Online sales cuts distribution costs almost to nothing, but it doesn’t affect the promotion costs at all. Now I’m not very familiar with the music business – I don’t think that labels spend a huge amount promoting various artists – but I know they spend something. In the videogame industry the promotion costs of a title can often equal the production costs. We might spend $5m marketing a title that cost $5m to create. That means that online distribution isn’t the windfall it would appear at first. Yeah, you might be able to go straight to a developer’s website and download their game, but how many people will know the game exists without advertising? Viral marketing is great, but it can’t beat a TV spot during the Superbowl.
Copyright today is so perverted from what it was for centuries.
It used to be an author retained copyright for 20 years.
Now, rights are so often ceded to media corporations, who keep the copyright going for 50 years. And why exactly do we grant those greed heads such additional rights? Do they protect the author? Usually not. A lot of famous authors die penniless while their published books live on collecting millions for the already wealthy.
Who are you thinking of?
Right, but what’s that $5 million spot in the superbowl doing? Bringing the cost of viewing the SuperBowl down to zero.
So video games spend $5 million advertising on TV, TV spends $5 million advertising in newspapers, newspapers spend 5 million advertising on the radio, and radio spends million advertising in games. Everybody wins!
My point is that the economic model doesn’t have to be as simple as the consumer directly paying the production company. The production company can make money many different ways, and at some point it’s more cost effective to stop charging the end user. And so we have free TV, free radio, free newspapers, free websites. We have movies you can watch in the theater, by purchased DVD, by rental, on subscription TV, on broadcast TV, on airlines. It’s legal today to record for home use a movie that was broadcast on TV. Whee, a free copy! Without breaking any laws!
Thing is, plenty of people really do this, they have shelves full of worn low-res VHS copies of movies, with commercial breaks raggedly edited out. But the market of DVD versions of those movies still exists. There’s a market for DVDs of TV series. Law and Order isn’t on enough cable channels? Buy the whole series on DVD! All 5 billion episodes!
There are all sorts of ways to make money in the media industry, and charging more for your product isn’t often the best way to make more money. And if we have fewer media-blitz driven blockbusters and more middle-list titles that seems to be a pretty good deal all around…win-win-win.
There will always be money to be made in media, even if there won’t be much money anymore in charging people for a copy of your product. The beauty of the interweb is that it takes as much work to produce one copy of a work as it does to produce 10 billion copies. And this is GREAT for everyone, producers, consumers, even distributors can get a cut. Sure, the books are going to show different revenue streams than today, 50 years ago the home video market was zero. 50 years from now there are going to be plenty of movies made, and the average person is going to spend less on movies than they do today and get much much more for their money, and the movie industry will make much more money.
I have no idea where exactly that revenue is going to come from, or how the market will work, or what business models will be followed. But I’m positive I’m right.
I would prefer people with both artistic and business sense, actually, so that everyone can make a nice profit while still producing music I like. I’d even prefer actual artists with artistic and business sense: if you know all aspects of something you can consciously decide to eschew or embrace them.
What I am complaining about is a total lack of an artistic sense. Someone must be buying those records, but someone down the line dropped the ball big time: most music today doesn’t even take any chances. It doesn’t even have the auteurial chutzpah to be bad: it’s just completely soulless.
If you take the chances that you need to make 10 genius albums out of 100, then you will also produce 20 foetid piles of llama excrement. But I will buy the 10 great albums. But when you don’t take chances you will only produce 1 or 2 great albums, 15 FPOLE, and 80 pieces of Disnefied, overproduced, emetic dreck. Someone might be buying these but it isn’t me.
IrisRings, your profile does not say if you are posting from the US, but just to fight a little ignorance on anyone else’s part regarding copyright in the US:
As of 1790, a work is protected by copyright for an initial 14 years, renewable for another 14.
In 1804, any of the original 1790 copyrights that are not renewed expire, and so forth for subsequent years.
In 1818, works begin to enter the public domain as the original 1790 copyrights exit their renewal term
In 1831, the initial term is extended to 28 years.
Between 1845 and 1858, no works are in danger of entering the public doamin due to failure to renew.
Between 1859 and 1872 The only works that enter the public domain through copyright term expiration do so due to failure to renew copyrights begun between 1831-1844.
In 1909, the renewal term is extended to 28 years.
Between 1950 and 1965, no works enter the public domain due to expiration of copyright protection term (except through failure to renew copyrights begun between 1923 and 1936).
In 1978, the term changes to life of the copyright holder+50 years (no renewal), or 75 years for works-for-hire or other situations where “life of the copyright holder” is a meaningless term. Everything still under copyright under the pre-1978 laws has its full term of protection (initial plus renewal) extended to 75 years. 1922 copyrights expire, making this the last year to date that any works entered the public domain due to expiration copyright term (except for failure to renew copyrights begun between 1951 ad 1963).
At the end of 1991, unrenewed copyrights from 1963 expire, making this the last year that ANYTHING entered the public domain due to expiration of copyright.
In 1992, renewal becomes automatic for works registered between 1964 and 1977 (i.e., everything still under initial copyright term under the old law).
In 1998, the term is changed to life of the author +70 years, 95 years in other cases (even for works covered by the 1978 change).
In 2006, everything before 1923 is public domain in the eyes of the US govt.
In 2018, barring another change to the copyright protection term, works copyrighted in 1923 will lose their copyright protection at the end of the year and enter the public domain, the first time a work’s last possible copyright protection will have expired in 40 years.
Extracted and extrapolated from US Copyright history circular and other Copyright office resources.
As far as authors ceding their rights to publishers, the rights are theirs to cede by choice.
Well, if that was my goal, I failed, because the rest of your post shows that you still have plenty of ignorance left.
You’re right. WASTE isn’t the most secure network, as it mainly relies on human trust - if you know everyone on your network, and you know they aren’t working for the RIAA and aren’t going to rat you out, you can share freely. Large scale WASTE networks don’t work, because you can’t know and trust a million users. Of course, you can trust five or ten people, and they can each trust five or ten people, and as long as each ring of trust has its own network, you’re fine.
Tor and Freenet are more different than they are alike, although they both route packets through multiple nodes and they both use encryption.
I’m not familiar with the underpinnings of Tor, but I know a bit about Freenet’s technology (unless they’ve drastically changed it in the past year or so) and it’s a lot more sophisticated than you’re making it out to be. You can’t remove a file from Freenet if there’s any demand for it, you can’t tell who originally posted it, you can’t tell which nodes are hosting it (and there will be many if it’s popular), and even if you break into a Freenet user’s house and confiscate his PC, you can’t tell which files are in his data store unless you have a list of specific items you’re looking for. The user himself doesn’t even know, because data is randomly cached on some of the nodes it passes through as it’s posted or requested. The traffic analysis you’d need to do to identify the nodes sending requests or responses is impractical on a large scale. Freenet doesn’t protect against an omniscient attacker, but it does seem to protect against the Chinese government and the FBI.
The creators of Freenet take security and anonymity very seriously, so if you know of any viable attacks on it, I’m sure they’d be happy to hear them (and the same goes for the developers of Tor). But you might want to actually learn how it works first.