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Comment by armchairhacker | Hacker News Reader

What % of new authors today make full-time salary on writing?

And what % of those do by selling, vs giving away their work for free (to get non-negligible attention) then getting their real money through donations, merch, etc.?

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The more successful "self published" authors writing web novels make significant money from patreon (>$20k/month); this relies on copyright protection (but interestingly, just a few months would be sufficient for that business model).

My understanding is that most of these web novels are free, and patreon grants early access at best, which is enforced by trust anyways (the creator doesn’t have the time or resources to track and sue someone posting the early access on a pirate site, when it will be public a week or month later, but the people who pay to get something a week or month early mostly aren’t the type who would pirate even if it was easy).

In what way does that business model rely on copyright protection? "Get the next chapter early" requires a source of chapters, so all you need is for paying clients to not be motivated to redistribute the chapters in an organised way, or would-be paying clients to not be motivated to use such organised "slightly more chapters of that webnovel you follow" services instead. Humans aren't amoral ideal rational economic actors.

The authors I'm aware of making >$20k don't do any significant gating. That practice is only really common with people republishing through Amazon (which probably demands it).

> so all you need is for paying clients to not be motivated to redistribute the chapters in an organised way

This is exactly what copyright is.

I agree that you could work around this in a world without copyright (e.g. by watermarking content and blacklisting), but it would be difficult and make the whole profession less viable.

Mass distribution and payment becoming accessible/low overhead was an extremely helpful development for authors in my view, and removing copyright would have the opposite effect (but cutting it down even to several years would change surprisingly little).

Not all motivation is externally compelled: there is such a thing as intrinsic motivation. Humans aren't amoral ideal rational economic actors. I do agree, though, that a few years' copyright provides most of the benefits of copyright, while removing most of the downsides (except stuff like clear abuses of anti-circumvention laws, which will happen for as long as there is a system that enables it).

This is way too much

What does it matter?

I don't think anyone has the right to take work I create, for free.

In the same way I have no right to walk into your house and use it for free.

In the same way you cannot expect me to turn up and work at your business for free.

I don't care what half delusional rubbish you come up with to justify your theft.

It's theft, you want to steal something you put zero effort into creating and use it as you see fit. No fuck you. If I want to give it away for free, that's my prerogative not your expectation, if I can monetise via merch or other means, that's my prerogative not your right.

I am not a fan of complete removal of copyright, but I also consider its current duration absurd and extreme - saying this as someone who wrote 10 books so far, so I have actual skin in the game. Some person in 2130 should not be able to profit from something I am writing now, that is just feudalism in a new cloak.

Any creative person whose ego is not overinflated accepts the fact that no art emerges from a vacuum, that they themselves were inspired by others and their work, and that they should pay this forward to the coming generations.

For me, the worst aspect of long copyright is the de-facto ban on derived works. Work derivation is how civilization and culture came to be.

It matters because copyright is widely abused and hurts neutral sites which must constantly check for copyrighted content, and it would’ve hampered AI if it was enforced.

Your analogy doesn’t fit because a house is physical, but “intellectual property” is digital. If we lived in the metaverse and I could just copy your house and live in it without affecting you, why should you care? Theft is bad because the victim no longer has the original.

Theft in this case is bad because you're removing the ability of someone to make a living from the thing they created.

On the basis it's digital.

I don't care if it's digital, I care if it took time and effort to create. If it did, it does not matter if it's digital or physical, it's theft.

Today, practically zero new indies make a living from selling digital copies of a thing they created. That income is eclipsed by giving away their main work, then asking for donations, maybe selling merchandise, early access, tailored commissions, or some other token (and sponsorships but those unfortunately hurt quality).

So abolish copyright, and indies still make money from creating digital works - at least almost as much as they do now, but probably more, because it will further normalize the alternate incomes.

Copyright maybe used to help indies, but every copyright case I’ve heard anywhere in the last decade, the plaintiff is a publisher with more than enough revenue. Meanwhile, in many cases the defendant hasn’t actually infringed, but regardless suffers from the DMCA, C&D, or lawsuit. Copyright relies on wishful thinking to provide an illusion of helping small-time creators, in reality far more often it hurts them.

I regularly see posts on reddit r/royalroad where people write amateur stories and have their works stolen and put up on other platforms for money.

https://www.reddit.com/r/royalroad/comments/1uwyuf1/psa_stol...

Here is an example of the theft you endorse.

Please go tell those people they should be happy for someone else to steal their work and charge for it even after they've given it away for free.

It doesn't matter whether "few" people make a living from it. Copyright does not guarantee you an audience. Copyright going away would not guarantee you more of an audience.

The only thing it guarantees is that if you manage to write something that resonates with an audience you have the potential to earn a living from it. That is what you want to take away.

These only further my point. Everything published on RoyalRoad is already free; the issue the authors face is trademark, not copyright, violation, because their works are republished under a different name. Also, while OP found resolution, most of the other commenters did not, demonstrating that IP laws don’t reliably protect indies anyways.

IMO the solution to protecting trademark is to ensure anyone who discovers a repackaged work (like those examples) also discovers the original author and their free version, so they know it’s a ripoff. It doesn’t require the finicky legal system.

> removing the ability of someone to make a living from the thing they created.

So layoffs should be illegal?

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