This is not true. Artist will always make art and always have.
You can't deny however that any massive undertakings would be effectively killed. No one will invest millions of dollars to produce a video game, or hundreds of millions to produce a movie if it can be freely copied.
It's great that you can make a game or movie on a small budget, but isn't it better to live in a world where we can have both? Does the cost of copyright really outweigh the benefits of living in a society where creative people can devote all of their time producing content?
You see the problem is that you have to think about this in a much larger perpective to realize that things will even themselves out.
With regards to cost of copyright. Then yes when it makes people criminals to the extent it do today and fines them with amounts it do then it is way way way to high.
I'm not sure how 3d models would make a difference in movies? Many movies are already basically 3d renders.
That's only true currently for games that are only playable via a single central online service (e.g WoW etc) and that's sort of dictated by the game format itself.
What I mean is a world where all games are video streamed to you even if they are single player only.
You know times change.
Anyway. I made my point already.
At the moment we have many people making something equivalent to "folk art" and getting paid to do so. Folk art does not necessarily need support from a patron since it is typically fairly easy to make (i.e. it can be done in one's spare time). People will continue making folk art after they can no longer be ensured payment for their work, though to a lesser extent.
There ain't such thing as free art.
Still, I'd rather not have to depend on charity-lumberjacking, you know? If someone wants to chop down trees for free, that's between him and his god (or dryad, as the case may be). If that's the only way trees ever get cut down? God help us all.
Above statement refers, for purposes of argument, to sustainable tree harvesting, so as to avoid irrelevant side tangents.
A lumberjack can't digitally mass produce cutting down trees. They have to actually be present at each tree.
What you cannot do, however, is find a difference that distinguishes them in a way that defends your argument that we shouldn't worry about a world where X is only produced by charity, since some people do X for free.
If you don't care that art would only be produced for free, neither should you care if lumberjacking only happened by charity. If you're not ready to go that far, you might not want to lean so heavily on the argument that "(some) artists create for free".
Don't blame me for you lack of imagination that would have allowed you to see a world where artist could create without making money on digitally mass produced songs.
It is possible plenty of people are doing it.
So please spare me the strawmen.
The guy that cracked your account and used it to make these comments:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3480634 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3480674 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3480761
>Don't blame me for you lack of imagination that would have allowed you to see a world where artist could create without making money on digitally mass produced songs.
I'm sure, that, just as with making music, there are revenue models for lumberjacking that don't involve charging for lumberjacking services. For example, they could broadcast live video of themselves chopping down trees and charge for that. Or maybe trees should only be cut down by their owners so they're not technically earning money from chopping down a tree.
Or, you know, we could just bypass the whole charade and let people charge for the lumberjacking/artistic creations that they were responsible for (if they so wish) rather than stick to some ideological belief that it's somehow wrong to do so while hoping they come up with some convoluted way to accomplish the same thing with more restricted means.
It's great that there are ways to produce good X without invoking exclusivity rights in X; but for those (many) cases where X wouldn't otherwise be produced, I would like for that model to be an option.
That doesn't mean the current copyright regime is optimal; far from it. It just means that the mentality of "IP sucks and everyone will produce valuable stuff for free" is looney.
If you cant see the difference between a performance and copying the performance to re-sell it, then frankly there isn't much to discuss.
- offering an argument, - being shown how it is flawed, and then - ignoring the explanation you were just given, to fall back on a variant of "copying is free".
I think a lot of us readers would prefer it if you engage the arguments given to you.
What haven't I addressed? Your flawed premise that lumberjacking can be compared to selling CDs?
What you haven't addressed is your inability to consistently apply your claims about non-IP-reliant methods of art production. Here's what happened:
You post (the one right before my first reply), showing indifference to the prospect of it being impossible to make a monetary profit from production of intellctual works.
Paraphrasing your comment, you say,: Real artists don't work for profit, so it's actually a good thing if production of movies, books, etc cannot earn a monetary profit due to people not respecting IP claims.
Then, I come back, and ask if you are so indifferent to the unprofitability of production of something else people want being rendered unprofitable due to widespread refusal to recognize rights therein, using the example of lumberjacking.
Due to your apparent inability to follow chains of logic beyond a certain depth, you felt it was sufficient to cite one superficial difference betweeen lumberjacking and creation of intellectual works, and considered it "case closed" and duh why can't this idiot see that they're different.
What you don't understand (almost certainly due to an unwillingness to) is that this difference, while true, does not invalidate the analogy I was drawing, because they are not different in the relevant aspects. What aspects?
1) In both cases, there would be a bad incentive effect on the valuable activity: the lumberjacking and intellectual works that need a profit incentive to produce, won't be.
2) In both cases, you can find some circuitous, inefficient way to reproduce the profitability that would otherwise come from simply recognizing rights therein.
In response to both of these similarities, and due to your inability to consistently apply the principles you advocate, you simply fall back on, "art can be copied, cutting a tree down can't". And that's true. But it means precisely nothing in terms of the above similarities.
Quite frankly, it's frustrating when you keep falling back on your standard line that they're different (in a narrow way), completely obvlivious to how it contradicts what you just said ("who cares if socially-beneficial activity X can't turn a profit [except by circuitous routes]?"). I expect better from people I debate with, especially on HN.