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>What unit would you use to measure the value it provides, if not money?

I'm against quantifying it at all because, while useful, price is a very limited metric. There are numerous cases where you can increase the transaction sum and achieve 0 value increase, eg. monopolistic pricing in a market with inelastic demand or bad investing (destroying capital) or externalities, etc.

>I don't understand the point you're making. Obviously somebody thinks Microsoft's Android patents are valuable, or they wouldn't pay to use them. What do you mean by "would it create extra value?"

Nobody is "using them", in fact nobody knows what patents are in question, all that's known is that Microsoft forced different Android manufacturers to pay up for Linux kernel or they take them to court. That's textbook rent seeking. It's likely that Linux devs arrived at the solution independently (since IIRC it's unknown what patents are in question), or would have done so - so you can't make the point that without granting Microsoft a monopoly you wouldn't have Linux kernel.

>That makes no sense. Demand existing isn't enough for something to spring into existence. You make it sound like other people slaving away to create music, movies, and software is your birth right or something.

People choose to share their creations, once it's copied the copy is no longer their property. They can do whatever they want with their property but knowledge is a non-rivalrous non-excludable good (without infringing on excludable property of others) and creating artificial scarcities to sustain someones business model is ridiculous. Software can translate nicely to a no IP environment by SaaS, NDAs and open-source development financed by consulting. There are various routes for other industries, and many more can be created. I'm not sure about things like pharmaceuticals and maybe other industries have different conditions that would lead to catastrophic results, but that doesn't apply to software and entertainment, bankrupting Disney and Microsoft != bankrupting a company with 10 years of R&D in cancer treatment research.

creating artificial scarcities to sustain someones business model is ridiculous

I read your words, but all I hear you saying is "I want free media".

Do you fundamentally disbelieve in the concept of paying someone for the use/enjoyment of IP they produced?

>I read your words, but all I hear you saying is "I want free media".

All the media I consume nowdays is free, news, learning resources, youtube vids etc. Apart from going to cinema (but even that started to suck), and music from local bands that I pay for to support the artist. So nope, I don't want any media.

>Do you fundamentally disbelieve in the concept of paying someone for the use/enjoyment of IP they produced?

Do you pay for broadcast TV program or radio ? They are funded by advertising. Same thing with software, I don't mind paying for it, but if you expect people not to copy it - keep it on a private server and expose it as a service, or find some other model.

>Do you pay for broadcast TV program or radio ? They are funded by advertising.

Actually, in the UK, we do pay for it (BBC broadcasts, at least) through a TV license.

But you have private channels that are funded by advertising ?

Yes, pretty much everything other than BBC.

Yeah, as an independent, 'starving' artist myself, I take exception to all this happy talk about making information free. It's already hard enough to make a living off of music, or any art, and I'm no fan of the monopolies, but it's incredibly obnoxious when I hear all this stuff about just give all of your work away for free with no path to eventual prosperity, and how "It's the producers problem, why don't they make a new business model". As for the monopolies, that's what they've done with litigation and IP protection measures, albeit more and more draconian ones...

So, you do realize that the information is free to duplicate, right? And that there is no way of ensuring you get paid for rent on a resource you can't control the duplication of--at least without causing massive headaches for everyone else?

Dude, sell tickets to shows, sell merch at shows, don't perform unless paid before hand.

If all else fails, consider that maybe you don't have a product worth buying, and then improve or leave.

> If all else fails, consider that maybe you don't have a product worth buying, and then improve or leave.

This point bears repeating. As a musician, like it or not, you're an entrepreneur. You can outsource your marketing and collections to a third party in exchange for a percentage of profit (or even in exchange for an advance on anticipated profits), but it doesn't make you any less of a businessperson.

Everyone reading Hacker News knows the statistics when it comes to startup success. Why would the music industry (or any artistic endeavor) be any different in this regard?

Make something people want, at a price they're willing to pay.

"Everyone reading Hacker News knows the statistics when it comes to startup success. Why would the music industry (or any artistic endeavor) be any different in this regard?"

This is the failed model that leads to the kind of monopolies all too well known to artists like myself.. It's sure not the American model for entrepreneurship. This hits "business" business model is for the fucking birds, and this line "If all else fails, consider that maybe you don't have a product worth buying, and then improve or leave." is bullshit. Ask Mozart, Van Gogh, Stephen Foster and lots of other great artists who died penniless.

"As a musician, like it or not, you're an entrepreneur"

Sorry, I know this and I like it. And as an entrepreneur, what I hate about about the hits business model that started in music, and is making its rounds to software is that it's not a very healthy one -- it's a winner take all, zero sum game, ans it's naive to not understand that most successful business models cannot run this way. Yesterday music, today movies, tomorrow software.

TL;DR thank you so much for the lecture, hacker bro. When it comes to: "Make something people want, at a price they're willing to pay."

/rant starts > Why would the music industry (or any artistic endeavor) be any different in this regard?

"why would" indicates you did not think about it but you just want to fit the arguments to your position. Answer is: why should it? Like everyone here on HN you should know that softwareland is not only filled with startups but that there are infinitely more ways to run a software company. Same with music. It's not about being Michael Jackson or starving poor.

I have seen all kind of spoiled brat arguments of entitled hard drive owners seen coming along here and they are in the end just that: sense of entitlement and "i want" spelled out in different forms.

Foremost I read it from the snarky tone with which BS "tips" are given like "sell you underwear", "if people don't pay just f* off" ... I was even reading from people who think that artists principally have no rights on their creations, others were going pseudo philosophical with "the bits of my hard drive are free", (Oh yes physical property is still sacred, can someone tell me why?).

And then to witness the shit storm breaking loose if a company uses designs of 37 signal. Then the wannabe startups come out of their holes, they already see their ios-apps floating around in freedom and not generating money anymore.

Here it is: If a content creator creates something it's at his will to decide what happens to it, if it's free, it's free. If he wants to be attributed or paid, then it be so. All else is not at your discretion. Running away with a 1TB hard drive full of downloaded content and then screaming "it's good for your resume" is just an insult. Not more.

This has got nothing to do with entrepreneurship. Apparently music motivates people to buy gadgets for several 100 bucks to have it 24/7, so let them take the free stuff, let them pay for the stuff with a price tag.

To paraphrase: consider it a product worth buying and pay or just leave.

As an aside: I do not make and do not intend to make money from music anymore and always have profited from very liberal use of copyright laws. But when I played copyrighted material I always made note of it and paid dues where applicable. Why is this such a difficult concept for the elite hanging out here? And why this kind of annoyed lecturing?

/rant ends.

You're an ass. No, it's not FREE to duplicate. It costs money to duplicate and distribute licensed copies of other people's work. And it's not information, it's art. The massive headache you feel is called honor. You're from a culture that now calls stealing liberty. Brave new world, indeed.

Dude, sell tickets to shows, sell merch at shows, don't perform unless paid before hand.

You're an ass.

If all else fails, consider that maybe you don't have a product worth buying, and then improve or leave.

You're an ass.

"No, it's not FREE to duplicate."

cp ShohamsGreatestFlames.txt ShohamsGreatestFlames2.txt

Man, that was really really cheap. Free even.

"It costs money to duplicate and distribute licensed copies of other people's work."

Notice that I didn't say anything about licensed copies of other people's work. Duplication--the raw act as shown above--of digital data is effectively free.

Your profits derive from your ability to control the scarcity of your product, right? If a publisher licensed your music and stood next to you at your shows handing out your album for free, you'd be boned, right?

The fact here is that these people can and will make duplicates of your work, and there is nothing you can do to stop them. It's not costing them enough not to, and anything you do to increase that cost--pushing for rediculous prison terms, making blank CDs have a big tax, forcing ISPs to limit service, etc.--hurts society far more than your loss hurts you.

"And it's not information, it's art."

To my capture card in the studio, to my sound board mixing analog signals, to my microphone receiving vibrations in the air, reading a phonebook and playing a song are functionally equivalent. To the hard disk, the bytes look the same. Metadata about "art" or "not art" is lost in the medium.

There may be a great philosophical difference between art and information, there may be a moral difference about how one ought be treated as opposed to the other--but there is no practical difference, and getting paid is about getting practical.

If all else fails, consider that maybe you don't have a product worth buying, and then improve or leave.

I think you shouldn't write this off as "you're an ass". It's rough to hear "you likely won't get full payment for the product itself because it can be pirated", but that is the curse of massive amounts of processing power, digital information, and storage space. It doesn't mean you can't be successful, it just means that traditional cash cows such as prints/CD sales are harder get. You used to be able to record a song once, and sell that song indefinitely. Milk the cash cow. Now, in a world where you could potentially (but not likely) make zero due to piracy, you can't rest on your laurels with an awesome work. It's strange, and like I said in a different post, not unlike software, but in the end, you can fight the whole internet and increasing technology or adapt (or die).

That's a great idea! Provide funding for movies solely with advertising! I'm sure that will result in no conflicts of interest that will severely compromise artistic vision and reduce people to no better than buying machines. </sarcasm>

I'm all for free flow of information and such, and the abolition of software patents and other substantial types of patent reform, but this kind of naive radicalism against all IP protection dilutes any reasonable demands for patent reforms and makes any activism look like a joke.

When you make a movie you can fund it and distribute it as you please. But it's extremely selfish and arrogant to want to benefit from other people's expensive endeavors, for which they are requesting a small fee to view, and give jack shit in return. By viewing the material you are admitting that there is at least some potential value in it, but by refusing to pay for it you are basically saying the movie studios and artists and writers and others can go ahead and close shop already, because you don't consider their business model viable and refuse to contribute anything.

I agree nice entitlement complex you have going there.

Cinema is a nice way to exclude people from your property. You can mandate no-camera and tighten the security for releases.

I have no entitlement complex, as I've said already I don't mind paying for cinema tickets and I don't even use other commercial media. If you're referring to focusing only on consumers and ignoring what's "fair" for the producer, they you are right, but also fail to understand the point of a market system - consumers are entitled, the whole system is designed to satisfy their needs, producers are meant to fight each other to do so and get the best results for the least amount of money. So yes starving artists - you don't have rights that trump the rights of the consumer.

I read your words, but all I hear is "I want to use the police and courts to demand income in perpetuity because I thought up something somebody thought was clever once."

"I don't think you should restrict sharing" is not the same thing as "I don't think you deserve to be paid". Find a business model that isn't based on prohibiting what everyone's mother has encouraged them to do since they were toddlers.

Sharing is good. Information flow is good. Impeding either of those things impedes human progress. Creation is also good, but modern technology proves it can be encouraged and compensated without strong arming society as a whole.

It sounds to me like you are arguing for the abolishment of patents, copyright, et al?

Also, for the record, I am not a music/movie/etc artist, and I do not hold IP.

It's a very valid and reasonable stance to be against all forms of copyright, patents or similar forms of "intellectual property". In my opinion, they are among the worst mistakes in the history of mankind.

>I'm against quantifying it at all because, while useful, price is a very limited metric. There are numerous cases where you can increase the transaction sum and achieve 0 value increase, eg. monopolistic pricing in a market with inelastic demand or bad investing (destroying capital) or externalities, etc.

I'm pretty confused as to how you first define that you don't want to quantify it but then one sentence later make a quantitative declaration ("achieve 0 value increase..."). How does this work?

Zero means nothing, absence of extra value, that can be established on qualitative grounds - but true it doesn't have to be strictly 0 it just means there is no proportional value added.

> knowledge is a non-rivalrous non-excludable good

You sound like you know what you're talking about here. What you're claiming is that digital media is a public good. I can live with that definition. It's certainly non-rival, and in practice is fairly non-excludable.

You then go on to claim that companies should just find a way to survive without copyright. The problem with this approach is that the creation of these public goods will be far below the social optimum without some sort of market interventions [1].

I definitely don't think that aggressive copyright law is the correct way to address the free rider problem. However, I think that it's shortsighted to create a necessarily inefficient market. It makes sense that companies like Disney want longer copyright, as that's how they capture the positive externalites of their work, and are able to keep producing it. Someone who is politically savvy and trying to solve this problem would look through possible solutions to the free-rider problem [2] and use them to formulate a way that producers and consumers can both benefit from relaxed copyright laws.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#The_free_rider_prob...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Possible_solutions

I would prefer to approach it as public good that is protected against market failure in few selective cases. I don't like that approach but it's an improvement over treating knowledge as private property/granting legal monopolies.

Copyright is monopoly protection granted on your works by the demos on the assumption of that work becoming freely available to the public domain in a reasonable time.

If your work is not going to enter the public domain then there's no contract - the state then is enforcing a monopoly against the interests of the people.

Disney can make a profit of 100s of millions on a movie within a few years. They don't need anything like as much as 20 years.

They will of course retain their trademarks, and I think this is only right in a realistic IP environment.

>relaxed copyright laws //

Relaxation general means less strict or less firmly applied. This suggests an assumption that the state should grant a monopoly - there should be no such assumption but instead the application of a strict limited time contract in accordance with the original purposes of the law.

> This suggests an assumption that the state should grant a monopoly.

That wasn't my intention. I wanted to emphasize that it already has. I think the state should work to ensure the creation of public goods and I think that they should relax copyright laws.

I'd love to read a rigorous analysis of this idea:

> Disney can make a profit of 100s of millions on a movie within a few years. They don't need anything like as much as 20 years. > They will of course retain their trademarks, and I think this is only right in a realistic IP environment.

"Government should never protect the producer."

At least we agree on something...

What is this madness??? I'm no Supply sider, but government does should and always will support producers. The question to me is only whether or not they'll just support monopolistic ones, or small ones and startups as well...

Does value need a standard or a measure? No.

Value is a different thing to different people.

Money is not required for value to exist.

There should be no intellectual property. There should be fair reward for positive contributions to society. Reward not protect. Provide an incentive rather than a pay off.

At the moment, society is based on money not value. It's founded on providing as little value for as much money as possible.

> There should be fair reward for positive contributions to society.

That's hand waving. Specify how you propose to achieve this.

That depends on how the person wishes to be rewarded (within reason) hence my previous comment about how "value" differs per person.

At a concrete, legal level, suppose that I as a software developer wish to be paid in money for my time working on software, and not on client projects, what do you propose? And if I write books?

What is the legal framework you are proposing that would ensure that I would be paid a "fair" price for my work? What if my work is brilliant and millions love it? What if it's shit, and no one would pay me a dime for it? Who judges?

Remove money from the picture entirely and ask yourself what you'd like to recieve in exchange for your work.

If there is not a "fair value" then it probably shouldn't be being done. If it's for personal interest, don't expect a fair value for it.

People expect and somehow manage to get money at the moment for shit which is the problem.

When you put something on the free market, you are opening it to opinion and other people deciding the value. Think carefully first.

I want the things I can exchange money for: food, housing, gadgets, bicycles, cars, stuff for my family, vacations, and so on.

Edit: I'll add the most important one, too: time. I like my job, I like coding, but I also like to do things like ride my bike, spend time with my kids, and so on. The more money I have, the more I can choose to do those things (simplifying a lot).

You have missed a bit there. The less responsibility you have, the more time you have. You are paying to lose some of your artificial responsibility. Cut some of the middle-man out (money) and some real responsibility and the net effect is the same. Less things, less ownership, less dependency.

What with two children, I can assure you that my responsibility is anything but artificial. And no, I don't think I'm going to give them up anytime soon.

Now, do you have something concrete to discuss or not?

I have two children too. They are the only non-artificial responsibility.

"Remove money from the picture entirely and ask yourself what you'd like to recieve in exchange for your work."

Yeah no. We want money so that we have the fluidity of choosing a candy bar one day and a vacation another. Besides, you can't have someone offer you fractions of a vacation for your work. Is it truly that difficult to see where barter systems fail?

Besides, you are putting too much faith in the "fair value" idea. First off, when you want something and you barter with someone, a common technique is to disparage the quality of the item you desire. Why? To convince someone else that it isn't worth as much, that a "fair value" is less than that. Then, take the example of a mom-and-pop shop making jams and jellies. They probably have a lot of pride in their work and the price reflects their feelings of craftsmanship. They say, "Look at how good it is! How fresh, how pure!" -- they are trying to convince you that it is worth more than you initially appraised it at.

It's a conflict of interest -- it is in the best interest of the consumer to pay as low as he can, and it is in the best interest of the producer to get as much as he can. One seeks to minimize losses, the other, maximize profits.

Ever heard of donation-based bagel shops? You pay "what you think it is worth". Some people drop $5, others drop $0.01 because they want food and don't really want to pay for it. Even being glared at (social pressure) isn't enough to stop them.

The moral of the story is that people suck and asking them to "be fair" is a hilariously misguided way of getting revenue.

"When you put something on the free market, you are opening it to opinion and other people deciding the value. Think carefully first."

Yes, they can decide on a value, and so can the producer. If the values match or can be negotiated, you have an exchange. If they don't, then there is no exchange. Eco 101?

The simplest way to do that is to reward that person with money, which the person may latter exchange for whatever is "valuable" to him.

Until the seller decides to monopolise the valuable items (Monsanto).

* Does value need a standard or a measure? No.

Value is a different thing to different people.*

So... yes, then? I mean, that's the whole point of money: allowing different people to express their preferences in a way that allows comparison. You don't need money to know whether you prefer apples or ice cream, but you do need to express your preferences in some way that lets stores know whether to stock more types of apple or more types of ice cream, and price is just the simplest way.