rather than entrepreneurs they were gullible saps being soaked of their spare cash). They were also invited to enrol in follow-up courses, e.g. 'An introduction to self-development' and 'How to run a start-up on a shoestring'.
It wasn't exactly a masterpiece of humour. Someone else can write a better script.
Naturally, everyone has the right to print as part of their natural right to liberty.
It is the 'right to print copies' that was derogated in the 18th century from the individual's natural 'right to print', in order to create the mercantile privilege of copyright, a reproduction monopoly for the benefit of printers.
So, yes Mike, there is such a thing as the right to print. It is the restoration of this right that is pursued by copyright abolitionists.
Individuals are of course printing what the heck they like anyway (via their inkjet printers), but the abolitionists would see them exempt from prosecution (for ignoring a printer's monopoly).
On the post: Newsday Columnist Quits Over Paywall, Wants To Be Read
Control may be power, but it doesn't build an audience
With copyright ineffective, and a free and dwindling market in copies that people can now make themselves for nothing, the market that's left is for journalists, their views and news, and the money of those in their audience who would incentivise them to continue producing it.
But, the elephant in the room that proponents of paywalls ignore is "Why does a journalist want to keep their audience small, simply so their publisher can charge admission to those tiny few that will jump through hoops to read them?"
Even in 1701 Defoe was happy to embrace pirates selling copies of his work - if they would at least ensure those copies were accurate:
If he was in the business of selling copies (or charging for access via a paywall) he would be concerned at the competition, but he's not, he's writing to be read, by those who would read him.
Writers are not in the business of selling copies, they're in the business of selling their words and ideas. Copyright was created for the press, not authors (despite the press pretending otherwise).
Given a choice between a sheltered life as a circus freak, and straddling the world's stage as a literary colossus, one shouldn't be surprised if such captive authors as Saul Friedman seek to escape the circus to the freedom of the world's free press aka the world wide web.
You never know, they might even have a thousand true fans waiting for them that throw them a few pennies to persuade them to keep up their good work.
From the prohibition of copying parochial newspapers, to the liberty of the world's free press. And there's no law preventing journalists being paid by those who would pay them to write - yet.
On the post: F. Scott Fitzgerald Made $8,397 On Great Gatsby; His Daughter Gets $500,000 Per Year From It
What about the rest?
People are either paying this money or they are doing without the liberty to read, share or build upon these works.
The bulk of revenue obtained via copyright is through braking cultural progress, not from incentivising it.
It's like putting a very inefficient dynamo on a normal car to power an electric motor that supposedly increases the car's acceleration. The motor is happy (sometimes) and is indeed contributing to the vehicle's progress. The dynamo loves all the energy it's getting and will zap anyone that tries to remove it. But the car is burning a heck of a lot of fuel to obtain the same amount of progress it would without that Heath Robinson junk dragging it back. It's one big con.
On the post: The Debate Is Not Free vs. Paid
Re: Re: Re:
If anyone reckons they can add value to an author's work (paid for by their audience) and sell it (possibly at a profit) then they should be welcome to it, e.g. WikiTravelPress printing books from WikiTravel.
If we pay the author their dues for their intellectual work, then it's a free market for anyone else to print it, whether in softback or hardback. No-one needs a monopoly. No-one ever has, but they're very lucrative if you can get them.
The problem with copyright is that it is no longer an effective monopoly, so it's not even lucrative. You can only look forward to a smug feeling when you bankrupt each random family for infringing it.
On the post: The Debate Is Not Free vs. Paid
Re:
Yes, me and the rest of the interested audience, though more likely on a per work basis rather than a per annum one.
Who else do you think has been paying publishers a 10,000% mark-up?
If an audience of 10,000 each pay a publisher $10 for a copy that the publisher pays the artist a royalty of 10¢ for, what happens if you cut out the publisher? The artist either needs only 10¢ from each member of their audience, or $10 from only 1% of it.
Having paid the artist for their work I'll make my own copies. It's time producers of copies competed in a free market. Given their 10,000% mark-ups it's not surprising it's actually the publisher who's squawking, and the artist who's realised things aren't quite as bad as the publisher has tried to kid them. The artist still has their market, their audience. The publisher has no market, well, at least not one that will tolerate monopoly inflated prices.
On the post: The Debate Is Not Free vs. Paid
Free as in speech not as in beer
It means that publishers can no longer expect to sell copies at monopoly protected prices if people assert their natural right to make copies and derivatives of their own.
Copies costing nothing to make is completely different to art costing nothing to make.
If your business is producing copies your monopoly has ended, so you're going to have to add value.
If your business is producing art, it's business as usual.
The market for art is as strong as it's ever been, but the artist's customer is no longer the producer of copies, but their audience.
Admittedly there are some misguided artists who think that means they must now sell copies directly to their audience. Nope, the artist must sell their art to their audience, just as they previously sold it to a publisher.
The market for copies has ended. The market for intellectual work continues.
On the post: Weird Priorities: Europeans Want To Digitize Books As Quickly As Possible... Just As Long As It's Not Google Doing It
Re: Re: Moral Rights
Authorship is a matter of fact, not a privilege to be sold. However, being given credit is not a right. Authors have a natural right against misattribution, but that doesn't mean they can demand their names in lights any time their work is used.
Similarly with reputation. The right is against falsehood, not to deny others the liberty to express their negative opinions.
Again with integrity. The right is against an edited work misrepresented as original or authorised. It is not the right to veto any modification of one's work.
The problem with much moral rights legislation is that it has become contaminated by copyright inspired overreach. However, at least moral rights have a natural, ethically sound foundation. Copyright on the other hand is pure, unadulterated commercial privilege, unnatural and unethical.
On the post: Media Watchers Beginning To Ask Why People Would Pay For Online Journalism
There's a demand for news, but not for copies
The incumbents are busy trying to figure out how to sell copies, or 'pay to view'/'pay to listen', but they really need to sell what the customer can't easily do/make and hasn't got. The customers can view, listen, and copy, so it's a bit stupid trying to sell them that.
Producers of the news should sell their product, i.e. the news. Just as musicians should sell their music.
The days of selling copies have ended. The market for copies has ended. The market for intellectual work continues.
On the post: Court Once Again Confirms Right Of First Sale For Software: You Own It, Not License It
Re:
1) Material property can be sold or lent.
2) A copyright holder can provide transferable or non-transferable licenses to people permitting them to make copies in certain conditions.
That's all there is to it.
You buy a material copy, you can use it to prop up a table, burn it, or sell it. Copyright doesn't impact any of that.
All copyright does is prohibit anyone apart from the copyright holder (or their licensees) from making copies.
Copyright does not grant the copyright holder with any power, e.g. to prohibit anything "You may not use this copy as a paperweight". Copyright prohibits copying. The copyright holder simply gets to permit copying. A license is about giving permission - not taking anything away from a recipient or binding the poor mug to surrender their first born.
When I buy an AutoCAD CD I buy a piece of plastic representing an authorised copy. I NEVER need to sign any contract to use this copy that is now my property, nor can some spectral force reach out and bind me to terms of its choosing. The only thing I can't do (legally) is make copies of it. A license may be provided, that permits certain copies on certain conditions, but I can always ignore that license, especially if I never want to make any copies. Even if I do make copies, I can still ignore the license and possibly infringe copyright as a consequence. Simply making a copy doesn't trigger the spectre to leap out of the license claiming that the copy signifies my agreement where none was given. I know what I agree to or don't agree to.
Copyright may be incredibly complex, but that's no reason to start getting superstitious about it.
It still sounds like the judge has drunk some of the koolaid. Right of first sale was never about selling the license to a book you purchased (given books rarely came with licenses), but about selling the book: paper, ink and words. The same applies to software: acetate, pits, and machine code.
On the post: Interview With William Patry: Understanding How The Copyright Debate Got Twisted
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: copyleft?
Compare this with the misanthropy that copyright has become today. Few really cared about printers having monopolies, and so few were too concerned when copyright started being used to protect monopolies against individuals. "You have to hurt a few to teach the rest a lesson"
The publishing industry and their legal departments have gradually fooled people into believing that privileges are rights, and that if all 'rights' must be protected, their monopolies must be protected too.
What is most important to protect are the natural rights of the individual. The unnatural privileges of copyright and patent should be abolished. The corporations should be relegated as regulated financial instruments (instead of being regarded as equivalent to human beings).
Here's some further discussion on why advocates of the GPL aren't consequently pro-copyright: questioncopyright.org/columbia_panel_2008_12_01.
If you see the GPL as a neutralisation of copyright, then upon the abolition of copyright the loss of the GPL is not a loss of liberty, but the redundancy of a mechanism that restored it.
When liberty is restored through the abolition of the privilege that suspended it, it is important to recognise that the public's liberty naturally ends at the front door of each of its members' private domain. Liberty grants no sanction to sequester private source code (though many are confused into believing it does).
On the post: Interview With William Patry: Understanding How The Copyright Debate Got Twisted
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: copyleft?
In any case, without copyright who in their right minds is going to pay any money for a binary? If you're paying someone to produce some software for you then you're going to damn well make sure you get the source code or no deal.
Lastly, the natural right to privacy prevents you bashing someone's door down because you suspect the binary you've found was written by them and you want the fricking source code. It could be a poor student who's just chucked out a cool demo. Are you going to sue them for millions because they've published a binary derivative without source?
Don't get hung up on flawed dogma.
See Flawed Freedoms.
On the post: Interview With William Patry: Understanding How The Copyright Debate Got Twisted
Re: " . . . to promote the useful arts and sciences. . ."
How can people compare the progress we've made whilst being prohibited from standing upon the shoulders of our fellows, with that which would have occurred given the liberty to do so?
No-one sees the loss of what could have been, and instead comforts themselves with the perverted delusion that without monopoly we would have gained nothing.
Piracy is the ethical assertion of the individual's natural right to liberty. An ethical infringement of an unethical privilege.
See A Pirate's Code - 21st Century Edition.
On the post: Interview With William Patry: Understanding How The Copyright Debate Got Twisted
Re: Coffee
People might not care whether one publisher sues another for infringing their monopoly, but they sure as hell care if they are going to be in the firing line, e.g. for umpteen court appearances, invasive discovery searches, and a fine of around $2,000,000.
The idea that a corporation such as Disney or Sony should be able to bankrupt a family for doing what comes naturally, sharing mankind's culture, should be properly recognised as abhorrent, let alone an injustice.
It's a mystery as to why so many seem to think that bankrupting families as part of an educational campaign to persuade people not to share music is reasonable, measured and proportionate. What people miss is the fact that people should be free to share music in the first place - there is no cause to fine them even a penny.
Hence the rise of 'free software' and 'free culture', artists and audiences who realise that the privilege of copyright is an unethical anachronism wholly unsuited to protecting a printer's reproduction monopoly in the information age.
On the post: Interview With William Patry: Understanding How The Copyright Debate Got Twisted
Re: Re: Re: copyleft?
On the post: Fine, Let Newspapers Collude
Re:
I wouldn't be surprised if they also reward good comments with credits toward free subscription renewals.
It's all going to be one big community of happy families playing in blissful ignorance within a walled garden (topped with razorwire). Eventually people will realise that such happy smiley holiday camps soon turn into stagnant ghettoes.
On the post: Fine, Let Newspapers Collude
Re: Re: Nice Idea... Has it worked anywhere else?
I wonder if we're to see an inversion again between the cachet attached to amateur vs professional.
On the post: Fine, Let Newspapers Collude
Experimenting with more creatives business models?
Making an ethical incentive: money for art, liberty for people.
The copies are free. You pay for the work you like.
The traditional press can't grok it, the poor dears. See Invasion of the Copy Snatchers.
On the post: Can You Teach Entrepreneurship?
Re: Re: Rejected
It was the sort of comment that an overly fastidious moderator would reject as frivolous, hence me wondering if you were raising the quality bar for commenters.
I'd simply parodied a hypothetical tutor's welcome to their students highlighting the irony of their effective self-deselection from the necessary attributes of entrepreneurship (implying that rather than entrepreneurs they were gullible saps being soaked of their spare cash). They were also invited to enrol in follow-up courses, e.g. 'An introduction to self-development' and 'How to run a start-up on a shoestring'.
It wasn't exactly a masterpiece of humour. Someone else can write a better script.
On the post: Can You Teach Entrepreneurship?
Re: Re: Rejected
In place of staid agreement with Mike, I felt inspired to make an entertaining parody. Well, I thought it was amusing.
On the post: Can You Teach Entrepreneurship?
Rejected
On the post: B&N Claims It Must DRM Public Domain Books To Protect The Copyright On Them
Right to print
It is the 'right to print copies' that was derogated in the 18th century from the individual's natural 'right to print', in order to create the mercantile privilege of copyright, a reproduction monopoly for the benefit of printers.
So, yes Mike, there is such a thing as the right to print. It is the restoration of this right that is pursued by copyright abolitionists.
Individuals are of course printing what the heck they like anyway (via their inkjet printers), but the abolitionists would see them exempt from prosecution (for ignoring a printer's monopoly).
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