Can someone explain without using "magic happens here" arguments how an author, musician, etc. would build a portfolio of assets from which they could attain any measure of financial security in this world? Working for tips is not a valid answer.
Writers would have it even worse than musicians, since at least musicians can tour. When was the last time you attended a live reading of a novel?
I am not arguing that copyright is perfect as is, but so far I see nothing better that allows artists to actually eat. In a post copyright world, big capital would still own brands, distribution channels, networks, etc. It would actually be great for them: they could now monetize artists work any way they wanted without paying the artist anything. Google, Apple, Amazon, etc. would be big winners.
This stuff is yet another hard right wing labor busting idea masquerading as something liberal and progressive.
"Tips," as you seem to classify everything from Kickstarter to Patronage to Patreon, and fan interaction are the most reasonable means by which an artist might derive a living.
Artists who can't derive a living by these means should look into alternate means of making a living. Success as an artist is not an entitlement. Creative people who make creative works will succeed in proportion to their ability to be valued by society or a subset of it, not because society can correctly identify any objective or intrinsic value in any particular creative work.
It's also not comparable to the "wealthy engineers" you malign. If engineers worked under the same terms as modern copyright never a road or bridge or factory would be built because the next hundred years of paying royalties to all the engineers on top of construction costs would make it impossible to build anything.
Frankly, most engineers give up the rights to their creative works in order to be employed at all and recognize that they can't expect to make a living for their entire life just by designing one awesome bridge or skyscraper.
Artists who can't derive a living by these means should look into alternate means of making a living. Success as an artist is not an entitlement. Creative people who make creative works will succeed in proportion to their ability to be valued by society or a subset of it, not because society can correctly identify any objective or intrinsic value in any particular creative work.
In other words success is correlated with successful marketing rather than any intrinsic value of the work. So even if the work is great and popular, authors of said works hould not be allowed to have an economic interest in its distribution.
It's also not comparable to the "wealthy engineers" you malign. If engineers worked under the same terms as modern copyright never a road or bridge or factory would be built because the next hundred years of paying royalties to all the engineers on top of construction costs would make it impossible to build anything.
Utter, unmitigated bullshit. You're saying that there is really no such thing as original work, which is patently untrue.
Utter, unmitigated bullshit. You're saying that there is really no such thing as original work, which is patently untrue.
Name one story in modern movies that doesn't follow at least part of commonly identified narratives. Name one painting that doesn't follow some common themes (Madonna and child comes to mind). Name one written work that doesn't have some intertextual references. Hell, name one superhero that isn't a knock off of another.
If you can't then will you admit that everyone borrows ideas from everyone else?
Which contributes to their success through free marketing and word-of-mouth. "Who are you listening to?" is a common question people ask when they hear music they like that someone else is listening to. Which, if they hadn't pirated that persons music they might not be listening to and the answer would be a different artist.
From an economic sense I've never understood trying to prevent piracy. I can understand not encouraging it or even encouraging buying the product but not acting like piracy is a heinous crime that robs them.
My favorite example is illegal anime fansubs that open up an entire foreign market to something they otherwise would not participate in. From purchasing merchandise (figurines, dakimakuras, DVD's, soundtracks, etc.) to telling their friends about the anime. It's business that these studios would otherwise not get and so many fansub groups are tolerated or even hired as official translators for studios.
This sort of black/white standpoints on piracy do more harm to both sides in many cases...people shooting themselves in the foot because they don't understand that potentially free marketing brings in more money than the imaginary "lost sale" (who says the person who pirated would even buy your product to begin with?)
From purchasing merchandise (figurines, dakimakuras, DVD's, soundtracks, etc.) to telling their friends about the anime.
What you're missing is that those things only exist for purchase because someone invested capital in their production, and you only learn about the original media because money was spent on marketing in its home territory.
If all you have is the IP and no capital, which is the position that most authors are in, then you can't easily cash in on the merchandising possibilities or purchase the marketing resources to focus public attention on your product at scale.
people shooting themselves in the foot because they don't understand that potentially free marketing brings in more money than the imaginary "lost sale"
Have you ever tried to sell a creative product? Maybe you should. The reality is that 'potentially free marketing' is a terrible bootstrap strategy for many creative products. If your only marketing option is to give it away free then the signal you are sending to the market is that 'this work has no value' and so nobody is inclined to pay for it. Piracy across market boundaries (like anime) only works because there is already a perception of value for the product - you want something that people in another market can easily buy but which you can't. They can easily buy it because someone invested in distribution and marketing.
Look, if you sat down, learned to draw, and made your own anime book and put it up on the internet for free without caring about copyright, do you think money just comes rolling in? It won't, even if it's good and popular. If you ignore copyright that someone else who does have capital sitting idle will just start producing and selling merchandise and they won't give you any of the money.
>What you're missing is that those things only exist for purchase because someone invested capital in their production
True. Most of the time at least. This is assuming it isn't some indie project, but for the most part I'll agree and say it is true.
>you only learn about the original media because money was spent on marketing in its home territory.
I hate to enter a semantic debate but I don't consider announcements to be marketing, although I can understand how one could interpret them as such.
People learn about the original media through the fansub groups who learn about the product through announcements of upcoming works from the studios and/or the native TV rippers (I forget their actual name). Only a small, niche market of foreigners who happen to also speak Japanese hear about it from marketing in the home territory. There are fangroups who, at the start of each season, compile the upcoming works from each studio. That is all the marketing that most of the pirating consumers get - and none of it is from marketing the product in Japan.
>If all you have is the IP and no capital, which is the position that most authors are in, then you can't easily cash in on the merchandising possibilities or purchase the marketing resources to focus public attention on your product at scale.
Which is why free advertisement from pirates is a benefit. Which is part of what I'm getting at...then there's the entire doujinshi market which runs counter to this claim. Many doujinshi artists become very popular because of a single sale that is then scanned and distributed to people who then pirate the work. The artist can gain a lot of popularity through this pirating of their work, which results in more sales in the future.
>Have you ever tried to sell a creative product? Maybe you should.
I have.
> The reality is that 'potentially free marketing' is a terrible bootstrap strategy for many creative products.
I already replied to this. >I can understand not encouraging it or even encouraging buying the product but not acting like piracy is a heinous crime that robs them.
>If your only marketing option is to give it away free
Nowhere did I say that.
>Look, if you sat down, learned to draw, and made your own anime book and put it up on the internet for free without caring about copyright, do you think money just comes rolling in? It won't, even if it's good and popular.
Ignoring your bad assumptions, do you think an artist would make money if their initial marketing, at some level, wasn't free? How many artists would make sales without a portfolio or free display of their work? How many musicians would get signed to a label without an EP?
I hate to enter a semantic debate but I don't consider announcements to be marketing [..] That is all the marketing that most of the pirating consumers get - and none of it is from marketing the product in Japan.
Look, the existence of the studio and fansubs' awareness of it is itself a 'marketing debt' much like 'technical debt.' People only care because something from that studio has already been on TV in Japan, or they wouldn't know it existed. If you go to a fansub group ad say you (an unknown producer) have a great idea for a show that you will produce using an unknown artist, do you think people are going to send you money to produce the product?
>Have you ever tried to sell a creative product? Maybe you should.
I have.
And?
Ignoring your bad assumptions, do you think an artist would make money if their initial marketing, at some level, wasn't free? How many artists would make sales without a portfolio or free display of their work? How many musicians would get signed to a label without an EP?
But they are not giving away the copyright when they do that, and I think you know this. They retain their ownership interest in the work and then bargain for the terms under which they are willing to assign or sell it to a publisher in exchange for money and/or distribution services.
If I'm a record executive, hear a great demo, but don't like the look of the band, I can't just hire some photogenic actors to get a cover shot and start selling copies of the music without paying for it. I will get sued into the ground and possibly go to prison. The copyrighted work is an asset whose price can be bargained for. That's why experienced artists are very wary of submitting to contests and stuff like that, because some contest operators make assignment of copyright a condition of entry and people who submit to such a competition have no legal recourse.
I don't totally disagree with much of what you say, but in the case of anime, it is important to remember that the works that are highly successful in Japan are produced solely on the premise they will rake in cash for the IP owner. The income they get from non-domestic consumers is a drop in the bucket. Take away that incentive and there is a good chance that overall quantity and quality of content would decline.
Perhaps I should have used manga/doujinshi as my example as it doesn't require an entire production studio to create. Off the top of my head I can only think of 1 or 2 quality anime doujinshi that were subbed - making it a worse example for "for-free artists". Many doujinshi will hand out free copies of their manga though when starting out, to gain popularity. Even if it is initially a loss for them.
For anime, it's produced for-profit, that's correct, but piracy arguably helps their for-profit motives more than it harms them. If they spent a bunch of money, time, and effort preventing all piracy of their IP - they'd lose out on countless international sales of merchandise... and for what exactly? Because they own the IP? That's nice. As long as it's profitable for them, why should they care? This is why Comiket is tolerated.
It's costly to sub an anime for a foreign release where it isn't guaranteed to do as well as it did in Japan. Often times unpopular anime from Japan is very popular overseas, so it can be difficult even choosing what to release overseas. They're essentially getting free labor from fansub groups which results in sales they would have had to pay for (by releasing their own sub/dub). That's a win-win for the studio.
This is less applicable to Hollywood movies that lack merchandise deals (e.g. anything that isn't superhero related) and music. I'm aware of that, but each form of media has its own arguments.
Over 1/2 of my music library was purchased only because I originally heard of the artist because a friend pirated their music or I was listening to their music for free (I use AdBlock, so they aren't making money off ads) on YouTube. I would not have discovered the artist or purchased their music without this method of discovery, which is reliant on my friends or other people pirating their music and "broadcasting it" to the world.
So it becomes an issue of "if 1 pirate results in greater than or equal to 2 sales, it is profitable to let the pirate pirate" and measuring (and quantifying) the pirates "free marketing" aspect. While I can personally quantify which items my friends have pirated and determine whether it was, in the end, profitable for the company to let them pirate or not.
The company has no way of measuring what sales of their sales occurred because of pirates. They only know that piracy means they "lost a sale"; which might not have happened even if piracy wasn't an option. This is where the problem lies and opinions differ.
I'm of the opinion that the free publicity piracy provides outweighs the lost sales that occur from piracy, therefore tolerating, but not promoting, piracy is an overall net gain.
This argument is different than one I would use for a painter or photographer. Where stealing is a lot more harmful to the artist, especially since attribution is almost never given for stolen works. In this form of media, piracy steals recognition and publicity rather than giving it. That's actively harmful and is more easily provable that it harms the artist.
Can someone explain without using "magic happens here" arguments how an author, musician, etc. would build a portfolio of assets from which they could attain any measure of financial security in this world?
No. They can't. But it's important to understand that they can't attain any measure of financial security even with copyright law in place. It just looks like they can. Only the superstars ever get financial security from copyrights.
Writers would have it even worse than musicians, since at least musicians can tour. When was the last time you attended a live reading of a novel?
Crowdfunding is another option. But I think it's useful to give up on the idea that artists will ever make any meaningful amount of money from selling their art after the fact.
I am not arguing that copyright is perfect as is, but so far I see nothing better that allows artists to actually eat.
If we force artists to make art in order to be able to eat, isn't the system already broken?
In a post copyright world, big capital would still own brands, distribution channels, networks, etc. It would actually be great for them: they could now monetize artists work any way they wanted without paying the artist anything. Google, Apple, Amazon, etc. would be big winners.
Maybe. But you'd also see a lot of free distribution through BitTorrent, Popcorn Time etc. In order for Google, Apple, Amazon, etc. to make money, they'd have to be able to add some value on top of content distribution... value that can't easily be replicated for free.
What we call "intellectual property" is really a public good. It's non-rival and non-exclusive in nature.
This stuff is yet another hard right wing labor busting idea masquerading as something liberal and progressive.
Maybe. But that doesn't mean it's wrong.
This kind of thinking about intellectual property is what led me to re-examine the nature of labor in general. Is it reasonable for us to expect the labor market to provide sufficient income to consumers?
>If we force artists to make art in order to be able to eat, isn't the system already broken?
Can you explain what you mean by that? I'm trying to put it in the perspective of other careers, and it doesn't make any sense to me. Like, "If we force doctors to heal in order to be able to eat, isn't the system already broken?" It doesn't sound broken. I'm a programmer. I have to program to eat. I can choose something else if I don't make it as a programmer, just as artists can. (And in fact, I do some art on the side, too.) But everyone has to contribute in some way to eat. (Well, unless they inherit a bunch of money, I guess.) Why is that worse for artists than anyone else? I think I'm missing some larger point, here. Sorry to sound dense.
There was art and there were artists long before copyright. Michelangelo, Mozart and Byron were anything but buskers. Public performances and patronage are time-tested, but nowadays artists have additional options like online fundraising and donations, as well as a far greater reach through social networks, amplifying the effect of all of the above.
However, it is true that even the most famous artists might have to get used to their art "merely" affording them a comfortable life, instead of making them obscenely wealthy like it does through license sales today.
All those artists had patrons, a high end form of busking for tips, and none had any power in that relationship at all.
It's never been easy for an artist to make a living, but taking rights away just makes it harder. An artist can give away their work now if they want. You are talking about removing the other options, and I don't see much upside that outweighs the downside. Only big capital really benefits.
It's also hypocritical for engineers, who have the potential to become obscenely wealthy, to criticize others for this while advocating labor busting policies. Do people actually want a world where only a tiny handful of technicians and supercapitalists have wealth? All I see here is elitism. This is not a progressive idea. Please stop promoting it as if it is.
As compared to the power that authors have in their relationship with publishers now?
At least the relation of an artist with their patron was on a one-on-one personal level; they could influence their patrons and convince them to have their way on an emotional level. Try that when you're paid by a corporation.
I predict a future of performing arts for writers as well. Roleplaying games show us that doing such thing is possible, and creative platforms for storytelling will allow artists to perform live experiences for an audience.
"Experience builder" may very well be the future of what we call "writers" now, and the media that will allow it already exists; in that media, it's not unreasonable to think that people will pay to have the experience tailored for them in real time, even if recorded copies of such experience are then instantly distributed for free to the world.
Well, if a publisher defaults on a contract with me, I have a legal remedy. I sell or lease my property interest in a piece of creative work in return for some valuable consideration, usually money. If the publisher fails to deliver I can ask a court to enforce the terms of the contract. Is it ideal, no. But I certainly prefer it to the feudal model you propose returning to.
I predict a future of performing arts for writers as well. Roleplaying games show us that doing such thing is possible, and creative platforms for storytelling will allow artists to perform live experiences for an audience.
If I wanted to do live performance then I would have pursued a career in theater. The existence of other possibilities does not unilaterally justify the unilateral abolition of one economic mechanism (copyright) so as to privilege consumer interests over those of producers. Perhaps you don't enjoy reading novels or consuming stories with fixed narratives (rather than interactive games), but lots of people do enjoy that, and there is a distinct skill in the construction and development of such narratives.
Would you go to a farmer and say 'the food you grow should be free for the taking to anyone passing your field, after all the earth is bountiful and you can simply grow more food in the future so ownership of food is inherently meaningless. If you are just farming for the money, you could always go and work in a coal mine instead.'
Copyright is not a tool created in the interest of producers, it's primarily in the interest of distributors.
Technology has changed for good; when almost everybody carries in their pocket a machine for creating perfect copies of any kind of information, it's basic economy that the value of a copy reduces to nothing. It's the world which has moved on, not a desire to inconvenience authors; legislation needs to reflect that change. The value of original creation is worth something, but forcing people to buy copies in order to sustain such original creation is a market inefficiency; better processes need to be found, which are more well adapted to the way people behave.
A more apt analogy to your farmer example would be if everybody would carry Star Trek matter replicators on them. The farmer would not have a right to send cops to tie the hands of everyone passing by one of their tomatoes, or near any copy of a copy of the tomatoes, so that the walker can't create a copy for their consumption and thus have no need of paying for the original.
No it isn't! The discussion here is about taking away the only asset that non-super-capitalists who work in the arts have, and that's the saleable property interest in the work we create.
The Internet has already taken that asset away. What we are talking is about super-capitalists trying to break the Internet to keep their old bussiness model working, instead of inventing new models on the new efficient distribution channel.
I believe a new model that worked on protecting attribution of the work rather than copy-rights would be more adequate to protect authors from having their work exploited by large publishers without giving anything away in return.
Engineers only have the ability to become obscenely wealthy through business, not really through being an engineer.
Artists can do the same. Both artists and engineers can become wealthy through this method if copyright didn't exist.
Also, the point the article is making is that the current system is the one in which "only big capital really benefits". I have not seen you make any counterpoints to this claim, just an assertion that it is in fact the opposite.
A labor union for non-fantastically-wealthy artists would be a wonderful thing. I wonder why the existing labels are empirically not such a thing. (I haven't thought about this at all, maybe you know?)
It seems like the relationship between music labels and artists is more abusive than that between, say, book publishers and authors, so this may not be inherent to the problem.
On what basis do you dismiss an entire category of business models? Youtube, Kickstarter, Patreon: people are already living off of this model. In fact, I'd go so far as to argue that many of these people derive no benefit from copyright law right now; it certainly isn't helping them "actually eat".
To build a solid financial foundation, you have to own something. Otherwise you are a service employee. Take away copyright and only the owners of financial and physical capital can own anything. This is the "everyone is now a service worker" feudal world.
The models you describe depend on copyright. It's why I can't go to Kickstarter, copy all the work of a successful artist, and then do my own fund raisers and take their proceeds.
I argue so hard against this stuff because I used to believe it. Then I thought it through.
> The models you describe depend on copyright. It's why I can't go to Kickstarter, copy all the work of a successful artist, and then do my own fund raisers and take their proceeds.
Kickstarter and Patreon fund future work, not past work.
This is actually what makes them so much better than the copyright-publisher model, because they prevent that exact scenario that you describe. If I record some music, sign it to a label, and then leave, the label owns the rights, and payments for copies of that music goes to them. If I record some music, give it away for free, and advertise a Kickstarter for my next album, nobody gains anything from trying to sell my previous album. You're not paying for a copy of a work that was already worked; you're funding the promise of me doing more work, and that promise has to come from the person who is actually doing the work. So the money has to go to the person actually doing the work.
Since there is no copy involved, copyright doesn't help. If I'm not funded and take some boring desk job, zero copies will exist.
If I record some music, sign it to a label, and then leave, the label owns the rights, and payments for copies of that music goes to them.
I notice you're leaving out the part where the label gives you money in return for those rights, as well as your ability to negotiate the terms of the agreement you sign.
If I record some music, give it away for free, and advertise a Kickstarter for my next album, nobody gains anything from trying to sell my previous album.
What's better about that? You're not engineering an outcome in which you get paid, you're engineering an outcome in which nobody makes any money, and you think that by doing so you've now brought the publishers down to your level and so you've achieved some kind of economic parity.
You're basically saying that best strategy for people in the arts is to do a bunch of work for nothing, hope that it becomes popular (by doing additional unpaid work on marketing) and then go on strike.
No, they don't. Many of these artists receive their patronage and give all of their work away for free.
It's why I can't go to Kickstarter, copy all the work of a successful artist, and then do my own fund raisers and take their proceeds.
Why don't you try that and see how it works? Society operates on more than laws, it also operates on norms. Doing what you just described would make you a social outcast and open you up to widespread social retaliation; the legal system need not apply.
This model still depends on copyright. Yes, they give it away for free, but that's _cost freedom_, not _copyright freedom_. Without copyright, I can take all their works, strip off their name, put them on my own site, add a tip jar of my own and take their donations.
Many countries distinguish between copyright and "moral rights", where the latter includes things like being correctly identified as the author of the work, not having the work exhibited in demeaning circumstances, etc. You could (and in my opinion, definitely should) keep those laws even if you abolished copyright.
Most consumers don't care. If you get caught ripping off someone else's work, then you go out of business and open up the next day under a different name. Some buyers will take the part of the infringer because that was what they bought into in the first place and they don't want to deal with the cognitive dissonance of admitting they were ripped off. If you go to the legal sections of the Hollywood trade papers, you find there are always a couple of ongoing disputes over the original authorship of hit movies. Even where the authors may have strong cases, the general public has little interest in them and fans of the director or actors will often denounce the plaintiffs as scam artists.
For example, there's a $10 million suit against Warner Brothers of the film Gravity. Tess Gerritsen, a writer, alleges that the film film depicts the major events in a book she worte in 1999 and optioned to a film production company. The problem is that in the meantime that company no longer exists after a bunch of acquisitions, mergers and so on, and although there's good reason to think her book wound up in the hands of the film's writer/director and that the film is indeed derivative o the book, her legal problem is an inability (at present) to prove that Warner Brothers is the ultimate beneficial owner of the firm she was dealing with back in 1999. The problem here is not so much copyright as a lack of transparency in corporation law.
For example, there's a $10 million suit against Warner Brothers of the film Gravity. Tess Gerritsen, a writer, alleges that the film film depicts the major events in a book she worte in 1999 and optioned to a film production company. The problem is that in the meantime that company no longer exists after a bunch of acquisitions, mergers and so on, and although there's good reason to think her book wound up in the hands of the film's writer/director and that the film is indeed derivative o the book, her legal problem is an inability (at present) to prove that Warner Brothers is the ultimate beneficial owner of the firm she was dealing with back in 1999. The problem here is not so much copyright as a lack of transparency in corporation law.
Isn't this direct evidence against the claim that "copyright protects individuals against big corporations"? If it weren't for copyright, Warner Brothers would collapse and we'd be back to holding each other accountable on a personal level.
No, and that's not a claim I've ever made in the first place. Copyright gives you a remedy against infringement, but you can still encounter procedural legal problems.
What prevents lot of cheats popping up and accusing each other as a preemptive move?
Also, it's pretty easy to identify who's the original author. Simply, the person who posted it first is very likely the original author. Especially so if the author has a portfolio of works that identify the author.
You own your labor. It's not unlike any other job where you have to put in time to get something out of it. As a programmer, I don't own any line of code or algorithm which I leverage. I am skilled labor, pure and simple. And you as an artist are also skilled labor.
The question should be how to monetize your labor? That answer isn't easily given but I can guess it would require a whole new method of payment. For example, a musician in the vast majority of cases lives from the money earned in performances as very few are writers of their own songs (that's where the current money is found in terms of the music industry). Thus, musicians would monetize as they always have, through payment for performances. It's when you get into writing lyrics or entire songs (sheet music plus lyrics) is where things may become complex. If the writer and musician are the same person then the person would have to default to performances to ensure some measure of payment. As for the song itself, that would be something left to the creator to figure out.
As for writing books, well that's even more complex at least in terms of reprints. But first runs would still go through publishers like Amazon which means there's some guarantee of revenue (just not to the projected sums you may assume). But today's small time writer isn't working the gravy train any more than the musician is. If anything, both musician and writer are just could/would be profiteers.
It's blind luck either profession finds success. Copyright doesn't offer much in the way of protection. What happens now is that human beings in general value your work. Thus pay you as we do now. Copyright is just the formality to prevent non-payment from other parties such as publishers. Copyright today isn't much of a benefit even there since many publishers write contracts to their advantage. What should happen is that copyright should largely (and in my opinion solely) apply to companies. And it should be by default that the majority of all proceeds be held in trust to the creator of the work even if the company in question offered the means to produce said proceeds. I think this approach would go further to ensure artists and content creators have a better chance at a livable wage. But it shouldn't include lifetime of the creator plus X years in any capacity. It should be up the creator of the work to register for the copyright as before the 1970s. And it should be easy as filling out a form on the web with a copy of the original work in question for verification with the US Copyright office or its analogs in other countries.
As a programmer, I don't own any line of code or algorithm which I leverage. I am skilled labor, pure and simple. And you as an artist are also skilled labor.
No, that's an economic decision you made to enter into a work-for-hire arrangement instead of selling your own product/service - whose assets you would own - and you are now trying to foist that economic arrangement on other people who don't want to enter into it.
But today's small time writer isn't working the gravy train any more than the musician is. If anything, both musician and writer are just could/would be profiteers.
Well, excuse me for wanting to create and sell my own literary product. WTF.
What should happen is that copyright should largely (and in my opinion solely) apply to companies. And it should be by default that the majority of all proceeds be held in trust to the creator of the work even if the company in question offered the means to produce said proceeds.
It seems as if you propose establishing a more equal playing field by abolishing the economic incentive for capital owners to invest money in the production of cultural goods.
It should be up the creator of the work to register for the copyright as before the 1970s. And it should be easy as filling out a form on the web with a copy of the original work in question for verification with the US Copyright office or its analogs in other countries.
Well, this is how it works now if you want to recover statutory damages. I create work, I pay $50 to register with the copyright office and supply a deposit copy, eventually I get a receipt and if someone infringes on the copyright I can recover punitive damages. Otherwise I'm limited to economic damages which are a lot trickier to recover, as many infringers can hide behind shell companies and just let them go bankrupt. In practice publication deals typically require that the copyright be registered in advance of the deal so as to avoid messy and expensive litigation at a later date over exactly when the work was created, likewise many publishers prefer to be approached by attorneys or literary agents rather than by authors, precisely because those professionals will have the legalities in order at the commencement of negotiations and publishers will know exactly what they're buying.
No, that's an economic decision you made to enter into a work-for-hire arrangement instead of selling your own product/service - whose assets you would own - and you are now trying to foist that economic arrangement on other people who don't want to enter into it.
Nope, it's a reality. The majority of people who work are not business or capital owners. It's a fact of capitalism which is not immutable.
Well, excuse me for wanting to create and sell my own literary product. WTF.
Then deal with the hard reality that being a writer isn't always profitable just as being a programmer isn't always profitable. The market does not promise any ROI for any vocation or enterprise. You have to see it through like the rest of us.
It seems as if you propose establishing a more equal playing field by abolishing the economic incentive for capital owners to invest money in the production of cultural goods.
Capital owners are the problem with our economy, yes.
Otherwise I'm limited to economic damages which are a lot trickier to recover, as many infringers can hide behind shell companies and just let them go bankrupt.
And yet the primary target of copyright infringement these days are kids who torrent the latest Taylor Swift album. I'm sorry if I'm not sympathetic to your cause when the actual infringers have no money of their own or little of it to give to you.
In the end, you seem very much invested in keeping the status quo where it's impossible to achieve a practical method to recover losses. The current system is built with the assumption that one size fits all. The reality is that there is no one size fits all solution. If you want to recover losses from the teenager who torrented your work then figure out a monetization scheme. Don't go to a lawyer and bully a kid who probably doesn't even have a personal checking account. Figure out how to price it right for that kid. Otherwise, just get out of the market place because your reaction is like that of certain libertarians I've debated where they justify the killing of a kid who steals a stick of bubblegum from a news stand.
That's the only thing anyone can own in reality. The other concepts of property can only exist with the mechanisms of the State. Capitalism in this function is an organ of the State and can only operate within a State since without a monopoly on force (be it a tribal council, a brutal tyrant, a publicly traded company, or a democracy) there's no means to deprive others of their labor or the product of their labor. And that is exactly what copyright does as a side effect.
So, within a State we have to ask the question regarding how to best protect both labor and the products of someone's labor. It's not as easy as writing a computer program to be sure. I'm just pointing out that effectively all copyright doesn't effectively pay a proper wage as like all titled property it benefits those who can leverage the legal system to their favor. And historically speaking, copyright law has inevitably favored those who can pay the lawyers the most which is not the vast majority of creators (as labor).
90% of copyright is handling registrations and settling transfers, updating the account books at various places... just a shit ton legal and accounting grunt work. We've got skyscrapers filled with said grunts all over the Western world.
Enforcement has always been separate, even before copyright and from the very beginnings of the Stationers monopoly.
Despite the existence of the High Commission, the reality of censorial control of the press at this time did not primarily lie with the stationers. Certainly, they had a role to play in the politics and practice of sixteenth century censorship,[24] but in fact it was not the stationers but rather "[t]wo long-standing institutions, parliament and the royal prerogative, [that] proved to be Elizabethan England's most useful means for effecting censorship" [Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England, 19]
It really could just be as easy as writing a computer program. Spotify is basically a voluntary collection agency that honors IP contracts.
If we can make it so the legal and accounting services are computerized, with software both writing and enforcing contracts, we could make copyright registration and transfer settlement incredibly cheap. That's the main reason why copyright law has favored those who can pay the lawyers and accountants the most, they have always been necessary in order to make the entire system function.
Bingo. That's why I oppose copyright as it is both from a moral standpoint and the current legal reality of it. If real reforms could be passed that would focus on the creator of the original work and less on the owner of the copyright license then I could see this being as simple as paying a bar tab. It just seems people focus too much on the creators of content without realizing they're not the actual beneficiary of the current legal regime.
And yet history has proven that property rights of this kind don't actually give more to the creator. When Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin he fought for years in court against the makers of copycat versions of the cotton gin. Oddly, when he went into rifling of gun barrels he chose not to patent a single part of the process. He used trade secrets and focused on improving his products.
It's not a 1-to-1 comparison to copyright of music and art but I think the principle still applies. Focus on making a product someone wants. If you can't price it property the first time then try another price or business model.
I am not arguing that copyright is perfect as is, but so far I see nothing better that allows artists to actually eat. In a post copyright world, big capital would still own brands, distribution channels, networks, etc. It would actually be great for them: they could now monetize artists work any way they wanted without paying the artist anything. Google, Apple, Amazon, etc. would be big winners.
If you count an artist sharing his work via CC-BY and making a living, then yes, it already happened. http://www.peppercarrot.com/
Now, you might disagree with the example as evidence of a workable post-copyright world, you still need to explain how this artist and others manage to thrive anyway.
Copyright gives writers and other creators of intellectual property the ability to function in a market economy based on top of a legal system of private property, contract and tort.
Copyright lets people create capital that can continue to work for them after the initial labor, much like how a corporation works.
Being a laborer is being in an unfortunate position in a capitalist society. This is why democratic capitalist societies are also very interested in giving ownership to as many people as possible. Getting as many people invested in our systems of law and order helps it to survive.
If you look at a current example, a lot of Buzzfeed's success seems to attributed by people to the crowdsourced work at Reddit - up-to-date and current trends and content is provided and filtered for them to easily digest and compile - especially photo content.
Re: Google, Apple, Amazing, etc - In reality anyone who already has an organization or infrastructure to curate or the pool of funds to use and/or has the audience to promote to would be able to provide these services/do these tasks more efficiently.
Is this bad though? IMHO it's only bad if an unbalanced or unfair amount of resources are made or left with an organization or group of people - leaving others at a deficit and potentially suffering instead of all of this productivity increasing abundance and quality of life for everyone. You could apply same thought exercise to taxes.
Systems are only bad when there are frictions and inefficiencies allowed to exist to benefit one group more than another, otherwise you can create roles to reduce unavoidable frictions.
If an artist was able to travel the world freely (literally at no cost), the only real issue then is having space available for such an event - so then you'd have people who curate those spaces letting the artist in or not or based on criteria of how many fans they have in that part of the world, and perhaps it would become a celebration of that artist and his work, instead of simply entertainment or the artist trying to make enough to survive; sounds a lot like museums, why not more of this? Why not more startup co-working spaces that are social and not isolating and support creativity and connection?
There are of course ecosystems evolving that have more and more of this, culture breaking through systems of control and pressure - I'd like to see the world and cities designed as platforms to facilitate this kind of life - and not only because investment money is heavily funnelling into specific cities.
It's all about distributing resources to get tasks done - governance. Whenever you remove friction then productivity can increase - however if you allow oil to be burned until we pollute and damage our ecosystem to be so unstable as life is threatened then that is bad governance. Determining who gets access to resources needed for different types of creativity will be the interesting piece to figure out..
>arguments how an author, musician, etc. would build a portfolio of assets from which they could attain any measure of financial security in this world?
As I'm looking for passive income from copyright royalties, I'm biased but I will attempt to explain the counterargument as fairly as I can. I've read many philosophical arguments about copyrights.
Some arguments against copyrights start from a different premise than you do. Your question assumes the premise that the world "owes" artists the benefit of copyright. No matter how strongly you feel about that, if you want to engage with the other side, you have to temporarily suspend that premise.
The counterargument says that copyrights for music, art, text is a quirk made possible by technology (Gutenberg press, vinyl & CD replication, etc.) instead of a fundamental economic right. They can point to other areas of creativity that don't enjoy copyrights and yet new ideas flourish:
Andrew Wiles spends years solving Fermat's Last Theorem. He will get no copyright or royalties from that breakthrough. He does get bragging rights. So pure abstract mathematicians can't get rich off of theorem proving and buy mansions and sports cars like Michael Jackson.
A chef or bartender inventing a new recipe for food or mixed drink can't copyright their ingredient list. (They can keep it secret but "trade secrets" such as CocaCola formula is a different concept from copyrights.)
An interesting economic situation is poetry. Poetry is copyrighted but hardly anyone can make a living at it. Poets have day jobs such as a professor of English at a University. The royalties from poetry books are miniscule. If they give poetry recitals, it's usually performed for free.
Does the world "owe" poets a living such that they don't have to moonlight as an English professor? Well, so far, that's what they've been doing. They can't buy mansions and sports cars, or even a middle class living with poetry royalties but they continue to write them. One of the greatest poems/stories of all time is The Iliad and that never had copyright protection.
What would a world without copyrights for musicians look like? Probably the non-performing musicians would have to moonlight with day jobs, or get sponsorships (patrons, crowdfunding). Etc.
That scenario looks "worse" because all of us discussing it were born after copyrights have been entrenched. Like I said, we'd to have erase that premise to imagine it differently.
I find the counterarguments fascinating but I continue with pursuing copyright royalties because that's the current configuration we live in.
Off topic, but I find I do what you described with a lot of things. For instance, I am generally on the anti-copyright (and anti or less patents, at least for software) side but I will still take full advantage of the current system. I also think tax loopholes are rather unfair, but I take full advantage of them. It's an interesting conflict between principles and pragmatism.
Writers would have it even worse than musicians, since at least musicians can tour. When was the last time you attended a live reading of a novel?
I am not arguing that copyright is perfect as is, but so far I see nothing better that allows artists to actually eat. In a post copyright world, big capital would still own brands, distribution channels, networks, etc. It would actually be great for them: they could now monetize artists work any way they wanted without paying the artist anything. Google, Apple, Amazon, etc. would be big winners.
This stuff is yet another hard right wing labor busting idea masquerading as something liberal and progressive.