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Ugh. I know I'm probably in the minority, but, to me Avatar is a perfect counter-example. Because so much money was involved in its production, to make it a safe bet for a good return on investment, it had to necessarily appeal to the lowest common denominator. Hence the emphasis the flashy technology of production and presentation and basic complete neglect of everything that makes a film _art_.

If the movie industry went bankrupt, people would still create cultural artifacts, and (though I have no evidence for this) I would imagine they would create more meaningful ones. I don't think any of our neolithic ancestors made any money on the paintings at Lasceaux.

"If the movie industry went bankrupt, people would still create cultural artifacts"

But they won't have much "entertainment value" and therefore be disregarded as narcissistic ramblings or self-indulgent drivel. Or, just a hobby.

To have a "value" in a society or to have a cultural impact, one must create compelling works that appeal to a wide swath of the population to which the piece of creative expression is communicating. Perhaps that may take more than one person to accomplish. How do you get a group of people together to perform such a task without a motivational lubricant like money?

"I don't think any of our neolithic ancestors made any money on the paintings at Lasceaux."

There was no money in cave art because, well, there was no money at all. As soon as money was created, so was the minstrel, the portraitist, and the professional writer.

Thanks, those are great points! I have to admit at this point to be forming some of these thoughts as I type. (Also, I should admit replying to the GP mostly because I wanted to complain about the popularity of Avatar.)

But they won't have much "entertainment value" and therefore be disregarded as narcissistic ramblings or self-indulgent drivel. Or, just a hobby.

I disagree. History is littered with profound cultural artifacts that had plenty of "entertainment value" (weird term if you ask me) that did not have a monetary motivation. One might argue that these are in fact the best ones. You point out yourself that cave art preceeded money. Yet, it existed.

To have a "value" in a society or to have a cultural impact, one must create compelling works that appeal to a wide swath of the population to which the piece of creative expression is communicating.

True enough. But I would argue that in general the breadth of that impact is inversely proportional to it's weight. The Pixies (as the first example that comes to mind) influenced a pretty small number of mostly musicians, but that influence was profound enough to inspire bands that would later go on to have a much wider (and more commercial) impact.

I'm sure neither of us believe that money doesn't change the way art is produced. My point is that if you look at the correlation between production cost and final quality (of say, Avatar), if anything (maybe after a certain point), things get worse, not better.

It's worth remembering that Hollywood was created (as a movie making center) to escape the suffocating regulatory environment created by Edison on the East coast (specifically the Motion Picture Patents Company).

This debate isn't helped by demagogues on either side pedaling excluded middle fallacies. The future lies somewhere in the middle, not in either extreme.

But few people give away their work for free and even fewer do it for altruistic reasons (it's like "spending other people's money" - how can you not be fine with that?)

Are you saying the main motivation to create art is profit and/or recognition?

Human history has many examples of altruistic behaviors for art's sake.

You argue people will stop creating because there will be no profit for them to do so (or "lots of effort and monetary cost that can be quite substantial").

I argue if someone is motivated enough and creative enough, that person will find a way to manifest their vision into physical reality.

James Cameron's life during the creation of the movie "Titanic" was not one motivated by profit for profit's sake...

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,290182,00.html

       Are you saying the main motivation to create 
       art is profit and/or recognition?

No, stop twisting my words.

BTW, that article about the Titanic is in total favor of what I said. To break even, the Titanic needed ~ $400 million dollars.

I would totally love to see someone sharing that for free, for art's sake ;-)

      You argue people will stop creating because there will 
      be no profit for them to do so

I'm not talking about profits; I'm talking about revenu. I'm talking about a book author that works on a book for an entire year, during which he has to put food on the table, pay the rent, pay for his son's tuition and live in a decent environment. In my country, the best poet we've had, a pure genius, lived in inhuman conditions and died at 39 years old because of syphilis.

Are you by any chance suggesting that they are paid too much?

Do you think the genius poet would have been inspired living in a mansion, every need catered to by servants?

You validated my point. The best poet was not motivated by revenue, and althought I do not know, was probably not worried of others disseminating their work.

Creating art for art's sake, not to pay for the offspring's tuition bills.

In the arts, like in any field, you only get better by immersing yourself in it and it's hard to do that when you have to treat it like a hobby rather than a job.

Ask yourself what level of talent you would have right now if there was zero money in coding or designing software, and you just did it on evenings and weekends, when you were not working your full time job in retail or food services to scrape by?

There is just something disturbing to me about this idea that people should be suffering so that others can read better poetry on their comfy 100k tech salaries.

"Ask yourself what level of talent you would have right now if there was zero money in coding or designing software"

That's actually part of the reason why I find it so delicious that there are people outside of Computer Science that are hitting it big in Web and mobile apps; it's a validation that anyone can do the work of a CS grad just as anyone can write a novel or paint a picture; it just takes time and effort and acquiring skills.

Some of the greatest pieces of expression that have endured the test of time and taste (from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to Norman Rockwell's most iconic American slices of life to Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises") were almost resoundingly commissioned works, the artist working full time on their craft and getting paid to do so. Most artists are career changers, going from a "normal" job to one of creativity and artistry.

Even John Keats, the "poster boy" for poetic works of unending beauty and pure inspiration, quit his job as a surgeon-in-training to become a full-time published-and-paid poet. He could've easily worked his day job as a surgeon and moonlighted as a for-free poet by night. His primary goal was to be a poet, and he found the only way to do so was by making it his career.

Even Vincent Van Gogh, the more modern keeper of raw artistic expression, pined for more people to buy his work, not the least of reasons being to fend off abject poverty, but also as a validation of the style he admittedly created. He was resigned in his later years to live off his brother as he painted prodigiously, but by that point he was in the throes of psychosis. Is that what you meant by "art for art's sake"?

It's surely a romantic notion that artists draw forth passionate forms of expression from fending off psychological defect, hungry bellies, and harsh surroundings. But the truth is, every one of those artists to a person wanted to get paid doing what they do. Perhaps the money is a validation, or incidental being a published or culturally accepted artist, or simply a means to an end. Doesn't matter a whit. They want to do what they want to do full-time.

In other words, "Shakespeare got to get paid, son"[1]

[1] http://i.imgur.com/cyIGF.jpg

I'll go along with bad_user's example of Avatar.

From Wiki: "Avatar was officially budgeted at $237 million.[3] Other estimates put the cost between $280 million and $310 million for production and at $150 million for promotion."

So, I'd have to agree. At those costs, I don't think any amount of creativity or motivation could get that creator over the hump if all they had to look forward to was a bunch of people torrenting their creation.

I view the choice as simple. If you don't want to pay, in some regard, then don't watch the movie. Everyone has a choice. And nowadays the choice is easy... wait a few months and pay a $1 from Redbox if that's all its worth. Or get it through Netflix. At least the team gets SOMETHING for it.

If you don't want to pay, you don't have to pay. Ever snuck into an extra movie in the theatre when you were a kid, or had a friend who worked at the theatre get you in to a free show?

In your Avator example, had their been a group of motivated people willing to pursue the creative goal of James Cameron's vision in spite of monetary compensation, $237 million would not be required. Some sort of 501c3 action movie production company.

There have been no instances of altruistic people creating a movie valued at over two hundred million dollars, nor would piracy be justified if such an instance existed.

I actually haven't snuck into an extra movie. But, to be fair, I have downloaded movies and music.

I just grew up and don't find the need to do that anymore. With services like Pandora and Slacker Radio, and a ton of pay per song models, I don't need to steal music anymore.

With Netflix and Redbox, it is worth a few bucks to keep the artists creating so that I can keep enjoying their work.

People who justify piracy either A) Haven't grown up, B) Don't work for a living so they don't understand how important it is to get paid for their work, or C) Are selfish and feel the world owes them something.

Maybe a mixture of the above.

And they have, with DRM and all that. Only problem with it is that it's a PITA for honest customers, but technology evolves and people always find ways to build better mouse-traps.

i.e. publish serially and demand advances, like authors used to do.

Avatar is an interesting choice to make an example of, since copying it degrades a lot more information than copying normal, non3d movies. That is, by whatching it in a cinema, you get a better experience than if you download it (since you lose the 3d effects).

Selling used books is not comparable with putting an ebook on PirateBay. Lending books and returning them when you're done reading is also not comparable to putting an ebook on PirateBay. You also can't display the same painting in 2 museums unless one of them is just a cheap copy and people don't appreciate copies in museums.

All cases of "sharing" the "older media" you describe are subject to the laws of scarcity. Even xeroxing a book is subject to it, as the cost of that can be even higher than just buying the book; and is mostly done for technical references for which you can't find the original.

I think you might be missing my point. My point isn't that piracy doesn't exist, it does, my point is that sharing also exists and in the digital realm it is easily confused with piracy. A library allows a great number of people to read a book without any of them paying a dime to the author. In many ways it's fundamentally comparable to piracy, potentially hundreds of people a year can read a book while the author is only compensated for the purchase of a single book. However, we tolerate and indeed celebrate such things because we recognize that there is a tradeoff between the necessity of financial reward for creating art and the necessity of spreading the consumption of art by lowering the financial barriers to access.

However, while scarcity is intrinsic with physical goods it is not so with digital goods. Thus, when you translate an ordinary library into the digital realm without imposing artificial scarcity you get something that is fundamentally indistinguishable from pirate bay.

"people sharing" is a romantic notion; in a perfect world there would be no problem with it, but writing a book / creating a game / composing a song / creating a movie - takes time, lots of effort and monetary cost that can be quite substantial.

Would people create movies such as Avatar (in the interest of sharing) if the movie industry would go bankrupted? I doubt it. Would people donate money if movies were released for free? Sharing is all fine for people, as long as it doesn't cost them too much. But few people give away their work for free and even fewer do it for altruistic reasons (it's like "spending other people's money" - how can you not be fine with that?)

This is a false dichotomy. If all unregulated digital distribution were piracy then you would be correct, people would stop paying for goods that were available digitally and it would become difficult for more such things to be created, as creators would no longer be supported financially in doing so. However, that's not how things have played out. Avatar is a good example. It was almost certainly available online in clean, high-def versions while it was still in theaters and long before it was available on DVD. With just a few clicks and some waiting anyone of hundreds of millions of people could have downloaded and watched it, without paying James Cameron anything. And indeed many did. But none of this forestalled the massive financial success of the movie, both at the box office and in later DVD, blu-ray, and streaming sales.

This is not an isolated phenomenon. The ability to "pirate" digital media has been widely available and widely known for many years. And yet the music, movie, television, and book industries have not collapsed. Indeed, in the case of the movie industry it had a banner year in 2010. How can this be? There is no possible interpretation of the data which is compatible with the notion that huge numbers of people who engage in "piracy" are not also spending lots of money on media. Under the "all unregulated digital distribution is piracy" model this doesn't make sense. However, under the piracy + sharing model it not only makes perfect sense but is a predicted phenomenon of that model.

Despite this evidence that there is more to media "piracy" than just piracy many people refuse to accept it. But in order to proceed to a sane enforcement of laws and a healthy industry where content creators are rewarded for their creations we must see and acknowledge what is actually going on.

_the onus is on producers to figure that out_

And they have, with DRM and all that. Only problem with it is that it's a PITA for honest customers, but technology evolves and people always find ways to build better mouse-traps.

DRM very rarely works. DRM on movies, tv, and music does not work. Every example of DRM trying to impose artificial scarcity on these media has been utterly broken. It takes only a matter of seconds to begin downloading blu-ray rips. And yet despite this, as I've said, the industry still makes tons of money. Indeed, even when digital media is distributed without DRM (as is increasingly the case for music through Amazon MP3, iTunes, and other distributors) the world doesn't end, and artists still make money.

So the onus really is on all of us - if you don't like the current legal frameworks, think of something to reward the original authors; otherwise the situation is only going to get worse.

You seem to think that the situation has been getting worse, but it hasn't. In fact, the situation has been getting better. The lower costs and barriers of digital distribution, with or without DRM, has enabled artists to gain a higher share of the revenues of their work. And has enabled more artists to get into business who would otherwise have been too marginal to have been accepted into the industry. There are many examples now of artists giving away their work in exchange for variable donations (down to none), many of these have been hugely successful in generating revenue.

The problem we face today is not to find some desperate measure to divert us from the inevitable desolate wasteland of rampant piracy and starving artists. Rather, the problem we face is to acknowledge and accept the reality of digital goods and to come up with legal frameworks and business models which embrace the natural strengths of digital goods rather than denying them and pretending we can model this new media landscape by pasting a map of old media on top of it and changing a few of the labels.

      If all unregulated digital distribution were piracy then 
      you would be correct

I was thinking about trends.

Selling digital goods is obviously flawed right now; as you said, and you are right - because copying and sharing is so damn easy to do (and human nature too).

Heck, I "share" lots of stuff myself; then I start feeling guilty and purchase some of that stuff.

It's a trend that I worry about; because I'm also in the business of selling digital goods; but I also feel that the legal frameworks have been stretched too far and that DRM is really all about artificial restrictions, not "rights", which is just wrong.

I guess on the Internet the long tail works and some authors are doing quite well because of it. But technology is so disruptive in this case that it will shake a lot of bones :) - and this situation might be comparable to the end of The Renaissance period.

"DRM very rarely works. DRM on movies, tv, and music does not work. Every example of DRM trying to impose artificial scarcity on these media has been utterly broken."

Since you say there is no scarcity, create Photoshop for me without making a copy. How about a Metallica album? Oh? you can't?...that means that not everybody can create it..and there is scarcity. You (and every other person that tries to make the case for piracy) claim that the scarcity is in the copy..when it's actually in the creation.

"Indeed, even when digital media is distributed without DRM (as is increasingly the case for music through Amazon MP3, iTunes, and other distributors) the world doesn't end, and artists still make money."

You need to look at the big picture. Movies (and anything digital) are only about what people are willing to pay. Right now, piracy still has some stigma attached to it and most people will pay rather than pirate. If everyone knew they could get something for free, the value would eventually be $0, which will make it impossible for anyone to make money (or even recoup the initial costs). Since software isn't worth $0, I would say DRM has done a pretty good job.

A good example of this is iPhone apps. For the most part, you can't charge more than a few dollars, because that's what people are willing to pay.

"There are many examples now of artists giving away their work in exchange for variable donations (down to none), many of these have been hugely successful in generating revenue."

This isn't a viable business model. Donations only work so far. There are also many examples of people that asked for donations, had thousands of downloads, and got very little in revenue.

It's funny there aren't more people that have your views on things such as the GNU/GPL licenses. Since there is no scarcity with digital goods, am I really hurting anyone when I use GNU licensed code in my proprietary app (the original code is still 'free')? But, whenever there is a discussion on copyright infringement, people talk it's not theft yet when the guy from thesis used GNU code and didn't release it under the GNU license, it was called 'theft' by many people here on HN. It's because of this that I can't take the movement seriously.

I'm not making a case for piracy. I'm making a case that there's more to unregulated digital distribution than just piracy. The mistaken belief that there is only piracy is fundamentally incompatible with developing healthy and profitable legal frameworks and business models for digital goods.

no, you are trying to make the case that piracy is merely sharing, which is wrong.

He seems to be making the case that a business model that insists that there is no difference between sharing and piracy is not likely to succeed long term.