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Comment by vy8vWJlco | Hacker News Reader

It puts food on your table in the same way it did for PSY (the "Gangnam Style" guy)... People learn about you, and will pay a premium for almost anything you touch. For example, to see you live, or to speak to you about anything, or to buy your old house or car at substantially more than it's worth. In short, you become a celebrity. That is the intangible value created for yourself, as a reward for the intangible value you create for society. It works in areas like math and research too. Publishing research will get you a better job. Similarly, having your song copied will give you more income, even if it's just a tip - like a waitress, or a street mime.

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.

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I've got to agree that if I created the most watched YouTube video of all time that even I would probably be able to turn that into some cash. But I don't think that's a viable solution to the problem of novelists, etc., being able to earn a living in a world of unfettered copying.

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.)

I have to disagree. Copyright prevents re-use and new work.

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.

Most novelists do not earn a living from their creative work and must work a day job to survive. There are rare exceptions, of course, but in general artists do not earn enough from their creative work to pay the bills. This is as true today as it was before the Internet, before electricity, and before copyright laws.

This is true - most do not. But many writers, composers, photographers, etc. do in fact earn a living from creating. I just said that I want to live in a world where this remains possible. If we throw this out along with copyright, we've certainly lost something.

New technology always causes us to lose something. The issue is whether or not we gain more than we lose, and the answer is universally "yes." The combination of PCs and the Internet has made copyrights obsolete, and with that the concept of royalties is obsolete. Yet what we have gained from those technology vastly outweighs what we have lost. Poor students who can barely afford tuition can access textbooks they would otherwise be unable to afford. The concept of "rare" or "out of print" is a thing of the past. One no longer needs to travel long distances to find a library with a copy of some book or photograph.

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 absolutely agree with you about the importance and wonders of the internet. And you are undoubtedly right that the internet is making copyright, or at least the traditional view of copyright, obsolete. But we have some ability to create the future by influencing the direction of technology, law, and cultural attitudes. And to fail to replace copyright with something else that allows people to make a living through intellectual and creative work will be a grave mistake. Just ditching copyright and embracing unfettered copying while hoping that creative people will somehow figure out how to feed their families will mean that less, much less, gets created, and we will all be poorer for it. So far, no idea has been shown to be viable: voluntary payments do not and will not work, because enough people will not pay; taking your show on the road only works for able-bodied people with certain combinations of talents, and even then only while they are young and without children - when they need a steady income the least. We need new ideas, and new legal frameworks. Just saying that everything should be free leaves us endlessly recycling the creations of the past, created in the days when authors were still getting paid.

"less, much less, gets created, and we will all be poorer for it"

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.

I would think the heaps of money PSY made from YouTube royalties, including those from other people's videos that use his song (thanks to ContentID) and iTunes sales (where his song was #1 for many, many weeks) were among the things that put food on his table.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/cashing-gangnam-styles-youtub...

They undoubtedly were. As long as copyright exists, you'd be a fool not to exploit it. At the same time, it has been observed that the proliferation of parodies, remixes, and downloads only added to the revenue and profitability: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121002/11573120572/gangn...

What do you mean "at the same time"? Those derivative works were profitable because of copyright--that's how ContentID works! How would Psy profit from derivative works if he wasn't allowed to actually claim ownership of his original work? Why else would YouTube ever pay him for videos he didn't upload?

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.

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