Then maybe you can help me understand what it means. Say I write a book but nobody purchases a copy, while thousands of unauthorized copies are downloaded from torrent sites. How does all this "value" put food on my table?
It's always the same problem, how do you maximize the value for the society while still allowing the author to get a fair compensation for her work ?
Now we can have endless debates over how much we really care adding value to the society and how we actually define "fair"…
It's a spectrum of risk - from donations to Kickstarter - and nowhere in there is copyright - a restriction on other people's creative work (to the detriment of everyone, including yourself) - necessary.
Copyright is not a restriction on anyone's "creative" work. It restricts the right to copy things. (Not that I'm happy with all the details of current copyright law.)
The novelist wishing to earn a living is also taking a risk being a novelist, just as I take a risk in paying for an education that may not land me a job. I still charge for my time. The novelist can still charge for his or hers. We both must do something useful. If his or her novel is useful "enough" to live on alone - wonderful - but we shouldn't take it for granted that that is necessarily going to be the case, or that something like copyright will help it to be, or that that would even be a good thing (that people can make a living doing something that society wouldn't even naturally value enough to remunerate).
At the same time as all of that is going on, people are going to continue trying to make the best of what's around - and that includes copying.
People who have no idea how to develop a photograph can send copies to their entire family at near-zero cost. Researchers have presented systems that can create accurate 3D maps of cities using photographs published on the Internet.
I would not throw any of the above away just to preserve the ability of a tiny minority of authors, musicians, actors, etc. to live on their royalty payments. I want to be able to read scientific papers without having to spend hours searching bound journals at some library. Creative workers can and will find ways to monetize their abilities in a post-copyright world, and they will have to do so without relying on DRM and without trying to destroy the Internet.
I have seen no evidence of this. In fact, the Internet boom has been one of the most empowering and prosperous times for creators (distinguished from mere distributors) in my memory. (In fact, I don't recall nearly as much quality music 10 years ago.) Furthermore, the alternative model you seek is simply that of time-tested patronage, which has been the default for anything worth doing since the beginning of history. Today we have the possibility of crowd-funding. I have not been given any reasons to expect less art, only more. Netflix, for example (arguably still a mere distributor), is even producing original series for it's own subscription audience. Copyright is part of the present economy, but Netflix would still want new content for it's channel were it not. Subscriptions are just another form of patronage.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/cashing-gangnam-styles-youtub...
You don't seem to have grasped the point: You brought up Psy, but then proceeded to leave out all the evidence contrary to your agenda. The polite word for that is bullshit.
Just like music stars earn a lot of money from live shows. You may become a speaker, you may sell additional stuff derived from your book (as a freemium modelo for book market). You may sell this fame of yours to sign profitable contracts to future books with a publisher. You may create online courses to offer to those who read your book (if it is a technical one) or try to sell the rights to TV movies if it is literature.
Well, it is hard to create from an hypotetical situation, but I think you got the point.
If musicians aren't going to reward the people that advertise their work then they shouldn't release it in the first place.
Mince about ideology all you want, this is the market.
That's where you're wrong. An audience is value in and of itself. The trouble most authors have is with leveraging that value. Traditionally they'd handed the keys over to a big publisher and hoped for the best -- a sucker bet if I'd ever seen one. Now that the exclusive power of distribution has been stripped away from traditional publishers there's actually more opportunity than ever for an author to find and derive value from an audience; it just takes more savvy (and less luck).
An audience that does not pay for things is of limited value to someone who needs money to keep making things.
Also, why does the one who purchases it have to not spread the word and pirates do? Is that how this whole argument works? A paying customer is probably just as likely to inform other paying customers about this purchase he just made. More likely, in my experience.
Look, there is likely a critical mass of piracy that is concurrent to a rise in purchases as something grows in popularity and becomes part of the cultural zeitgeist. I remain unconvinced that the piracy causes it, and isn't just a sign that whatever is being pirated is good and would is gaining awareness and marketshare, but sure, I'll just go ahead and give up on that argument. But if you don't reach that critical mass, which by and large, most don't, then you are just gaining an audience that isn't helping you at all.
Also, just to be clear - I don't view all piracy equal. When I talk about it, I'm primarily talking about game piracy.
Ok, so what type of "value" are we talking about here and what determines this value? Is it economic value? The only reliable way to determine economic value is scarcity. If something is abundantly available (like oxygen or sunlight) its value in this regard is exactly zero. Anybody can obtain it and nobody can prevent it from being obtained. So in that regard I don't buy the argument that the artist has created economic value.
They have, however, created intrinsic cultural value. But cultural value is a completely subjective metric. How do we determine this value? Perhaps by counting the number of people who "appreciate" the art by obtaining it, legally or otherwise. But that would suggest that popular art is always more valuable than unpopular art, which we all can probably agree is false.
Starving artists are caught in a catch-22 situation. Until they become popular, their music is essentially worthless. Pirates, by copying and distributing their music for them, are actually adding value to their art. Most starving artists have a hard time giving their music away, let alone selling it, and I've yet to see one budding artist get upset about their music going viral. At what point does the artist stop encouraging the free and open spread of their art and start discouraging it by enforcing copyright law? And would they not be hypocritical by doing so?
Except where they don't add value by pirating something they otherwise would have paid for if it wasn't easily available to pirate with hardly any downside risk.
What if I don't want to do that? What if I just want to write books? I can't make a living from that unless I also become a showman or sell some kind of other crap?
"You may sell this fame of yours to sign profitable contracts to future books with a publisher"
But if the publishers can't make any profit because everyone is just love-copying books, they won't be able to offer me any money.
"online courses" "TV movies"
These sound like plausible ideas at first, but the courses and movies could be torrented as easily as the book, so this profit stream dries up as well.
"but I think you got the point."
I think I did, too.
Welcome to the creative industry. The previous copy-protected market guarantees your living in no way. The vast majority of talent is simply fighting obscurity. You're arguing about the results of fame, which is very rare.
If the only alternative is to destroy the free Internet and our computing freedom, then yes. I'm sorry.
I'm not condoning piracy, but the effects of it are complex. I'd rather replace it with a friendlier approach, like Bandcamp's pay-what-you-want options.
I supposed some fraction of pirates would have instead paid for the media had they not been able to pirate it, but there would also be a fraction of paying customers who would not have heard about the media had their peers not pirated it. It's hard to tell if these two populations are roughly equal in size, but I have a hunch that the second group is larger. This is based on our sales data following our involvement in the Humble Bundle: http://hitboxteam.com/dustforce-sales-figures
If you look at the third chart, you can see that after the Humble Bundle spikes, the blue line starts to have an upward slope, whereas it was almost flat before. This indicates that sales on Steam increased after the Bundle finished, due to the huge influx of new players (many who only paid a penny). It seems that the more people playing the game, the more copies you will sell, because more awareness is raised. There are a lot of factors involved in that that don't let me conclusively say that this effect extends to pirates too, but it seems reasonable. Since I can't do anything about piracy, I don't let it bother me too much and just focus on making things worth buying. It's just a part of the business, so it's factored into it all.
Denying people access to knowledge, culture and useful information on the single basis of money is in my view wrong. Why should we let poor farmers die of famine by denying them access to knowledge that cost us nothing to give? Why should only children from rich families be able to access culture and become great artists?
To quote professor Eben Moglen: The great moral question of the twenty-first century is this: if all knowing, all culture, all art, all useful information can be costlessly given to everyone at the same price that it is given to anyone; if everyone can have everything, anywhere, all the time, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone?
I think that's totally awesome in theory. In practice, I can give away all of the software, music, and artwork that I create, because we have "replicators" for it, but it seems that Honda can't replicate me a car and the local contracting company can't replicate me a house.
Don't misunderstand me. I really want to give away everything I create for free. I think that would be wonderful. But until and unless the parties that create what I want and need are willing and able to do the same, it kind of puts me in an awkward position.
I guess one solution is to work for pay only on things that aren't copyable yet, and consider all things that are copyable to be, by default, of zero monetary value, and if made at all, then made as a charitable gift to society. Is that a good path? (Really asking, not a trick question.)
This is a really good question and it's been in the back of my head for years. I think reality might force it to be the only tenable position, although one important piece you're missing is the willingness for people to pay you even if they don't have to. I think people recognize that there is value in your product, even if they aren't required to pay for your product to receive it. Many won't, but some will voluntarily pay you to compensate you for the value they received.
Advertising is another option.
The end result I see is we give up the massive budget productions (AAA movies), and instead receive creative works created by passionate individuals who want to spend their free time (youtube). If I had to choose between that result and destroying Internet and computing freedom, I think I would pick giving up massive productions.
I don't know. It's an interesting question, thanks for bringing it up.
Personally, I think there are many ways as a creative person can do to lower or even remove potential harm from copyright. For example, if I were to ask what part of my projects would be potential important for a kid trying to learn, I should be able to identify where copyright might be better removed than enforced. Until society figures out a way to not prevent children and starving people access to knowledge, all I can do is to realize when my work might prevent rather enable and then act. Depending on what ones work is, that can either be very easy thing to follow, or very hard. I hope its not hard, but if it is, I wish you luck :).
In terms of semantics: "Say I write a book but nobody purchases a copy."
In more meaningful terms: If people do not value your book highly enough to pay you for it, then without the thousands of unauthorized copies, you are an unknown writer languishing in obscurity. With the copies, you have at least started to publicise your name and your message.
But the crux of the matter is that people will, in overwhelming numbers, choose not to pay if they are not compelled to pay, even if they value the content. If you eliminate the thousands of unauthorized copies, it is not true that I still haven't sold any copies. I would perhaps have several hundred sales. I might prefer the several thousand free downloads, but I should have that choice.
Look at the "Pioneer One" example brought up in another comment. Four million downloads and a mere $20,000 raised. People feel entitled to free stuff; no matter how great they think it is, if they can get away with letting others pay, they will. All the "fans", and they refused to kick in one dollar for the content that they value so highly.
more generally, your argument seems to hinge on the idea that they would make more money if they could. but it's not clear to me that is the case.
"your argument seems to hinge on the idea that they would make more money if they could."
My argument is just that they absolutely need to make much more money if they are to make a living making TV shows, as other people do, and that voluntary donations aren't cutting it, because people don't pay when they are not compelled to. So this case, which was adduced as a counterexample, helps to prove my point.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/4/4054634/musics-pay-what-you...