Well, yeah. Most writers are dependent on their day job to make money.
I’ll give you my intellectual property when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!
Then what does the statement…
[QUOTE=phaemon]
Without copyright, writers will make money in the exact same ways the vast majority of them previously did.
[/quote]
…mean?
Exactly what it says. Without copyright writers will make money the same way they do now (where copyright exists).
Big name authors will make money by writing books and selling bucketloads of them. All other writers will make money either with another job or by writing for magazines etc, or both. They will then use this money to finance their masterpiece novel which their mother and a few friends will buy.
Same as it is now. 
How would they do that, when every publishing house can sell as many copies of their books they want without paying them a dime?
Are you sure you understand what copyright is?
How is an author going to make the same amount of money without a copyright to protect his work? What stops somebody else from just printing up copies of his book and selling them for less money?
A genuine author has to spend a year or so writing a book and needs to earn enough back to cover his life expenses for that year. A knockoff publisher doesn’t need that - he can just take a new book every week that somebody else spend a year writing and sell copies of that.
:dubious:
As opposed to an answer that says “If you abolish the legal and financial structure that artists are currently dependent on to protect their rights and earnings nothing will change”?
Not what I said. Try:
“If you abolish the legal and financial structure that a tiny number or artists are currently partially dependent on to protect their ‘rights’ and earnings but which are more often used to handicap smaller artists, then some revenue streams will cease, some new ones will open up, and many will remain exactly the same.”
The explain for us how this would work. Because none of us are seeing it.
How are the majority of artists not dependent on copyright?
How does copyright handicap smaller artists?
What new revenues streams will open up for artists if copyright is abolished?
What prevents the scenario I described in my previous post?
I’ve had a few replies and I don’t have tons of time to respond, so I’ll go with answering this one which should answer a couple of others’ questions.
Nothing. They can do that. However, the publisher that the author has struck a deal with gets:
[ul]
[li]To market first[/li][li]To make a deal with distributors that if they want the first printing, they can only carried the authorised version[/li][li]To also sell books that the knock-off publisher can. That is, he can do exactly the same thing back.[/li][/ul]
Also, if a store wants a book signing, they’d need to carry the authorised copy. And hardcore fans would only buy/want the authorised copy. And when buying a present, people would want that authorised version (who wants a cheap knock-off copy for a Christmas/birthday present?).
Explain this “handicapping”, please.
Explain how a nobody from Bay City Michigan (Madonna) was handicapped by copyright. How did copyright handicap college bands like REM as they rose from obscurity to success?
What new revenue streams are going to open up? Since you’ve abolished songwriting royalties, which revenue streams remain exactly the same?
By the way, let’s not move the goalposts on your answer as you did in the above reply. If you can’t be bothered to scroll up, here’s your original quote:
Nothing in your posts to this thread relate to your reply to my post - nothing about “handicapping”, for example.
What “first printing”? What value is there in a “first printing” if anybody is free to make their own printing (and there’s nothing implicit in this scenario that says the other printings have to be of lower quality, of course, though you argue otherwise)?
What “authorized” copy? How can one “authorize” something if they don’t own it?
“I don’t own this, nor do I have the means to say no, but I don’t authorize your right to print my book.”
“I don’t need your authorization.”
“Oh, yeah. Shit. Well, you still can’t do it because I don’t want you to.”
“Stop me.”
“… Fuck.”
All artists are not created equal. The waiters/accountants/programmers/whatevers who play at the coffeehouse/pub/library for a few coppers will gain a tiny bit each because the big stars simply will not exist in your brave new world. No one is going to put in a million dollars (never mind twenty million) to produce and promote an artist if the only way to monetize it is to perform live. So maybe live music (and plays) will be bigger. But only an idiot would think that a return to wandering minstrels and players represents an improvement over what we have now.
Simply that for many small music businesses the cost of complying with copyright law (in licenses) largely exceeds and revenue derived from copyright. Also, there’s the problem of inadvertantly copying a riff or bassline from a piece of music and ending up losing all profits you’ve made. Lastly, if you aren’t aware of how record companies have used copyright ownership against their signed artists, then I can send you links? Surely at least you’ve heard of how folk like Prince (or artist formerly known as) sued their labels?
I’m not claiming that copyright hasn’t benefited some bands, so I’m not disputing your examples of ones it’s helped.
What are you talking about? I’m trying to answer a load of people at once. I’ll try and get to everyone. Be patient!
Well, many of the the book publishing examples I gave above apply equally well to music publishing. Additional new revenue streams would include remixes and sales of older music.
Exactly the same would be CD sales, T-shirt sales, live performances, recording soundtracks for corporate videos, recording jingles, recording backing tracks for singers (which would be cheaper without requiring a license), giving instrument lessons, hiring studio space, hiring recording equipment, doing sound and light setups for conferences, printing flyers for band, doing posters, making music videos…you know…the usual thing your average musician does to keep going! 
It’s a bit of a mystery to me how you managed to read that into my post. Ideally, I would want every artist to be equally able to make a living through their art, not just the select few that have mass appeal; even more ideally, I would want artists not to have to make a living through their art, at all, to create purely out of a wish to create. Neither of which is realistic, or even within reach of becoming so. That doesn’t mean that the way things are now is the writ-in-stone way things have to be. And it’s already changing: many acts release music to the internet on a ‘pay what you like’-basis (see the fine folks over at Corporate Records). Ad-based or sponsorship models exist, as well.
And as I said, many quality movies I already get, for free, on ad-financed private television.
The first run would be the one that folk queue up outside shows for. The latest JK Rowling or whatever. It takes time to copy, print and distribute a novel. Especially if you want it to be better quality than the original and (presumably) you want to sell it at a lower price.
By authorised, I meant “author approved”. Sorry, I should have explained that. Do you see the value for a publisher in having the author approved copy?
In a world without copyright, no, I don’t see the value because there isn’t any.
I can’t believe you’re arguing that barriers of entry will provide authors with sufficient revenues and protections because it’s “too hard” to click the print icon on MS Word, upload a file to a FTP site, and staple pages together. 
I find the endless arguments about how nobody would ever create anything valuable or useful without copyright quite bizarre, when I’m looking at them on a free open source browser (Firefox) running on a free open source OS (Ubuntu Linux).
Yes, people do create worthwhile stuff for free. I’m using it, right now. Chances are you’re using it right now, too; many internet servers run on Linux.
You’re saying there’s literally no value at all?
Are you seriously saying that if someone bought you a signed, hardback copy of a book by your favourite author, it would be exactly the same to you as if they gave you a stapled copy fresh off their inkjet?
:dubious:
Inkjet? No.
But if someone brought me a hardcover book from an established publisher, I wouldn’t care if the copy were “authorized” by the writer. The words are the same either way, and if my friend paid less for it, well, good for him.
As for signatures, they don’t make the reading experience any better or worse. I could give a rat’s ass about signatures.