
Paul Graham has lost the plot - porfinollanes
http://mishandrob.com/paul-graham-has-lost-the-plot/
======
InclinedPlane
I'll just cherry pick this gem here: _"What would happen if creators couldn’t
charge for their creations? The same as if you couldn’t charge for lines of
computer code: there’d be less of it."_

Spotted the massive, gaping flaw in the argument yet?

It's 2012, if you make this argument then I am done with you. Linux is how
old? How much of the internet runs on it?

Done.

Edit: Wow, really? Why is this still a necessary argument?

The linux kernel is utterly free. Yet it's still developed. It's still a state
of the art product. And people still make money off of linux and linux-based
products.

Do I honestly have to connect the dots here?

Spoilers: if you can't or don't want to charge for the code directly then
maybe you find some alternate way to charge for _something else_ or you use
another form of supporting development.

The analogy to the creation of music and movies should be so frelling obvious
I shouldn't even need to make it.

~~~
alexgartrell
Linux is subsidized by large players who need an open platform on which to
provide other services. This includes companies like Google who provide
advertising based upon things that run on linux and companies like IBM who
sell proprietary software that runs on Linux and support contracts for those
products.

There are very few viable, large-scale open source projects that are run on
developer free time alone.

~~~
angersock
Tell that to the GCC folks, GIMP developers, Blender developers, Tremulous
developers, Firefox developers, Mono developers, Rails developers, Python
developers...

(we all know GTK is a labor of love, 'cause you couldn't expect people to pay
for it.)

~~~
zasz
Can you prove that those projects wouldn't be healthier if people were happy
to pay money for them?

~~~
kenmazy
Can you prove they would be?

How many closed-source, for profit software projects were rescued after the
supporting company went under? (I am intentionally conflating closed-source
and for profit as the majority of financed projects are closed source).

What you have to consider here is the rate of progress, as well as the length
of development time. Open source projects have essentially infinite
development time, whereas closed-source, for profit projects have a finite
development time (whenever the company decides further development isn't worth
it anymore)+. However, open source projects tend to have a slower rate of
progress versus financed projects.

After 6 months or 1 year, sure, the financed project will probably be ahead.
How about the 5 year mark? 10 year? It becomes much less clear which project
will have accumulated more man-hours.

+very rarely, closed-source projects are released as open source (e.g. Doom
3), but I think we can all agree that that is the exception to the norm

~~~
gcp
_very rarely, closed-source projects are released as open source (e.g. Doom
3), but I think we can all agree that that is the exception to the norm_

Well, if we compare to the list in the parent, it's much more. At least
Firefox, Blender, Rails qualify. These were products that had no future in
closed-source form. If they had, it would have been financial madness to open
source them.

------
babarock
"What would happen if creators couldn’t charge for their creations? The same
as if you couldn’t charge for lines of computer code: there’d be less of it."

This sums up why I disagree with the author. People have been playing and
composing music way before "selling records" was the way to make money. Just
like people don't contribute to open source "for the joy of it".

Very serious business is being done around open source, and the same could
happen around the music industry. I personally wouldn't mind settling for an
industry where artists get paid for their performances (getting paid for the
"actual" hours put in, not just a one-off recording session decades ago that's
making them fat millionaires), using their records as promotional tools.
Parallel business would develop, they would charge for packaging, interviews,
talks, God-knows-what. Let the next generations be creative.

The industry may not seem as lucrative as it may sound today, but frankly I
could do without the MBA consultant in a suit. Cut off his salary and most of
the middle men and you're good to go. Despite what the article says, the cost
of producing and publishing new material isn't that high. My closest friend
took a couple months off to record a home made 6 song album. With an iMac and
some amateur equipment. The result is simply bluffing. Even a small team on a
low budget can definitely invest this money as part of their promotion
campaign.

~~~
VMG
The difference is that nobody stops you from making "Open-Source" films and
music, and many people do.

The masses however seem to prefer commercial films, music and software.

~~~
scelerat
Just to supplement another response to this point... commercial entertainment
_does_ compete directly with free/amateur/semipro/fansourced material all the
time.

I would argue that this is more of a danger to Big Content's bottom line.
There are only 24 hours in a day. Youtube and reddit compete directly with
Universal, Sony, and the New York Times for people's attention.

The fact is that entertaining videos and music are not only easier to
distribute than ever, but also easier to _produce_. You don't need a degree or
the backing of a large corporation to be funny, insightful or clever. IMO
there is a lot of noise about piracy which masks this even larger "problem"
for traditional media.

~~~
angersock
Thank you for your excellent expansion of my point. I wager that they either
haven't identified the boulder rushing down at them...

...or are trying to win the piracy/IP battle enough that it gives them a
credible position from which to attack the populist works that remix what they
perceive to be their IP.

Especially if, for example, they've succeeded in making
faceless/nameless/processless takedowns possible--a pretty solid weapon
against populist entertainment.

------
jes5199
"The distribution might be virtually free, but the production certainly
isn’t."

Well, all of the music available on iTunes, Amazon, and the Pirate Bay has
already been produced, it just needs to be distributed.

If I want to pay for music to be _produced_ , I use Kickstarter. (Or go to
concerts, since playing a song live could be considered a new production)

It's a historical accident that we use charging for distribution of music to
pay off debts incurred while producing the music.

Of course, paying 99cents to have my phone download a song in the background
so I can play it in the next five minutes is worth it to me - cheaper than a
cup of coffee, and I don't have to do any work. So the old system of charging
for distribution isn't totally dead.

~~~
J3L2404
>If I want to pay for music to be produced, I use Kickstarter.

If I want to pay for software to be produced, I use kickstarter.

Now I can download AutoCAD, Illustrator and Photoshop guilt free.

~~~
jes5199
I actually have paid for software to be produced using Kickstarter. And I
donate to open source projects, too.

I happen to use the GIMP, Inkscape, and FreeCAD for free, and I don't feel
guilty about that.

~~~
leon_
Great. You use the FOSS alternatives and let the greedy guys play business
with commercial software.

But then ... tell me ... for what do we need the pirate bay?

------
qdog
I don't know why this is upvoted so much. PG's article seems pretty clear.

The problem I have with this article is the association of investment with a
'right' to recoup that investment. There is no inherent right to recoup
investment money of this type. NONE! It doesn't matter how hard something is
to produce, there is no inherent right to make a profit based on that effort.
People paint, write, sing and act all the time without compensation of any
kind.

The argument that creators must be compensated to keep creating is a bit of a
straw man. The idea that someone can spend some time writing or making music
and then deserves compensation seems to be strongly held, but the ones who
vastly profit from the copyright law are not the creators. Disney, for
instance, has been dead a very long time, but his company defends copyright
extension into perpetuity.

Right now, there are far more people unable to create because of
copyright/patent law than there are people getting compensated for their
creations.

~~~
DanielStraight
The question is not whether there is a right to make a profit but whether
there is a right to _pursue_ a profit.

Free, instantaneous distribution of all music as soon as it is produced (an
exaggeration of torrents, but not by much) seems to take away the right to
pursue a profit, at least profit by distribution of recordings.

Or perhaps there is no right to pursue profit by distribution. Perhaps there
is only a right to pursue profit by live performance. But what happens if
_that_ becomes copyable? We already have at least one instance of a
holographic singer (see <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku>). What if
holographic recorders and projectors become as cheap as cameras and
microphones and screens and speakers? Live performance could be copied about
as effectively as live sound is now (recorded music is not a perfect
reproduction of what was played in studio or on stage). What then?

Is there no right to pursue profit by live performance either? Decreasing
costs of production seem likely to make copying merchandise reasonably
possible (you can already just draw a design and have someone print a T-shirt
or such for you). So is there no right to pursue profit by merchandise either?

If there is no right to pursue profit by distribution, live performance, or
merchandise, I think it is safe to say there is no right to pursue profit at
all. But is that really fair? Musicians don't even deserve the right to _try_
to get people to buy their product out of anything other than sympathy?

Frankly, I think pay-what-you-want is great. But I don't think it can provide
the same level of economic activity and technological development we are used
to. The most advanced personal computing company in the world is also the most
closed or near it. The iPhone, iPad, corresponding retina displays, the
Macbook Air... all produced under tight control and for direct profit only.
Why isn't an open, pay-what-you-will hardware company beating Apple? We all
like our i-things, so why aren't we paying people to develop them? Why is
Apple's cheapest product $129, and the cheapest Kickstarter level usually $1?
Why won't we pay $129 for Kickstarter projects that sound interesting to us if
pay-what-you-will really works?

Similarly, the most advanced synthesizers, digital mixers, even music software
are all produced to be sold. Why is there no open, pay-what-you-will
synthesizer to match Kurzweil?

Why is there no open, pay-what-you-will library to match O'Reilly's? Why no
open, pay-what-you-will coffee to match Starbucks? Why no open, pay-what-you-
will transportation system to match the U.S. interstates and European and
Japanese light and high-speed rail?

I would argue it's because accepting only the payment you can convince people
to offer voluntarily doesn't work in most cases at an advanced level.

And either way, it doesn't seem to right to force people into a pay-what-you-
will model.

~~~
qdog
I'm saying it's not a 'right' to expect profit from something. The right to
pursue a profit exists as long as the law of the land allows it.

Markets already provide a "pay-what-you-want" model, it just happens that not
everyone is willing to accept what you want to pay.

Selling capital goods is very different than selling digital copies of
something. There is a limited amount of corn in the world, you can purchase it
at the going rate generally set by the supply and demand. In digital goods,
the supply is unlimited, there are no natural market forces.

Apple heavily protects its products with patents and copyright where it can.
You cannot take an ipad design and improve upon that design without cutting a
deal with Apple. I think that strongly supports the case that the few (Apple)
benefit from the current system while the many (anyone who thinks they could
enhance the design of ipad) do not.

There are, however, a few open and free items of software, Linux, MySQL,
Apache, Firefox to name a few. Arguably, depending on what you want to do,
there isn't even a better closed alternative (yes, yes, substitute whatever
SQL package you prefer for MySQL).

I personally have a cable provider (so I pay for the minimal tv package to get
internet), a netflix account, Amazon Prime, see the occasional movie in the
theater, etc.

When people talk about copyright though, I generally see some stuffed suit
making a bonus, not a bunch of creative people.

~~~
DanielStraight
Except Apple _is_ a bunch of creative people. So is Kurzweil and O'Reilly and,
heck, even Starbucks.

Markets are not pay-what-you-want, because pay-what-you-want implies $0 is an
acceptable price. At least that's how I was using the term. Apple will not
accept $0 for an iPad. If you don't accept their price, you don't get the
iPad. That's why people buy it.

Copying media lets you get it even if you don't accept the price. Which means
the only reason to pay is because you _want_ to.

My contention is that making people pay in order to enjoy a product is often
what provides the money necessary to exercise creativity. The iPad could be
improved by an individual working alone with their own funds, but it never
could have been created that way. Without profits from previous products, the
creative people at Apple who designed the iPad never would have had the
resources to do so. We have iPads today precisely _because_ Apple is closed.

What is the next innovation in personal computing? Who will come up with it?
Will it be Apple or someone on Kickstarter? My money is on Apple. Even if it
is someone on Kickstarter, will they be able to raise the probably millions of
dollars necessary to make a viable consumer product? Unlikely.

A system in which producers pay upfront and then recoup costs is actually
better for consumers. You get to see the finished product before deciding
whether or not to spend your money. If the finished product sucks, only the
producer loses. If the finished product of a Kickstarter project sucks,
everyone who contributed loses.

How many iterations do you think it took Apple to perfect the iPad? Each of
those would have to have been separately funded on Kickstarter for that system
to produce the iPad. I doubt even the costs of one iteration could be raised.

But when you cut off the ability to recoup production costs, you cut off the
incentive to _pay_ upfront production costs. Which cuts off the funding to
creative people who are doing important work.

The problem with only being able to collect voluntary payments (pay-what-you-
want, Kickstarter, etc.) is that people don't necessary know they want
something until it's done. The 1st iteration iPad probably sucked. So why
would people fund it? If Apple builds an iPad, it only takes a few people's
shared vision to make it happen. If a Kickstarter project wants to build
something as innovative, it will required the shared vision of everyone
contributing. You'll have to convince thousands of people that it's worth
funding numerous iterations at thousands, or possibly even millions, of
dollars, in the hopes that the final product will be good. I just don't see
this happening.

~~~
qdog
It did happen quite often in the past. See much of the research done over the
last hundred or so years in public universities.

I didn't say we should arbitrarily limit the amount of profit one can make by
investing capital, but the current copyright law and patent law is very
stifling to innovation.

Apple employs some people, sure. Monopolies (not implying apple is a monopoly
to be hit by anti-trust laws, btw, but copyright and patent are monopoly
powers) are very, very profitable for the few people that hold them.

I don't have my copy of Wealth of Nations in front of me (out of copyright,
but I purchased the penguin classics paperback anyways, go figure), but Adam
Smith made a very compelling argument that things like entertainment are not
acretive to the capital of a country. At the time of publication (1776), Smith
noted actors and musicians expected no more compensation than what they
received for peformances. They produced no lasting product that could be added
to the 'capital' of the company. Recordings you might say add this value
because of copyright, but if you cannot sell your copy that would mean it's
not a capital good.

So, yes, creative works existed before the current distribution model.

I'm not arguing people cannot profit from their works, far be it. I'm arguing
that the current model for profit favors a very few at the expense of very
many, and does not meet the needs of either creators or consumers as well as
it does the distributors!

Movies are perhaps the most dependent on the current model, as yes, it takes
significant capital to make most movies. However, is it truly more creative to
see the 3D version of Star Wars Episode I? Or would it be better to see "Star
Wars Episode I: As written By Kickstarter Member XYZ". I'm fairly certain
Option B would be more creative at this point. Lucas and everyone involved
with Star Wars has already made plenty of money, but you can't expand on those
works just because you have a great idea, you'd need Lucas' permission.

Anyways, copyright/patents are a very complex thing right now. I can't tell
you exactly how the Ipad came to be (although it wasn't the first tablet), so
I can't really say if Apple had the best idea, or just the right polish at the
right time. All the patent infringement lawsuits surrounding the ipad seem to
support my view that they stifle innovation more than they support the "It
required this closed model" argument, if you ask me. Apple is almost assuredly
infringing a lot of patents (which many may be invalid), and I would argue
they are really so successful because they have deep enough pockets to fight
all those legal wars.

I could write a lot and end up saying very little, it is very hard for me to
boil down all my thoughts on copyright and patents into a HN comment.

------
rdw
It bugs me that we haven't moved past "What would happen if creators couldn’t
charge for their creations" in these discussions. It's an extreme strawman. No
one -- not Graham, not Richard Stallman, not Julian Assange -- is interested
in making it impossible to make money from creating stuff.

Copyright is simply one _means_ of accomplishing the _end_ goal of paying
creators, and certainly not the only one. I'd like to hear an argument in
favor of copyright-exactly-as-it-is that doesn't involve this logical fallacy.

~~~
aamar
Copyright has on its side reams of academic literature and centuries of
apparently successful implementation. Some alternate systems, like patronage,
have been tried at relatively limited scales, but there are in general strong
theoretical or evidentiary reasons to believe that none of those would produce
as much media as we have today.

That doesn't mean that there isn't some better system out there, but I think
the burden is on the copyright-dissenters to develop a theoretically sound
alternative and implementation plan. Stallman's work in this area is
incredible and inspiring, but there isn't, so far, nearly as much theory or
evidence on that side (despite the work of Benkler et al.).

Meanwhile, low protectionists--like most people here, myself included--are
frequently going to assume a version of the current system stays in place,
while proposing tweaking some of the knobs (types of content covered,
expiration, penalties, enforcement mechanisms, etc.).

------
nkassis
I personally think copyright can be a good thing. My beef is with the never
ending length extensions and that everything including the piece of napkin I
used to doodle on earlier is covered by it.

I think the solution is more to push for it to become registration based and
offer companies a way to extend the copyright for a fee that increases
exponentially with time. Lets say the first 10 years is free everything after
starts to cost you more and more.

That way I feel that you let things like orphan works be preserved and used
even if they are not longer worth enough money to keep under copyright and
publish.

Also have the database of what is under copyright be available to everyone so
that right holders can be located and licensing can be made easier. These
records can be maintain with the money obtain from copyrighting fees.

And also, fix issues with fair use such as breaking DRM being made not
illegal.

------
Luyt
This reminds me of a medieval tale, telling the adventures of the Belgian
scoundrel Tijl Uilenspiegel:

"Tijl was visiting the market, and noticed a food stand where a butcher was
roasting chickens over a fire, spreading a delicious smell.

Tijl stood a while next to the barbecue, sniffing the exquisite smells. Then
the butcher noticed him just standing there, sniffing, and not buying
anything.

The butcher said: "Hey, you're enjoying the smell of my grilled chickens, not
buying anything, you know what? You should pay me for the cooking smells of
these chickens instead!"

Upon which Tijl produced his wallet, made tinkling noises with the coins, and
replied: "I pay for the smell of these chickens with the sound of my coins!".
Faced with such impertinence, the butcher got angry and chased a laughing Tijl
away."

------
redthrowaway
The author, and the content industry in general, are misunderstanding basic
economics:

 _Just because there is a cost to produce something does not mean that it has
market value_.

pg was right in pointing out that the content industry is built on the
economics of scarcity, and that this scarcity no longer exists. You could
charge someone to see a movie in a theatre when doing so was the only way to
see the movie. You could charge for an album when doing so was the only way to
hear music on your terms.

That is no longer the case. Scarcity, as far as arrangements of bits is
concerned, is over. Period. You can complain about it, you can legislate about
it, you can gnash your teeth and prostrate yourself and offer blood sacrifices
to your preferred god, but nothing will change this basic fact. If the content
industry wishes to persist in this new reality, it will have to adapt to it.
That means a business model that is not based on the economics of scarcity.

That does not mean, as the author seems to believe and the content industry
threatens, that there will be no money to pay for new content. It means the
economic model will have to shift away from one of necessity, to one of value-
add.

There is no shortage of cleaning labour. Anyone can pick up a feather duster
and go to town. Yet, we have professional cleaners. Why? Because there is an
opportunity cost to cleaning. An hour you spend cleaning is an hour that you
can't spend doing something else. Too, there is value-add. Perhaps the
professional cleans better than you do. Perhaps they clean faster, or clean
when you're not home. There is convenience and status involved in having
someone clean for you.

All of this adds value to cleaning labour, making it so people can charge for
it. Similarly, the content industry can focus on modes of distribution which
add value to the content, _which is not scarce_. The content industry
currently pretends it is in the mining business, with large upfront costs to
extract a valuable and rare resource then bring it to market. It isn't. It's
in the bottled water business. Water's everywhere, and it's free. Yet people
buy it bottled. They pay for the convenience, and perhaps they pay for the
perceived quality as well.

Just as the water bottlers cannot stop people from getting water for free, so
too can the content industry not stop free content. They can only offer it in
a better, more convenient form.

Amazon does this incredibly well. I used to download ebook torrents, and read
them on my laptop. It sucked, and I stopped. Then I got my Kindle, and started
again. It still sucked. The formatting was wrong, it was inconvenient, and the
metadata was filled with crap from the rippers that meant it would never sort
properly. So I bought an ebook from Amazon.

It was amazing. I got the book I wanted, instantly, in a fantastic format, for
cheap. It was a _better service_ than bittorrent, and I paid for it. Gladly.
Now, I get all my ebooks this way and I wouldn't think of going back.
Certainly, the publishers are pissed at Amazon, but that's because Amazon is
rendering them obsolete. So too are studios pissed at Netflix. What they fail
to grasp is that Netflix is not the problem, they're just a company that
adapted where the studios have not.

There's no going back. The content industry can stamp its feet and huff and
puff and sulk all they want, but the genie's out of the bottle.

Time to adapt or die.

~~~
citricsquid
And you're misunderstanding economics too. Just because you _can_ get it for
free that does not mean there is no market for people paying for it.

> Just because there is a cost to produce something does not mean that it has
> market value.

What shows market value is the desire for that product. The only reason that
music is pirated now (when it used to be purchased) is because it's easy and
without consequence. Let's say hypothetically in the future stealing a car
becomes easy and without consequence (even though it's still illegal) does
_that_ mean there is no market value for cars? Of course it doesn't. It shows
that people care more about saving money

If pirating music was impossible many people would return to paying for music,
the only reason they don't now is because stealing it is consequence free.

The convenience argument is also (for want of a better phrase) complete and
utter bullshit. I can switch to itunes right now, type in a search term, hit
purchase and have the song on my hard drive (and iphone and any other device I
have connected to my itunes account) within 10 seconds. Hell, I'll open my
screen recording program now and record me proving this:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA2wzb0-4Pg>

People pirate music because it's free, consequence free (the reason they don't
steal cars is consequence) and everyone spends all day every day justifying
it. It's not a matter of convenience, people go to more effort pirating than
they would purchasing (except for cases where the music is not available
commercially, but those instances are "rare" and not a worthy consideration
for the sake of this argument).

~~~
maratd
> People pirate music because it's free, consequence free (the reason they
> don't steal cars is consequence) and everyone spends all day every day
> justifying it.

Please don't conflate tangible goods with intangible goods. Intangible goods
are patterns. You can't steal a pattern, because a pattern can't be "owned" in
any sense that a physical object can.

Now, you can have rights to a pattern and that right stops others from
exploiting that pattern commercially, but you don't own the pattern. Even our
current laws recognize this. After all, your right will expire, but if you own
a car, you own it forever and without limits.

So enough with this "theft" bullshit.

~~~
jamesaguilar
> you own it forever and without limits.

The _only_ reason this is true is that the laws say it is. Same as with those
patterns of yours -- the laws could easily be changed so that you own the
pattern always and forever. It's quite pointless to argue about the shoulds of
the situation based on current law.

When we're talking about incentives for production and utility, it actually
makes quite a bit of sense to conflate cars and music. They have many similar
properties. On the consumption side, you do have to consider the added utility
of making the music free, though, because some people will be able to consume
it who otherwise wouldn't have paid.

~~~
icebraining
_The only reason this is true is that the laws say it is._

I disagree. I think it's part of the current social code/contract, not just
the law. In fact, the RIAA/MPAA ads say exactly that - "you wouldn't steal a
car" - because they know people find property (particularly personal property)
to be something we have a right to.

Copyright, on the other hand, is only unquestionable by the law.

~~~
jamesaguilar
> I think it's part of the current social code/contract

Eh. For the purposes of what I said, these are about the same. Laws are
indirectly derived from the social code, so just move my statement up a level.
You still can't answer the question of how the social code ought to view bits
from how it currently views them.

Sometimes the social code is wrong, and those who believe that copyright
piracy is bad for society are making the case that this is one of those times.
Simply observing the current state of the social code in no way counters those
arguments -- although some of them can be countered other ways.

~~~
icebraining
_Eh. For the purposes of what I said, these are about the same._

That's the thing: I don't believe they are. 46% (70% for young adults) of the
US citizens admit to have committed copyright infringement. Almost no one
agrees with large fines or with cutting off the connection for infringers.

I think there's a big disconnect between the social code and the law.

~~~
jamesaguilar
OK, there may be somewhat of a disconnect. On the other hand, that disconnect
is irrelevant to my point. I'm only saying that you can't argue from what is
to what should be. Whether it's the social code _or_ the law, pointing out
that it's currently in favor of copyright infringement doesn't prove anything
about whether it should be in favor of copyright infringement.

~~~
redthrowaway
The should, however, is derived from the is. Our prescriptive laws are, at
least in theory, derived from descriptions of reality. Thus do we claim
contraception should be legal. Thus do we claim interracial marriage should be
legal. These rights are fought for; granted from first principles, but also
from social realities. "All men are created equal" was only taken to include
blacks after the Civil War.

So too must the public attitude towards filesharing define our laws
surrounding it. The majority of people have, without caveat, expressed through
their actions their belief that filesharing is, and should be, a normal and
accepted part of society. This may rankle those whose paychecks are predicated
upon the status quo, but it doesn't affect our shifting morals. We are a
people who accept and embrace "copyright infringement". It is only once this
reality is accepted that the content industry may move forwards.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Yes, but not the _tautological_ is. "People should not be sued for their
entire worth for pirating songs," isn't derived from, "People like to pirate
songs." It's derived from, "punishment should be equitable," "pirating a few
songs isn't that big of a deal," and "that's scary." And those are derived
from even further beliefs.

The important question is, if you take the root beliefs and walk back up the
tree, do all of the beliefs come to an overall support of free copying? Then
you do that in aggregate for society, taking into account uncomfortable truths
about the economics of music production and advertising where necessary and on
a level individuals won't when they derive their inevitable personal free-
riding preferences. Going from high level feeling to high level feeling ("I
like file sharing" -> "file sharing is right") does not work. Almost everyone
says that they would prefer to pay less tax too.

To put it another way, there are plenty of things people would do if they
could get away with it. Not paying taxes, driving as fast as they want,
tossing cigarette butts wherever, etc. Your exact argumentation could be used
to say, "Society's views about these activities need to change," but that's
not actually the case. All you are observing is that people will take
advantage of situations where they can get away with something, even if it's
not ultimately good for society as a whole. In no way do I accept the norms
that you're deriving from this. Rather, I should say that I don't accept the
_way_ you are deriving them. My personal jury is still out on whether I think
filesharing is a problem that needs to be addressed more or less forcefully.

------
laglad
Doesn't it cost money to produce the smell? As pg mentioned, if on the moon,
they charged for smells because they had a delivery mechanism to ration the
smell to you, wouldn't that be accounted for in their value offering?

The reason that point is important is because regardless of the value derived
by the end user, it is the ability to extract value that counts for the
producer. And when smell cannot be rationed, or music supply cannot be
controlled, you change your model.

~~~
ef4
> Doesn't it cost money to produce the smell?

The author's point on this is that there's already a paying customer who
covers the cost of producing the smell (by buying the meal).

Which just goes to show you can't push a metaphor too far. I still agree more
with PG's conclusion. It really is a strawman to claim that copyright is the
only way to pay creators.

~~~
guard-of-terra
In fact it is so.

There's already a paying customer who receives meal: local distributors who
the content is licensed to. They get exclusive rights to the content (meal).

Now, internet services receive smells: non-exclusive rights which are valid in
some countries and not others, like cheese with holes.

Now there's this huge problem where I can't go to 99% of internet services and
pay for music because they don't want my money because I live in a wrong
country. This is what we'd call "smell", and while I would pay for "meal"
(ability to use any music service in the world according to its pricing and
model), I'm only offered "smell" (the suggestion to go elsewhere and figure a
way to actually pay for stuff).

And this smell, I won't buy.

------
timmm
I haven't heard anyone articulate the problem better than PG. The analogy
isn't perfect but it's sufficient. The point, Paul Graham says, is that in our
history we've limited what we sell to what makes sense to sell.

Land used to make no sense to sell. Shit changes it now makes sense. Copies of
music doesn't really make sense anymore either.

~~~
J3L2404
What about copies of software?

Hype (which is great) for example. Can he really tell his investors that
people downloading it from TPB is no problem? In theory his thesis is fine, in
reality not so much.

~~~
timmm
Clearly he is talking about copies of software too. It's changing from Adobe
PS type software to a subscription cloud based software. You can still
certainly make money with software but your not gonna make as much selling
just copies of software.

------
crusso
I viewed Paul's essay as more pragmatic than philosophical.

Whether or not there is some truth in the philosophical view that "illegal
copying is theft", the reality is that the characteristics that make it easy
to copy digital works makes it really difficulty to maintain a business model
that relies on everyone paying for the bits they copy... as difficult as
charging for smells.

------
JDulin
At first I wasn't sure if "Defining Property" was one of the most insightful
essays I read in a long time, or lazy logic on Paul's part trying to protect
the internet in the copyright debate. But I'm pretty sure Paul is talking
about something important now.

What he hits on is that there is no scarcity anymore. Media is reproduced and
shared freely and instantly, because that is the nature of the internet. The
'pipes' (expensive, physical means of distribution) the recording industry
pumped music through for decades have now dissappeared and have been replaced
with an open environment. Anything that tries to close that environment is
just trying to create artificial scarcity.

It's true that media costs money to produce. And the publishers can still
charge for it, if they make the distribution model convenient (or not). But
that is still a one time cost which promotes the artist. And let's not act
like artists are going to just stop making media if they don't think
publishers are going to give them a big payday. They aren't. The more likely
scenario is that the distribution will shift to being handled by the artists
and that money will be made through concerts and merchandise. Downloaded music
will be paid for sometimes, but mostly used for advertisement.

~~~
VMG
There was little scarcity before. The production costs of CDs and LPs were
much lower than what they were priced in the shops.

~~~
JDulin
But it looked like there was scarcity to the consumer. When you are the one
means of distribution, you can create as much scarcity as you want. It just
seems that the record labels and movie industry have carried out that ruse for
so long, they actually believe it.

------
jonnathanson
I hear this argument a lot. I've heard it in comments sections on HN, on
Reddit, and elsewhere. I've heard it from colleagues in the Entertainment
business. I've heard it from friends who are artists and producers -- some
established, and some just getting started.

Here's the thing: production needs to change. If production is too expensive
to justify digital revenue streams, then either we need to get creative about
revenue streams _or_ we need to rethink the cost side of the business. I'm
less concerned with whether we feel this is "right" or "wrong," as such
concerns are largely irrelevant. Arguments about right and wrong are
distractions, and they offer us little in the way of practicality.

What's relevant is that a shift has occurred in the marketplace, and now the
players in the market needs to adapt to it. Adaptation isn't going to be easy,
and the status quo will need to undergo a painful transition. But we need to
adapt, one way or the other.

Hoping the genie gets sucked back into the bottle is not a business strategy.
But rethinking the revenue and/or cost sides of the business is.

------
rdtsc
There is a difference between a prescriptive argument and descriptive (and I
just made these up on the spot). A prescriptive argument admonishes others to
do something. So for example he would admonish people to pirate because
information is like smells. A descriptive argument describes what the
situation is without necessarily telling others what to do. This is the
argument that I see pg making. Basically the idea that information is easily
distributed, and that it will be distributed. Trying to contain it with more
antiquated laws is like trying to plug all the holes in a sieve. In other
words the future is looking this way whether recording companies want it to or
not. And then he proposes thinking about a different way of distributing
music.

~~~
aamar
But pg's argument is prescriptive. For example, it includes the question
"Should people not be able to charge for content?" and then gives a
(conditional) answer.

There's nothing wrong with writing a prescriptive essay; it doesn't make it in
any sense weaker. But it is prescriptive, and Rob's argument here is
specifically with the prescriptive part of the argument--in other words, he
argues that music is not so much like smells that it supports the overall
prescription pg is making.

~~~
rdtsc
I think it is prescriptive for the distributor and creators, but descriptive
for consumers. He is not admonishing consumers to pirate, as it seems many
have misunderstood, he just describes what is happening and what will happen
with information. But he asks distributors and creators to change and adapt to
a new way of doing things.

The original blog didn't claim pg was encouraging piracy directly, so my post
was a bit off topic, but I wrote it because I found when discussing this
essay/talk with others, many tend to draw that conclusion.

~~~
aamar
I do agree that pg's essay was not encouraging piracy. Its main thrust was
prescriptive with respect to public policy-- that means prescriptive to
legislators, voters, and to a degree industry. Rob's essay, as I understand
it, disagrees on the policy advice.

------
tissarah
The question isn't whether music and information are property or not ... the
question is whether or not our government is protecting it in a way that makes
sense for its citizens.

The examples that PG points to are all examples of massive societal and social
change (moving to the moon, changing from hunter gathering, and in a comment
he nodded to the abolition of slavery). These were situations where we did
have a fundamental shift in what our society believed was property. This
simply hasn't happened here. Citizens still believe that an idea is yours,
that creative works have value and belong to the person who creates them. We
desire to protect that.

Where it has all gone wrong is our laws and the industries. Perhaps the value
of this property has decreased and the law still protects the ability of the
media giants to price beyond that value. That's not working for citizens.
Citizens are being held to licenses and contracts they haven't read and don't
understand. They can't trade an ebook from their device to their spouse's.
When I switch between android and iphone do I no longer own angry birds? The
real problem is that the legislature isn't working for us to protect these
property rights in a way that makes sense for us as the citizens who made the
property a right in the first place. Could this be keeping the market from
adjusting to valid pressures?

------
takinola
If we stop thinking of this as a moral issue (stealing music is bad) and more
as a business issue (how can I make money making music?) the issue becomes
clearer. In my opinion, the laws of copyright were designed to facilitate
commerce and are not 'self-evident' in the way human rights are.

If I was in the music industry, my line of reasoning would be thus

1\. Can I prevent people from downloading my stuff illegally? (My guess is
this very unlikely regardless of lawsuits, drm, etc)

2\. Given that some people WILL obtain my goods without having paid for it,
how can I still make money from the cheap bastards? (My guess is this will
probably involve using assets that I can exert monopoly control to access e.g.
live interactions, licensing, early access to stuff, etc)

3\. How can I ensure the folks who would still pay for my goods are not
tempted to defect and join the pirates? Here's where you make sure your
distribution strategy is much better than the pirate experience (It probably
wouldn't hurt to help to make the pirate experience suck a little bit by
seeding torrents with crappy versions of your goods and hampering companies
who want to improve the pirate experience).

I would probably focus more on the 2nd step simply because the 1st and 3rd are
just band-aids and can only take you so far. This point of view probably
pisses some people off but like everything else, it's not personal, just
business

------
DennisP
"Graham doesn’t offer any alternatives"...ok, here's an alternative. Let the
public pay for music creation in advance. When files are released, they
function as advertisements to help the musician sell more creation.

Musicians can help the pledge process along by releasing low-quality or
partial files, and releasing the full files once pledge targets are reached.

There's a game theory argument that this won't work, but million-dollar
pledges on Kickstarter pretty much prove that it works just fine in the real
world.

------
Sambdala
So, some sort of modified Labor Theory of Value?

~~~
porfinollanes
Not really, because no-one would argue that a creative work has more value
just because it took longer/more work to produce. If that were true, people
would value the hell out of Chinese Democracy.

~~~
Sambdala
My point is his whole argument consisted of an emotional appeal about a. the
intention of the 'creator' and b. the cost of creating XYZ piece of 'IP' as
defenses of copyright.

------
sophacles
It seems like the author is missing a huge chunk of this analogy: the aroma
from the restaurant is not merely a by-product, but also a free advertising
channel. Heck, many restaurants strategically vent exhaust from the kitchen to
get more people to notice them. They are paying to distribute the smells for
free yet not charging for them! (A fact the author asserts would strictly
result in a reasonable charge for the aroma).

Similarly, the recording people have regularly paid big bux to radio station
to freely distribute the music. The exposure gets a song popular, hence more
sales. Yet, instead of looking at an even greater chance for big exposure, the
industry is looking to clamp down on it. Granted, it involves changing the
product from the recorded music to something else surrounding that. Still,
this I felt was the main point of the analogy, rather than "derp music is just
air", like the author suggests.

I will be glad to see the "big music" bubble burst and all these companies go
out of business. I find myself hoping the execs stay jobless and penniless for
long after they do. I'm not worried about the lower echelon people, skilled
talent will find a way to earn their living either in a small scene,
specialized way, or in a different industry.

------
kijin
> _Cooking smells are a positive externality ...[snip]... But commercially
> released music is produced specifically for the purpose of being heard, and
> paid for ...[snip]... The true equivalent would be someone standing outside
> the fence of a music festival, enjoying the sounds without having paid._

It depends on what you mean by "being heard". Some people think the only
acceptable business model for music is for musicians to perform live. If we
were to follow this line of thought, what's the difference between listening
to music outside the concert grounds and listening to music stored on a
digital device? In neither case are you participating in the live performance.
In neither case have you reduced the artist's net worth by a single penny,
provided that you never intended to attend the live performance anyway.

> _What would happen if creators couldn’t charge for their creations? The same
> as if you couldn’t charge for lines of computer code: there’d be less of
> it._

And maybe that would be a good thing, as some other commenters have already
suggested. Maybe it's not a morally acceptable business model to charge money
for making copies of existing code. More companies should be charging money
for the value-added services they offer, like making it easier for us to
access music and apps, and offering subscriptions. If you don't want people to
copy your code without paying, don't release it publicly in the first place,
and only release it to people who sign NDAs. That's how business secrets work,
right?

I'm not sure if I want to agree 100% with these lines of thought, but it's an
interesting thought experiment.

Edit: Added paragraph.

------
mindslight
PG's analogy is only flawed in that it's meant to be prescriptive and not
fundamental, so it admits arguments like this. Producing content costs money,
yes. But once it's been released to the public, it's impossible to restrict
copying. Cold hard fact, move on. Sorry if it's not the way you'd like - you
can take your ball and go home, but you can't go back in time.

All the interest and investment in new distribution services is basically
looking to be part of RIAA 2.0 - continuing profitable distribution channels
based on consumer laziness. The goal of the record industry has never been to
compensate artists, and the decreasing prevalence of big-name acts means
there's even fewer lucky ones with the power to demand so. Meanwhile, the
pirate side has _accepted_ that distribution is free and is trying to usher in
the future so sustainable artist-beneficial (whatever that turns out to mean)
structures can be created. Oink was responsible for my going to _many_ shows,
while the risk of being hassled over torrenting (I've become more risk-
adverse) has resulted in me knowing very few bands on the concert listings.

------
toddnessa
To me the article speaks to the frustration of past funding models giving way
to new ways of monetizing creative works. The gateways that have been
necessary for works to be promoted are changing from an executives sitting in
an office somewhere to everyday people who like your work and have the ability
to spread word of it throughout their social networks. As the technology is
further developed to further empower these everyday people with even greater
ability to spread creative content, such as Spotify is doing, this will
accelerate even more. It's my feeling that a new way of monetizing creative
works is underway. This will be a paradigm change that will allow works to be
seen or heard that would have otherwise never been allowed to see the light of
day. We all win when we have the greatest number of individuals having more of
a say in things rather than just a select few. Authors, musicians & other
creators in the future will be more in the driver seat than in the past and
will be given new & different options for monetizing their products.

------
jbigelow76
Why does YCombinator deserve equity (value) from successes of the YC program,
these are internet companies, aren't msot of the company's benefits intangible
"smells" much like music?

Wait. Let me guess... because they invested, so they deserve to profit right?

So somebody please explain to me why the media industries are different. If
anybody thinks music is free please go price out studio time before replying.

~~~
angersock
$400 dollars for a full day of recording
(<http://www.inthejarstudios.com/rates.htm>).

I have to pay for my own woodworking tools and computers, but I don't expect
people to subsidize me in my hobby. And if I decided to go pro--which in the
case of computers I have--I would make sure I only make things the market
wants, and not take on shitty contracts signing away future sale equity until
some vaguely defined point in the future.

~~~
jbigelow76
Subsidizing a hobby is not an accurate analogy. Is a doctor practicing
medicine for pay subsidizing their hobby or are they trying to derive value
from their efforts? Just because somebody may enjoy what they do to produce
that value doesn't mean it de facto becomes "free".

~~~
angersock
Until you make money because people are willing to pay for what you have and
will do so even in the presence of cheaper alternatives, yeah, it's a hobby.

~~~
jbigelow76
Well the labels paid specific artists despite cheaper alternatives immediately
taking them out of the "hobby" category.

------
padobson
Are we forgetting the difference between free as in freedom and free as in $0?
Isn't that what open source is all about.

I would never make the argument that musicians shouldn't get payed and payed
well for their work, but for the copyright holders to dictate how, where, and
under what circumstances I listen to music that I've payed is the problem with
copyright law.

I should have to pay for music. I shouldn't have to pay for the same song four
different ways so I can listen to it in my car, on my Ipod, computer, and home
stereo.

The problem is the distribution companies. When artists wise up and realize
they don't need record labels or movie studios anymore, we'll all be paying
for DRM free content - and the artists will get rich.

This is why we have lobbyists for these big companies trying to avoid
extinction.

------
Tycho
Is copyright the only way for content-creators to make money? No. Is it an
honourable, respectful way and probably the best option we have? Yes.

(also the smells equivalent in music would be more like trying to charge
people who happen to overhear music while going about some other activity)

------
npsimons
TL;DR: "Paul Graham has written some very insightful and entertaining essays,
but I disagree with one of his more recent ones, so he has obviously 'lost the
plot'. PS, I make my money from imaginary property, which is what the Paul
Graham essay I don't like argues against."

------
kirinan
I disagree with the point of the blog post. While it doesn't make sense that
we people would charge for air pipes to be dragged to earth from the moon in
order to use the smells produced (because of legislation), it is perfectly
analogous to what the RIAA and MPAA do when they try to influence legislation
to stop pirating. Instead of targeting the root cause of the problem (cost and
quality), they chose to legislate away rights (SOPA) on the internet. This is
similar to the smells example because instead of allowing you to breath the
free air, we are going to make you breath our air because we feel its better.
This makes no sense, and is hazardous to not only open enterprise but the
freedoms that we have.

~~~
chernevik
Piracy is abuse of open networks and speech right. I don't want a government
sufficiently powerful (per the RIAA) to stop it, such powers would would
themselves be a serious danger to society.

I suppose that amounts to a freedom to piracy. But that doesn't mean piracy is
somehow right, or even intended. It's an injustice, of individuals, persisting
in the space needed to maintain a free society.

Nor am I much impressed by the argument that with so many people pirating, it
must actually be moral. Probably most of them think it's moral, given that
they take their norms from the people around them. And the offenses are
largely minor. But I think the steps from principle to copyright are pretty
clear, and I don't see how anyone concludes that it's actually right.

It's like littering: no one actually thinks it's okay, but they do it because
it's convenient, they won't get caught and it isn't a big deal. The
consequences of those calculations are obvious.

------
functionform
There are ethical and economical reasons for low to zero-cost mp3s.

1\. The artist actually gets even more of a shit deal with digital
distribution than they did with physical media. You are supporting the
machine, not the musician.

2\. The cost of developing a quality recording has plummeted dramatically, the
only substantive cost remaining is the advertising. The exception might be for
faux artists like Rihanna that hire top notch songwriters to pen hits, but for
lesser known musicians, mp3 distribution has been shown in studies to have a
positive impact.

3\. mp3s can function as the advertising medium itself. The money can be made
elsewhere like endorsements, or touring. Live music can never be "stolen".

------
cturner
Although there was some to disagree with in Graham's essay, he had some
interesting insight. The restaurant smells analogy is the least bad I've heard
so far.

This response was flimsy.

    
    
        > This is a flawed analogy. Cooking smells are a
        > positive externality – they’re generated as a
        > by-product of providing a service to paying patrons.
        > But commercially released music is produced
        > specifically for the purpose of being heard, and
        > paid for (whether by the buyer, or by a royalty
        > from a radio station). 
    

So let's consider that you commercialised the sale of cooking smells. What
would be the result? A bunch of providers would crop up dedicated to providing
smells. They wouldn't bother with the food - they'd just sell the smells. And
they'd talk about "smell innovation".

That's similar to the situation we have with commercial music venues. The
government extends property rights to things that are both (1) not property
and which (2) have a very different dynamic to property. And then dedicate
operators set up to harvest that.

The people producing cooking smells wouldn't be restaurants producing food
innovation. The restaurants themselves wouldn't have time to spend chasing
after fiddly smell licensing arrangements, and paying up lawyers to go chasing
after freeloaders. They're too busy running actual restaurants. Just as it is
where the people producing music aren't themselves the music artists, and
except for a tiny (although highly visible) fraction, music artists (even
world class music artists) do not benefit from copyright protection.

The article goes on to claim that music costs money to produce - ludicrous.
You can put a microphone under a jazz musician and then publish it on the
internet and it's first class music. You can take a laptop into a symphone
orchestra concert and record it. Recording and distributing things is so free
of cost that the commercial music industry has to go out of its way to find
mechanisms to shut down the people who do it, and to get the government to
protect it.

I'm in the privacy of my room. Someone is broadcasting radio into my space.
Why the hell shouldn't I flip some magnetic signals and bottle it, and give it
to my friends if I want to? Or sell it? It's my damn room and media.

It significantly impedes our freedom. It makes us criminals in our own homes.
And it doesn't delivery to the people whos interest it is justified by. It
creates a sea of lobbyists who need to extend the policy further and further
into our lives just so they can stay in the same place. It is indefensible,
disgusting policy failure on a grand scale.

It's important to stress that intellectual property innovation occurs because
people have a problem to solve. I wrote a franchise system for an events
company because - surprise surprise - they had a franchise, and wanted
software to better run it.

Mendellsohn wrote the Scottish symphony because he was inspired to do so.
Orchestras perform works because people come to their concerts to experience
the sound and atmosphere and variation, despite having high quality recordings
at home. IBM funds linux because it wants an operating system capability for
its servers.

However, the mamoth presence of things that leverage copyright in the market
and in our lives distorts our perspective. Because of its legal advantages and
the privilege it pushes focus away from artists, and leads to crazy circular
logic of the sort shown in this article. You could simplify many of the points
as, "The world is this way, therefore the world must be this way."

There was a time hundreds of years ago when the church had a monopoly on
education. They would have tried to claim that without strong privilege,
education would not happen. It's a lie.

IP law is holding us back, but you need to use your brain to see past the
world we live in to the opportunities we're missing out of because of all
these protected gangsters who dominate the channels.

Near the end I see bold text,

"What would happen if creators couldn’t charge for their creations?"

You can charge for your creation. Steam has mechanisms for getting people to
buy from them, and to make it difficult for people to run steam software they
haven't paid for. Good for them.

But you shouldn't have the right to get the government to annoint business
models for you, or to be your enforcer. Copyright and patents are not
property, and they should be described that way or treated that way in law.

~~~
koblas
Smells are covered by copyright, it's a $20 billion dollar industry.
<http://bit.ly/GKyiOa>

~~~
tissarah
Smells are currently being sold -- as advertisement for products held within
stores (big box stores are known to pipe in smells of baked goods at the front
etc...)

What if consumers don't pay for music? There have been many suggestions about
how this will play out, but maybe it will be that Pepsi and McDonalds will
decide the music that is best suited for selling their products. Brittany
Spears will stick around for sure (love her), but I'm not sure where this
leaves us.

------
handelaar
_"commercially released music is produced specifically for the purpose of
being heard, and paid for (whether by the buyer, or by a royalty from a radio
station)"_

Remind me again how much radio stations in the US pay in performance
royalties?

~~~
kreek
Not sure in the US but I remember hearing around £200 for day-time airplay
(more listeners) to £40 at late-night is what an artist can expect to earn
from a play on the BBC.

------
DannoHung
> What would happen if creators couldn’t charge for their creations? The same
> as if you couldn’t charge for lines of computer code: there’d be less of it.

Would there? Really? Like, are we absolutely sure there would be less of it?
Are we also ruling out the possibility that someone would pay you to produce
specific lines of code or just that once you produce code, you can't sell it?

It used to commonly be the case that you got paid to make music for someone.
Now you make the music and then try to sell it to people.

It just seems like there is an implicit assumption that the marketplace model
is the best way to encourage the creation of all things.

------
oz
I have always found it difficult to understand how people manage to convince
themselves that the creator of a work does not have the right to charge for
it. For

To those who make impassioned pleas that technology has made copyright
obsolete, what if there were a technology that allowed the wholesale copying
of your profitable Saas/PaaS from AWS? Sure, the code you wrote is still on
the server, but is that something you would condone? All the months of hard
work and crunch mode, being made to benefit another without your consent? Does
that _feel_ right?

Didn't think so.

------
FrojoS
'When you're abusing the legal system by trying to use mass lawsuits against
randomly chosen people as a form of exemplary punishment, or lobbying for laws
that would break the Internet if they passed, that's ipso facto evidence
you're using a definition of property that doesn't work.' - PG

Brilliant. I was expecting something controversial. But, I assume, that at
least within this community what PG says here, is the opinion of the majority.

------
tzm
The mechanism for vending the rights and distribution to sound waves has
changed. If all you need is a sound recorder to capture the IP of a work of
art, then the governing environment must change.

Smells are similar, but are not yet distributed as a temporal frequency.

Software is much easier to control, since after all, logic is embedded in the
work of art, an OS can govern the rights and/or TCP requests can act as a
conduit for authentication.

------
doki_pen
I think pg is spot on. Record companies make money on distribution. They are
no longer needed. Artist always have made more money on live concerts, with a
few notable exceptions. The thing record companies are trying to hold on to is
controlling distribution, because if artists realize they don't need a record
company, record companies will cease to exist.

------
scottmey
I agree with Paul in some respects. But I did feel that his analogy was a bit
strange, although kind of creative.

------
ziadbc
I don't think PG was saying that music equals smells. He's saying piracy =
smells, some of them good, some bad.

It's just silly that the industry spent a decade suing people, and probably
could have made 10x their money by giving up the 'suing people for smells' and
started other music/content related businesses.

------
wam
Curiously omitted from both essays (unless I somehow completely overlooked it)
is the ending of this apocryphal story. The judge asks the accused infringer
to take a coin out of his pocket and drop it on the table, saying "The sound
of the coin shall pay for the smell of the food."

~~~
barce
Thanks for adding this. This is brilliant on the part of the judge.

------
jjcm
Your analogy is flawed. Air doesn't cost anything, but sound waves dont cost
anything either. The data that's embeded in it (whether it's a smell or a
song) has a cost to produce. It costs money and experience to cook the food.
It costs money and experience to produce the songs.

------
acroyear
re : "What would happen if creators couldn’t charge for their creations? The
same as if you couldn’t charge for lines of computer code: there’d be less of
it. Some people would keep on producing for the public good, just for the joy
of it – in the same way that people contribute to open source software. But
plenty of people wouldn’t be able to do it anymore."

so what if there's less of it?? .. necessity is the primal driver - if society
as a whole really needs your shitty music (or whatever widget you want), it
will get made by some avenue of support. PERIOD. we don't _need_ most of this
bullshit anyhow .. so boo f'ing hoo.

if you distribute something outside of your garden, it has gone wild and you
have no right to restrict how anyone can then play with it. .. imho

------
dusklight
What if musicians freely allowed the distribution of their music, but charged
for concerts? That would be a clear parallel to the "smells" analogy. Many
musicians would be able to survive, and it will encourage them to put on more
spectacular shows to draw in the crowds.

------
trotsky
I'd offer the idea that a significant amount of what YC offers is a brand, the
essays are marketing, and anti-entertainment industry sentiment is very high
in their target market of young technologists.

------
Orlowski
>>Spotted the massive, gaping flaw in the argument yet?

Yes, in your analogy

it's

air:internet smell:music

NOT

air:music smell:???

also, from above...

Water is free, but bottled water has essentially added 'smell', or, the
convenience of having it in a bottle and across the street, refrigerated.

------
bootload
_"... Rob has seven years of PR experience ..."_

Steps to increase exposure: I read PG essays, PG has a of exposure. I don't
agree & write counter arguments. Post article & submit.

------
nhebb
_> It sounds ridiculous to us to treat smells as property. But I can imagine
scenarios in which one could charge for smells._

It's called perfume.

------
rytis
one line of thinking is this: "if it's not re-sellable it's not worth paying
for". I buy a hammer, and once I'm done with it I can sell it. If I buy an MP3
file, can I resell it? Not that no one's going to buy, it's even 'illegal'...

------
rlpb
Music existed before copyright did. I remain unconvinced that music costs
money to produce. Art gets produced for the sake of art, not for compensation.
Specific forms of art (say for example big budget movies) may be an exception,
but then the argument needs to shift accordingly.

~~~
drumdance
Music existed, but not recording devices, microphones etc. There is a hard
cost associated with all of those. Granted, those costs have come down over
time, but the rental of a decent studio is not $0.

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
The cost of studio rental is irrelevant. What musicians want to be compensated
for is the lifetime of study, dedication to a craft, years of poverty and
uncertainty, risk of repetitive stress injuries, etc.

~~~
gnaritas
And they do, whenever they perform those skills for an audience. The market
doesn't pay for effort, it pays for things people want.

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
"And they do, whenever they perform those skills for an audience. "

The overwhelming majority of musical work -writing, recording, practicing etc
- is done in private with no audience present. Many musicians perform very
little in public.

~~~
gnaritas
That doesn't mean the market values such effort. They have no right to demand
to be paid just because something takes skill. Lots of skilled activities are
of no value to the market. And I say this as a musician who's very aware of
the effort involved.

~~~
superuser2
>They have no right to demand to be paid just because something takes skill.

But they do have a right to demand to be paid when someone chooses to
experience the result of their skill.

~~~
gnaritas
Not necessarily. They can of course charge before demonstrating said skill,
but if someone else happens to be witness, or copy the output in some way, it
doesn't mean he controls all future uses of the result of said skill.

------
wisty
I'll just recycle my comment I made on the PG's article:

 _PG seems to be advocating a pragmatic approach, based on the difficulty of
enforcement. Goods can be excludable or non-excludable. Excludable goods are
anything that can be effectively locked down (like most physical goods, or
movie tickets). Non-excludable goods can't (like air, fish in the sea, and
IP). You can make a non-excludable good excludable by creating laws (like
Carbon Taxes or IP laws), but it's not always practical.

But he kind of misses the other half - rivalry.

Goods can also be rivalrous or non-rivalrous. Ideas are non-rivalrous as you
don't lose anything (except a competitive advantage) if other people also have
it. In fact, IP may be the opposite to rivalrous (which is a rare enough thing
to not have a name, though I like the name "network goods"), because it's
worth more if everyone has it. If more people can speak a language, it's more
useful to everyone. The Lord of the Rings is more interesting if you can talk
to your friends about it.

While there's a good reason to try to make common goods (rivalrous but non-
excludable) goods more excludable (by introducing laws which prevent over-
exploitation), it's perverse to make non-rivalrous excludable. You don't tax
breathing if there's plenty of air.

The main reason you want to make a public (non-rivalrous non-excludable) good
more excludable is to incentize its creation (another reason might be because
it's judged to be a "de-merit" (bad) good - such as a porn or a method of
manufacturing weapons). But since IP is an input to creating IP, there's very
good reasons why you want to make copyright and patents expire in a short time
- bringing down the cost of creating new IP may outweigh the lost incentive.
Also, the anti-rivalrous nature of IP may even encourage people to make more,
simply because it's so useful have more people using it - Linus got his own
private kernel debugged and extended at a lower cost by sharing it._

If a good cannot be easily made excludable, then it's all very sad (assuming
that the lost incentive to create more of it outweights the loss from more
people having access to the existing stuff, and the stuff that's made
voluntarily) but there's not much you can do without heavy regulation.

Music will still be made. Musicians will make money on gigs. Advertisers will
pay musicians for annoying jingles. It's not the 1700s, there's literally
millions of talented musicians who will eke out a living actually connecting
with the community (concerts, teaching, playing in pubs) who should be able to
produce far more (in aggregate) than Mozart, Beethoven and the like. Without
copyright, many of those musicians may make a _better_ living, as they can
draw on other people's material more easily.

The fat distribution pipe (distributors, promoters, producers, broadcasters)
will mostly die, but no-one really cares - they don't create much value. OK,
the definition of value is rubbery, but if you make money by convincing people
that they need something (i.e. tell them that folk music is daggy, and you
have to buy the latest pop hit to be cool) then you're really _destroying_
value, then offering a band-aid.

------
jongraehl
Horrible writing.

------
fellowniusmonk
Music is like air in the sense that it will always be created, it is as
natural as speech for humans, stories and song are to people as oxygen
creation is to a plant, the amount of funding may effect the quality
(subjective) and quantity (unlikely), but that is the entire point of funding
new distribution channels that pay artists directly (which this author equates
with "Not respecting the funding of Creation").

Coming from Nashville/Austin I can assure you, the reason people are
interested in distribution channels is because that IS the music industry.

All this copyright hubbub is just a natural protectionist attempt to keep the
high cost/barrier of entry for musicians (not just to distribution but
profitability) by established entities like clearchannel, et al. You can't
convince a new musician to sign a predatory contract when they have reached
profitability through an easier distribution channel.

From an artists perspective: Talent isn't going away, at first the internet
made the talent acquisition process easier and faster for studios, but Talent
now has easier options for sustainable profitability through these new
distribution channels. Studios have come to simply hate how much harder
contract negotiations become when the artist they are targeting is already
"making enough".

There is a lot more nonsense in this article regarding "Lines of Computer
Code", "Forced Open Source" and the like, along with absurdist FUD like "What
would happen if creators couldn’t charge for their creations?", give me a
break.

------
batista
_Graham draws a comparison between the ridiculous situation of a shop owner
wanting to charge passers-by for smelling the delicious cooking smells coming
from restaurant, and record companies going after people who’ve illegally
downloaded music or movies. The supposed point of comparison is that
‘information is like air’ and can be freely transmitted, so it can’t be
treated as the property of one party._

If PG is making that point, it's stupid. How about someone stealing his ViaWeb
source back in the day before the Yahoo acquisition? (Actually, it wouldn't
even be stealing, because he would still have the source himself).

Would he still be using that "information wants to be free" meme?

~~~
jes5199
even up to the acquisition, ViaWeb's source code wasn't that valuable. What
was really valuable is the knowledge of the code that its developers have, and
the relationships with the customers, the minds of the leaders who made the
company successful, and the brand.

Plenty of companies get their source code leaked, and yet they keep on selling
the software. The code itself is treated like a curiosity - some people play
with it, but not many, and I've never heard of anyone building and selling a
closed-source project once they obtained the source for it.

~~~
batista
_even up to the acquisition, ViaWeb's source code wasn't that valuable. What
was really valuable is the knowledge of the code that its developers have, and
the relationships with the customers, the minds of the leaders who made the
company successful, and the brand._

So, if a guy more connected than PG in the Valley at the time stole the code,
and had some top notch Lisp guys study it and expand it, and had $$$ to spend
for marketing, it would still be OK to take ViaWeb's code?

It's not that any or all of those things are an impossible secret sauce. For
example, they guy could be an ex-employer, familiar with the source code AND
with relations to existing customers.

 _I've never heard of anyone building and selling a closed-source project once
they obtained the source for it_

That's mostly because they would be sued to oblivion in a case like we
describe. But in other cases, where they legally obtained the code to a
project used by some business (e.g if it was open sourced) people HAVE built
competing businesses. From MariaDB to Slashdot clones to OpenStack, to
competing Unices, etc.

------
J3L2404
tl;dr The smell analogy stinks.

------
barrkel
_As Bruce Waria says in a comment on his own Music Think Tank piece, by
Graham’s logic he should force all the companies he invests in to open source
the code which he funded, or allow anyone to embed their technology without
compensation or conditions attached._

This wouldn't actually follow PG's logic. Using code does not necessarily
require the end user copying it, especially for web-based software which is
mostly run remotely. Consuming media necessarily requires copying it to
somewhere - to your nerve endings, at the very least.

~~~
drumdance
If you classify nerve endings as part of the value chain, then the UI of web
apps certainly qualifies.

~~~
barrkel
For sure; and that's why most web UIs rely heavily on open source frameworks.
I don't think this disproves my point at all; I think it strengthens it.

