It’s always considered axiomatic that not being able to profit from ideas would lead to the complete death of creativity. I’m not convinced. I’m not suggesting doing away with all IP law, by any means, but IME, most creatives are gonna create regardless.
Actually, you are. You’re saying that copyright protects an idea. That’s not correct. You’re saying that trade secrets are protected intellectual property. That’s not correct.
I’m afraid I don’t see any point in trying to discuss issues when the topic of discussion isn’t based on the generally accepted meanings of the terms. I’m bowing out of this thread.
The last hundred years or so of American dominance in creative industries is a pretty good argument that creatives create best and create most when they have the freedom to spend their lives building and exercising their creative powers, instead of having to sideline creativity as a part-time avocation.
Through strong copyright and patent protections, we have built a critical mass of creativity, that is constantly churning, populated with people who have had the time to hone their creative skills and build upon each other.
Sure, there will still be creativity, but with strong intellectual property protections we have built an awesome engine, a creative community of highly practiced creators. It’s possibly the greatest feat of American policy.
I agree with Northern Piper. If you want to discuss these matters, you have to be a lot more rigorous with your terminology.
As I pointed out above, you suddenly switched from “idea” to “product,” which are two completely different things.
“Create most”, sure. “Create best” - highly debatable.
I disagree. We have so much excellent output in the last century. The volume of high-quality works is unmatched in human history. We can roduce geniuses of creativity at an unprecedented rate, because individuals can from childhood choose to do nothing but pursue their passions. The trick now is to give that privilege to everyone, not to eliminate it.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on this. I don’t rate most mass-produced studio output very highly, whether it’s TV, film or music. And what I do rate, is usually in spite of that system (Taylor Swift notwithstanding).
I agree everyone should have the privilege of being creative without worry.
That’s why I support Patreon and Kickstarter.
Couple that model with UBI and UHC, and the results will outshine corporate pap, I’m sure.
Thank you. I’m glad somebody wants to actually discuss the issue.
That said, I tend to disagree with what you’re saying. I feel creators are like any other people in that they want to be paid for their work. If nothing else, they need to put food on their table. And as far as I’m concerned, they can want to buy a mansion and a yacht if they can earn the money.
I don’t see how society benefits if a creator has to hold down a day job to pay the bills and can only create in their spare time. If they can create valuable work then we should have a system in place which allows them to make a living by doing so.
I have no problem with creators being paid for their work, nor them wanting to. Lord knows, I’ve been paid for creative work in my time. I just don’t think not being paid will stop them. I’m not saying mechanisms to patronize creatives should be shut down, not at all Not even the big studios.
I just think discussing the ethics of IP shouldn’t be based around an “axiom” (or an implied unintended consequence) that isn’t true.
I mentioned just such a system in my previous post.
Patreon can even net a creative a yacht.
Patents and copyrights are not about ideas but about their expression. I’ve had a number of ideas during my career. I publish them and then the publisher owns the expression of them. I cannot even post the resultant papers on my website. (I have to admit that I do anyway; no publisher has objected although they could.) Once upon a time copyright was for 7 years, renewable for 7. Then the periods were doubled. Then they got extended every time Mickey Mouse was about to enter the public domain.
The original reason for patent and copyright laws was to encourage inventors and authors to put their efforts into the public domain in return for a limited time period of exclusivity. Fine. But the time periods, especially for copyrights, have grown so long that these things never enter the public domain. I recall wanting to photocopy and use a text published in 1928 and couldn’t. It had been reprinted once and I wrote to that publisher who replied that they had a one-time license from the author’s widow, but had lost track of her. I tried to locate descendants, but could not. That work will likely never enter the public and the original purpose of the copyright law has been lost. Thanks, Disney. And thanks to all the corrupt legislators who enable them.
I have no idea what the story with patents is. I know copyrights are trivial to get (I think this posting is copyright) and patents are hard. Trademarks are another issue entirely since they were never intended to go to public domain.
Could you give an example of what you think a “distributor” is in fields other than music?
That system exists! Artists can record their own music and distribute it on the internet, or on street corners, or uploaded to Spotify, or by listing it on Amazon.com… It’s existed for at least 2 decades. The fact that most musicians don’t use it maybe implies that record companies add more value than you’re giving them credit for.
It’s also telling that when a musician makes it really big and no longer wants to share their profits with a record label, they don’t go it alone, they make their own record label.
- This example is an anomaly. Kindle books are generally priced lower than physical books. I just went to the “top sellers” list on Amazon and looked at the top 5. Of those, one doesn’t have a kindle version, and for the other four, the kindle version is $6 less expensive, $9 less expensive, $0.50 less expensive, and $1 more expensive.
- Prices aren’t based on costs. What does the price of a kindle book have to do with the cut distributors are taking? For all we know the author is getting a bigger slice of the digital sale because they don’t have to pay the printers?
I’m aware of Kickstarter and Patreon. I myself support a number of creator through both platforms.
I just don’t feel they should be seen as a model for a general system. I see them as the equivalent on crowdfunding for a medical procedure. It often works but the ideal solution would be to have a medical system that doesn’t require patients to crowd fund in order to pay their bills.
Before somebody says it, no, I am not suggesting we need some creative equivalent of a public health care system. I do not feel that Federal Project Number One is a good model either.
I think what you are calling “creatives” is a much much smaller subset of the people who currently create intellectual property. Many of the larger set are “knowledge workers”, not “artists”.
I also think that the issue of quantity over quality gets even worse if you reduce the monetary incentive. Not the artistic quality, but the production quality. You’ll still get writers, but no one’s going to put in the hours it takes to edit and fact-check and typeset a book without getting paid. You’ll still get musicians, but you’re mostly going to get live shows and shitty recordings of live shows, because that’s how you can get paid as a musician if you can’t profit off recordings enough to hire a sound studio and a mixer and seven backup singers and so on. Would we be better off if we had lots of individually (badly) recorded live shows and few polished studio albums? Phish fans think so, but most people don’t.
I agree with that policy. I don’t see any benefit to be gained by having a trademark become available for free use. I see trademarks as an exception to the general rule in that they’re an idea that the originator should be able to retain ongoing exclusive use of.
Er… I disagree somewhat.
If you’re talking about a corporation, yeah, I agree, but if you’re talking about an individual creator I’d prefer to see them control the copyright for their lifetime, even if it’s a long one, because it would provide a decent retirement income for said individual.
I want my creators to be creators and not have to worry about becoming financial investment experts on top of that in order ensure they don’t wind up destitute if they have the happy luck to live to 90 or 100.
Please stop perpetuating this myth.
Trademarks are subject to a different mechanism–genericization. If the public as a whole comes to understand a term as a generic name for goods or services, then the trademark rights may disappear. That’s a powerful public right, and akin to a type of free speech right.
This is not correct.
Should people who think up a cool new invention get that too? Should we extend patent rights to the life of the creator plus X years?
If all you are looking at is the most popular stuff, you’re blinding yourself to the explosion of creative output in the last century. There is a ton of quality literature, music, film, etc., out there and the creators were able to devote their time to developing their personal skills and creating those works in huge part because of the existence of copyright protections. there are more quality works than one person can read in a lifetime, for example.
And that’s even discounting the popular, commercial works that you dislike. And it’s doubtful whether your opinion about them should matter. Many of the old works that survive today as classics were popular, commercial works disparaged at the time by the upper crust. I hate Titanic, but I accept that it’s very likely that decades from now, that might be considered one of the greatest works of film.
Not being paid will mean that fewer creators will be able to devote their lives to developing their skill and creating works. A necessary result of this will be an overall decrease in the skill level of the creative community and the volume of creative output, which will mean fewer “great” works will be created.
Copyrights and patents are very different and their terms of protection are set differently for very rational reasons.
When it comes to copyright, the protection might be long, but it’s very shallow. It applies only to the expression. All the ideas in a creative work are free for copying. That creates a very low bar for competitors. Anyone can write a new vampire story. Anyone can write a new superhero story. Anyone can write a new story about the crew of a spacefaring vessel. The copyright system pushes such creators to come up with their own settings, their own characters, and their own words, which enriches the human literary legacy with more variety.
Also, creative works are very personal in a way that inventions aren’t. If I create a setting and characters, then they are a part of me in a way that a device is not. Fuck anyone who wants to mess with my characters while I still iive. They are a part of me, an expression of my individual thoughts, beliefs, personality, and experience.
Preventing someone from copying a creative work for 100 years thus has a very different effect than giving someone exclusive rights over an invention for 100 years. I argue that for many types of inventions, the current 20-year term of protection is too long. Recent decisions by the Supreme Court have severely curtailed what kinds of computer/software things can get patent protection. The patent community hates it, but I think it’s great.