Bleah. And so there was obviously no need for McCain/Feingold (not that M/F solves anything) or any other lobbying reform. They’re “not allowed”, and thus all is well. Nothing to see here, move along. Right.
I’d like to throw in one more question, if I may:
What punishment would you be happy with for different copyright violations? (You can make up your own classifications if you wish. Anything from sharing an mp3 to owning a Cd duplication facility to hosting warez etc. etc.)
I’m interested in this because I wonder how many people agree with current laws on the topic.
You (your widow) would be paid for what you had done. Mine wouldn’t. BIG difference.
Basically, you’re proposing what I proposed about 25 posts ago? Although I made an error there, it should have said “whichever comes later” instead of “whichever comes first.” I believe that copyright should last the life of the author, or 50 years, whichever comes later. If I live 50 years after writing the book, then the copyright stops when I die. If I die before that, the copyright lasts 50 years from when it was published, not 50 years from when I die.
Not true. See my explanation of risk/reward below. There are no guarantees for writers (the book flops, we make nothing*). The benefits are only a tradeoff for the risks.
You don’t understand. When you take a work-for-hire job, like our hypothetical construction worker, there’s no risk. He does the work, he gets the money. There’s no upside, either. If the building he worked on wins awards and becomes the hottest nightclub in town, he doesn’t get any more money.
Writers work with a risk/reward tradeoff. If we write a book that fails miserably, we don’t make any money*. But if the book is a massive success, we share in the profits from our work. If you shorten copyright protection, you leave all of the risk, but you take away a chunk of the reward–the part we can pass on to our families if we die early.
- If you’re preparing to argue that advances take away the risk, go read some contracts and see what an advance is. It is essentially a loan against future royalties. If the book flops, the publisher can demand that the author repay the advance. With small advances, this virtually never happens, and some big-name authors can negotiate up-front money that’s not in loan form, but for the vast majority of us, the advance just keeps the bills paid while we’re writing.
Treat it like any other theft. You steal a 99-cent song, you pay your buck and get a misdemeanor on your criminal record. You print up 50,000 copies of a counterfeit book or CD and sell them, making a quarter-million dollars in profits, you go to jail, lose the profits, and become a felon.
I suppose it should include lost profit calculations, but that gets very complex…
I’m not trying to be a dick here, but you know the risk/reward before you get into it. An example: my grandfather had a job scrubbing the inside of oil tanks; dirty, dangerous, physically demanding, etc., but he was well paid for the risk. If he had died, that would’ve been it; no gauranteed profit for his family (I wasn’t born yet). Here’s a different take: I’m working in academia. I could get paid much more in industry. I’m making a choice about: (1) what I like to do, (2) which job allows me the lifestyle I prefer, and (3) (potentially) being less-at-risk of being laid off. I’m sacrificing reward for reduced risk. If I so desired, I could be a high-school teacher and reduce both risk and reward even more. Here’s a third take: a friend of mine is a professional gambler. When he wins, he wins. When he loses, he loses. Now that’s a risk/reward situation.
You’re arguing that, for some reason, writing a book should absolve you of having to recognize the risks associated with becoming a writer, that you should get special laws for your support. Huh?
Please note again that I’m in no way arguing that copyright should be abolished. Rather, I’m simply addressing your risk/reward argument.
But it’s not theft. It’s copyright infringment.
Yup, I understand that. But no one’s forcing you to take that agreement. There’s nothing inherent in the act of writing that requires you to be paid differently, or accept more risk, than a construction worker. Maybe you accept it because you like the possibility that you might become a millionaire from your book’s runaway success, but that’s called gambling, and it doesn’t deserve any more sympathy than any other form of gambling. No one is forcing you (meaning artists and authors as a group) to gamble instead of taking the same guaranteed-but-modest pay as the construction worker.
Ah, so once again, you want special treatment. It’s not enough to treat as theft an act that bears little resemblance to actual theft–you want to treat it more harshly than actual theft.
Let me try explaining this a different way. Your grandfather took the job, knowing that a year’s work would net him $X. By the end of the year, he had been paid the entire amount. I write a book, guessing (remember the risk thing) that it will probably net me $X. By the end of the first year, I’ve probably received about 30% of X. That number is higher for some writers, lower for others. Generally, at least in my experience, it takes 5-10 years to reach 90% of X.
I’m not asking for special laws or protections to let me roll in the extra dough. My income is spread out over a long period of time, and I’m asking for enough time to receive it. Imagine that your grandfather’s company had said, “we’ll pay you this amount for performing a risky job, but we’ll spread it out over ten years.” He works for a year, and settles back to receive the money. At the end of the 2nd year, he dies. Wouldn’t you expect the company to be obligated to pay the rest of his money into his estate? THAT is the situation a writer is in.
If I’m selling candy bars for a buck, and you take one without paying for it, it’s theft, right? If I’m selling songs for a buck, and you take one without paying for it, why should that be any different? It’s still theft. You’re still taking something that isn’t yours without paying for it.
If you want to be a freelance writer, you have to accept the way the biz works, unless you have a lot of leverage. Unless you’re Bill Clinton or Stephen King and you can negotiate millions up front, you’re stuck with the system as it is.
There are tens of thousands of new books published each year. If the publishing companies paid each writer a fair wage for the books, they couldn’t afford to publish them. The majority of books are commercial failures. The publishing companies deal with this by offering to share the risk with the author: your book flops and you get little or nothing, but if it succeeds you share in the profit. If authors weren’t willing to accept those deals, most books would never get published.
Where the heck did that come from? Thre’s no special treatment at all. Let’s say you’ve built 1,000 widgets that you normally sell for $10 each. Somebody steals your widgets and sells them for $1 each. Should the thief have to pay you $1,000 (because that was his profit) or $10,000 (because that’s what you lost)?
Hmmm… No. When I mentionned working free-lance, I wasnt thinking of people who bill $ X/ hour, but rather to people working on projects who are paid when the project is completed.
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Basically, you’re proposing what I proposed about 25 posts ago? Although I made an error there, it should have said “whichever comes later” instead of “whichever comes first.” I believe that copyright should last the life of the author, or 50 years, whichever comes later. If I live 50 years after writing the book, then the copyright stops when I die. If I die before that, the copyright lasts 50 years from when it was published, not 50 years from when I die.
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Well, yes. I agree with that.
OK. replace “everlasting” whith “unreasonnably long”. My answer stays the same : people investing in Disney stocks because Disney holds the copyright of a work done 75 years ago doesn’t encourage creativity. It deters them from investing in a more creative company that doesn’t benefit from thee overprotective laws. They encourage investing in the “already done long ago” rather than in the “not yet thought of”.
McCain-Feingold was about “soft money”, i.e., money from Political Action Committees, the leading of which are:
- EMILY’s List $22,767,521
- Service Employees International Union $12,899,352
- American Federation of Teachers $12,789,296
- American Medical Association $11,901,542
- National Rifle Association $11,173,358
- Teamsters Union $11,128,729
- International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $10,819,724
- National Education Association $10,521,538
- American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees $9,882,022
- Laborers’ International Union of North America $9,523,837
Where do you think Disney gets the money to create new works? From its investors. And from return on investments, including copyrights. Yes, including copyrights for works created 75 years ago.
But with actual theft, you aren’t just getting something for free, you’re taking it away from someone else. That isn’t a minor difference - the only reason stealing is wrong, IMO, is that you’re depriving someone else. No one has a right to get your money, but they do have the right to hang onto the things they have unless they agree to part with them.
If you could touch a candy bar at the store, magically make a copy, and walk off with a free candy bar while still leaving the original on the store shelf, that wouldn’t be stealing and I’d say it wouldn’t be wrong at all.
That’s why I’m not blaming any particular author, but authors as a whole. This arrangement exists because everyone accepts it. If they would band together to demand a better payment structure, publishers would be forced to give it to them. I don’t think they will, though - I think they like to gamble, to think that they might become millionaires if their books take off.
Here’s what you wrote: “You steal a 99-cent song, you pay your buck and get a misdemeanor on your criminal record. […] I suppose it should include lost profit calculations, but that gets very complex…”
But 99 cents is the normal selling price, not the cost. The “lost profit” is already included in it.
In fact, it’s all “lost profit”, because there is no marginal cost for each copy of the song. There’s an initial cost to produce the master recording, but you can’t just divide that by the number of copies that exist to find the cost per copy. Unlike CDs, which are manufactured up front, downloadable copies are created on the fly as people buy them.
Now, in your example, something’s missing: the cost to the widget maker of each widget. You can’t assume he has lost $10,000 that he otherwise would’ve had, unless you can prove that he would’ve sold every one that was stolen at that price. In other words, the profit isn’t lost because it was never his to begin with. You do know, however, that he’s missing a bunch of stock, which cost him a certain amount to produce originally and will probably cost the same amount to replace. But in the case of songs, there is no cost to replace them - mainly because they’re not missing in the first place, but also because if you have even one copy, you can produce an infinite number of extra copies for nothing.
First, let me state again that I’m not arguing for abolishing copyright. Second, part of the risk you incur in being a writer is recognizing that you may never receive $X (similar to entrepreneurs). Third, it seems to me that you should be arguing for copyright terms of 20 years (or thereabouts), not 50 years or death, whichever is longer. I say that because, as you say, in 10 years (taking your upper bound to be agreeable), you’ll receive 90% of $X. I’m kicking in the extra decade as a bonus. By arguing for 50 / death, it seems to me you’re arguing for a better than $X return, which indicates a desire to go beyond the risk you yourself recognize and ask for special laws.
It’s not theft. Copying an idea is not theft. An idea can be reproduced infinitely; it is not theft. It is, however, copyright infringement. And I think it’s right and proper to penalize copyright infringement. But it’s not theft.
Apparently, my contention wasn’t clear . I contend that Disney is less creative than other, more recent companies or individuals because a significant part of its activity still rely on profits made on old works. Hence that money invested in Disney is less conductive to creativity than money invested elsewhere. When you’re investing in Disney, you’re investing in large part in Mickey Mouse, not in something new.
I agree with the creator keeping copyright until his death. But it’s not an issue of return for me, it’s an issue of moral rights on one’s own creation.
I agree with that. Comparing copyright infrigement with theft is very misleading. Copyright is a very abstract concept we had to come up with to further specific goals. Theft, at the contrary, is very concrete and obvious. Human societies worked quite well and for a long time without any copyright or patent laws, while theft has always been a no-no. Mentionning copyrights some centuries ago would have gotten you the same reaction people have with the well-known tale of the man asked to pay for smelling the roasted meat and offering the sound of his money as payment : laughs.
Okay, that’s fine. If I have a contract with you to build a house, and I die when I’m half-done, I fully expect that my estate will get paid for half of the work. Same thing.
Ah, so you do agree with me…sort of. Let’s say it cost him $5,000 to produce the widgets. You’re arguing that he should get $5,000 back from the person who took them. Okay, let’s say I write a book and produce $5,000 worth of them. You reproduce the books on a photocopier (or whatever), and sell them at half my price. I get nothing, so you owe me the $5,000, right? But it also cost me a half-year of my time to write the book. That’s worth something, right? And that’s what copyright is about–getting paid for the time it took to write the book. Are you really saying that if you spend 6 months writing a book I should be free to do whatever I want with it without paying you?
Sorry, I didn’t make myself clear. Royalties don’t follow a linear curve. If you make $Y in the first 5 years, you’re not going to make $2Y in ten years. The royalties gradually decline. If I’ve received 90% of $X in ten years, it may take me another 5 years to get up to $X (after which the book goes out of print or the sales go to zero), or it may take another 50. The royalties approach $X asymptotically.
We’re not talking about ideas. You can’t copyright an idea. You can only copyright a finished piece of work. If I come up with an idea for a book, I can’t stop you from writing another book using my idea. I can stop you from using my actual words.
No. Please reread what I wrote. The arrangement exists because it’s not economically feasable to produce all of the books produced today on a work-for-hire basis. If we didn’t have a royalty system, the majority of books would never get published–not because publishers force the system on authors, but because publishers couldn’t afford to do it without sharing the risk.
Well, duh! 
No, because I didn’t take your books. You still have them. (Maybe I could pay you in photocopied money, but I don’t think the Secret Service would approve.)
It’s indirectly about that, sure. But in most other industries, people manage to get paid directly for the time they spend working.
Yes, as long as you give proper credit and as long as you’re not breaking any contract we made beforehand. I knew before I started writing it that it’d be impossible to keep people from making copies; complaining about your copying would be as futile as complaining about the tide washing away my sand castle.
It’s reasonable to call that an idea too. A book contains a sequence of words, and what is a sequence but an abstract concept, and what is that but an idea? Whatever you call it–an idea, a sequence, a chunk of information, a majestic assembly of verbiage–it can’t be taken away by copying.
Then perhaps there are too many books being produced today.
No, that was quite obvious. If it were linear and you received 90% of $X by year 10, by year 20, you’d have 180% of $X. Which is why I kicked in the extra decade. Also, to be a little nit-picky, the curve of $X is not asymptotic, which says that it approaches but never reaches, a given value.
We’re not talking about physical property either, which is what the term “theft” entails.