Can you please explain how consumers can possibly be “hurt” by the govt enforcing ip laws? Do you mean to say that if an artist prices their work too high then consumers will not be willing to purchase and therefore they are hurt?
The person was motivated to create that one single work, it performed it’s function. Others are similarly motivated to create one or a hundred works. It doesn’t matter how many works an individual creates, what matters is that an individual has an opportunity to get a financial payback for dollars and time spent learning a craft and then creating something.
That’s not exactly the same as copyrights on entertainment that has been the primary focus. I disagree with entire categories of patents including dna patents.
Are you able to come up with an example that is more related to what we are discussing (copyrights and most examples are in the realm of entertainment)?
Excluded middle. There are more options than granting rights holders such incentives as would allow them to retire to unproductive idleness after a single success or making it impossible for artists and inventors to reasonably expect to profit by their works.
Very much of digital culture is “derivative works”. Sampling, mash-ups, vs-remixing, fanfic, etc. Flash videos that get hit with DMCA takedowns because they have a song playing in the background or as incidental music. Chuck Norris Facts, MasterCard Priceless parodies, Rick-rolling, et al. Much of modern common culture would not exist if we did not infringe copyrights.
Whether the person makes money is based on the market and it’s probably rare that a person can produce 1 single item and retire for life. Just because there are more options doesn’t mean that the example of an individual continuing to make money off one work is compelling enough to change the law.
Your statement was that the law was to promote creation and I think it does, just because a very small minority of individuals happen to hit a home run does not invalidate the system.
I’m not sure how I feel about this. Maybe we should promote this type of activity, maybe not, I need to think about it.
Your statement was that the law was to promote creation and I think it does, just because a very small minority of individuals happen to hit a home run does not invalidate the system.
[/QUOTE]
The term of copyright is Life + 70 in the case of a human author or, for corporate rights holders, 120 years from the date of creation or 95 years from the date of publication.
It was originally 28 years (56, if renewed).
Used to be that by the time you reached 30, all the things from your childhood that made you who you are and shaped your aesthetic were probably fair game for your own creations. Yesterday’s ideas could be reworked into something new before they were forgotten. Assuming there are no further extensions, the works created today will become public domain some time next century.
I don’t have a problem with shorter lifespan of copyrights (I said earlier gut feel felt like 20 years was ok), but I don’t think the argument that “because some people will get rich off 1 work” is compelling. A more compelling argument is the acknowledgement that all works are to some extent combinations of inputs from previous works and for that reason a reasonable limit is placed so that others can continue to build on what is out there.
Well that hurts the consumer, yes.
I used to be a paid member on this message board named bookbuster. I just wanted to post in this thread because I distribute my own music through my website. I let people listen to the music for free and as many times as they like. If they can afford a donation there is a paypal link.
Recorded music is an invention, a very useful one, that has become more and more entrenched as a normal and everyday thing in life,
to the point where the market has responded by not placing too high a price on recorded music.
However, even though recorded music isn´t as rare and valueable as it first was, people are still very open to giving $5 or more for new music that they would like to listen to.
In Mexico, where I live, live musicians still parade the streets, a typical mariachi song performed by a band personally for you is $5. However, there is a small contingent of mariachis here in Tijuana, Mexico that will play one song or more for $1. They are guitar players that usually work alone.
from erislover
If one does not buy anything that is not a necessity to survive and live because the price is too high, they are not “hurt”. They simply do not have a luxury that they cannot afford.
Unless this comes down to another battle of definitions of terms and a term like “hurt” is defined so broadly to mean anything you want it to.
Maybe one of the good things about the coming depression is it will finally educated people to what they actually need to live and what are merely the extras of life that are neat to have but rather unnecessary.
I think you’ll find that shared culture is pretty necessary. Unfortunately, our culture is mostly locked up by corporations.
Culture will develop regardless if you or me or anyone can afford a CD or DVD.
I am sure that some folks of a certain age with no other real bills consider their music and gaming as the essential needs of their lives. Then they grow up.
Corporations do not normally create culture. They merely follow it to the bank.
I’m sure this makes sense in your head but it is not a very enlightening criterion. Just about every single purchase I can imagine, including housing and food, is a “luxury” in the sense that that particular purchase is not a “necessity to survive.” I am suggesting that the rent-seeking from copyright hurts consumers because the price is higher than it would be in a free market. I am not aware of any more appropriate use of “to hurt” in this context. Apparently society at large feels that the cost of this setup is worth it for the benefits that accrue which ostensibly encourage the production of this material. Historically this may have been true but the model is breaking down and it is time to revisit the question.
It makes sense to everyone who doesn’t believe they are somehow magically entitled to other people’s work for free. Some people refuse to be enlightened, which is pretty sad for a site that’s all about fighting ignorance instead of spreading it around.
Wow, talk about an argument that’s completely off the rails. By your argument murder laws won’t work, general theft laws won’t work, and, in fact, no laws will ever work.
You can stop greedy bastards by fining them so they have less money if they copy other people’s stuff, because it hits them in the pocketbook. Repeat, serious offenders can be thrown in jail if necessary. People who won’t learn will be punished, and all the people who are capable of learning from other people’s mistakes will see they can’t get away with it. At that point they either learn to pay if they want it or to go without it. Simple. It’s the foundation for law enforcement the world over, and something anyone who has paid attention to the world at all should understand.
Unfortunately the “I want things for free, wah, wah, give it to me” crowd refuses to acknowledge how simple it is because they want to try to justify their greediness as something the rest of the world just has to accept. Screw that. You can be greedy all the want, but that doesn’t entitle you to anything.
Good job on that argument, Dan! You won’t believe how calling those who disagree with you ‘greedy bastards’ and ‘“I want things for free, wah, wah, give it to me” crowd’ really wins over the opposition around here. It is amazing how correct you sound when you insult your opponent and ignore their arguments!
I don’t believe anyone is entitled to receive other people’s work for free. I believe we should strive to ensure the market is free and fair, which in this case happens to mean that reproduction would be essentially free.
How is that fair to the person that spent significant time and money creating something?
RaftPeople, it is not clear to me that it has anything to do with it at all in a general sense. Creation of something new is pretty much a sunk cost and should have no bearing on what happens afterwards. Society seems intent to remain in the position that patents or, in this case, copyrights, are a viable way to account for sunk cost issues. IMO that has been historically true but is no longer true, if in no other case than reproduction of audio recordings. This doesn’t mean I don’t want artists to receive compensation for their work. But their work is not in the reproduction, and it is reproduction (that is, violation of copyright) that is at issue here. Historically, copyright collapses this distinction in law but that doesn’t eliminate it in fact. Creation is different from reproduction.
A proposal I outlined in another thread was to suppose we had a popular recording artist like Madonna who we wished would make another album. So we create a fund that people donate to, anonymously or otherwise (I don’t think it matters), and if Madonna thinks the fund compensates her for her efforts, she produces and takes the money. If not, then not, and we can pull our money out at any time. After she creates her work, reproduction rights go to whoever can reproduce it, be that me on my computer or not.
It’s not a suggestion meant to “solve the problem” or anything. It’s more like a way of explaning what I mean by compensating artists for their work, when it is impractical to control reproduction, as we see in the world around us.
Digital music is, basically, a public good. Wikipedia states that a public good is a good that is non-rivaled (consumption by one party does not limit its availability) and non-excludable (enforcement of property rights is cost-prohibitive or impossible). David Friedman states a similar definition, “I prefer to define [a public good] as ‘a good such that, if it is produced at all, the producer cannot control who gets it.’” [here] This is actually a kind of market failure. If artists, for our case, aren’t receiving sufficient compensation because of the public good problem then art will be underproduced. To the extent that copyright is enforceable then we might say that solves the problem, but this is no longer working and instead of getting on a soapbox I think we should face the issue, face the facts, and ask ourselves what can be done about it.
It’s not entirely clear that artists deserve compensation for reproduction of their creation, so it is not entirely clear that copyright was ever the “right” answer. After all, commodities aren’t free from clones and in fact it is the existence of substitutes that guarantees efficiency in such markets. It is clear that the cost to the artist for creation of the work should not affect the market price of an easily-replicated product (sunk cost). But we should ensure that artists have the incentive to create.
This is a difficult discussion in other ways. Not all artists are particularly keen on copyright. From Metallica’s current point of view, of course they want to receive income from their scarcity power (being popular and having legislation to protect reproduction), but I have to wonder what Metallica thought of me when I was 13 and copying their tapes before I could save enough to buy a real copy (which I did, eventually owning all their work up to the black album). Were it not for dubs, I’d probably not have ever been a Metallica fan. Plenty of up-and-coming artists realize this and you can find MP3s available from the band for free. iTunes probably has some of its popularity due to the fact that it decreases the cost for people to try something new. If you think about the price of a good, part of its function is to make sure it will go to people who most deserve it. A price is part discouragement. High rents discourage people from living in New York City, because there’s only so much New York City to go around. From a band without popularity (scarcity power), price is a discouragement to investigation. So small bands play a lot of shows, where you can see three or four acts for less than the cost of a CD (or, as I’ve mentioned, they give their music away for free online).
I’m interested greatly in fairness here, but it is not especially clear to me what really counts as fair.