You could swap `book' and `author' with `code' and `programmer' and you get the open source model.
What about passion? Sense of accomplishment?
Perhaps the author could make money on book signing, interviews, or even donations. Writing a good story could open doors to writing a movie scenario...
To be honest I don't really care how the authors can get some revenues, nor the programmers.
Data must be free, and this is far more important than how someone can make money on it.
You could swap `book' and `author' with `code' and `programmer' and you get the open source model.
Except that typically programmers write open source code which they then use directly themselves to do other things they want to do. An author probably doesn't get much pleasure or utility out of reading their own book.
Writing a good story could open doors to writing a movie scenario...
Except that presumably you want that to be given away for free too.
Data must be free, and this is far more important than how someone can make money on it.
Can't agree with this enough. I think most people believe that there is a need for copyright in some form. In it's current form, especially because of the ridiculous cases of people being sued for millions because they downloaded a few songs, it's just gotten a bad reputation.
The comparisons to open source software never do much to convince me. Many people think that it is a good model and make money through it sure, but I believe commercial software makes more money and that money is easier made (for example money from a sale instead of money from support seems much easier to do and scale).
The digital music space has been improving (iTunes has been DRM free for a while now) and it's hopefully going to get better - probably as more of the old media people retire and the companies enter the control of people who have grown up with digital content. The only way things will move forward is if both sides compromise but the mentality some people have of 'I want it now, I want it in the format I want, and I want it free' doesn't do much to convince music/movie/book companies. It makes them want to lock things down tighter, not open them up.
" Many people think that it is a good model and make money through it sure, but I believe commercial software makes more money and that money is easier made..."
Making money out of it is irrelevant.
Whether or not you can copy a file is a moral question, and this has a higher priority than how to make a business model out of it.
You can't argue about if something is good by checking if you can easily build a business around it.
I will take an extreme example here (just so we get out of the copyright environment):
What if I want to make money by kidnapping children? I believe I could make a descent living out of it (especially if I have some kind of law on my side). However this 'business' aspect is never considered, because it doesn't pass the morality check, and thus is irrelevant.
I know it's an extreme example, but this shows there's a hierarchy when we need to determine if something is acceptable. Making money ISN'T among the firsts.
I'm not saying you can't make money without copyrights, but it simply can't be an argument.
I don't think people want it now, in the format they want and free. Sure, when I was younger that seemed reasonable but for a long time I've been happy to pay for it.
Here's the bit distributors haven't figured out yet, I want it now and I'm willing to pay. Hell, I've literally just infringed copyright today because my only legal alternative is to wait 12 months for local release (and I do it every week). There's a missed opportunity.
No one has ever been sued for downloading a few songs. The suits have purposefully been against people who have distributed via uploading, either willingly or not (e.g. Kazza) hundreds or thousands of songs.
While for the majority of authors open source would be a poor deal, for some authors, open sourcing their work is still financially viable. I think to argue that either extreme is necessarily true would be foolish.
Do you know of any coders who survive off of signing things at trade shows and doing interviews? I, for one, want there to continue being art, so I want some copyright protection. I think the US got it right at the start: 14 years was about right.
Remember, there will be no data if people can't make some money off of it.
Of course there will be data even if people cannot make money with it. Just less data, and sometimes of lower quality. There are plenty of examples of people writing novels in their free time. Or people writing free software as a hobby, while working in a company developing internal software for which copyright is irrelevant.
But anyway copyright is just one way of monetizing one's creation. People will pay to see their favorite bands, or to have the original of a painting or sculpture even if copies can be freely made. There are free ad-supported newspapers. Many artists get public funding. Many projects are supported by donations, and so are some individual programmers[1].
I'm all for deprecating copyright-dependent business models and encouraging the development of alternatives. Kickstarter has some good examples of what can be done through donations, and I can see similar models replacing much of the copyright-based economy.
Almost all of software work is done on products that aren't sold to consumers and for which copyright is irrelevant - for every developer working on products like MS Office or Angry Birds there are 9 developers working on company internal, custom, business-specific software. The products that consumers know and buy are just an insignificant tip of the iceberg. B2B giants such as Oracle or SAP can easily extend their licencing&support contracts to be watertight even w/o copyright laws. Even the large consumer companies such as Google and Facebook don't particularly need copyright protection to distribute their products.
Eliminating copyright wouldn't destroy the software creators jobs, only the industry of consumer retail software products would need to change (i.e, a rapid move to SaaS), and that is just a minor (although very visible) part of the industry. Almost all other industry would be ok and workers can make their money.
> You could swap `book' and `author' with `code' and `programmer' and you get the open source model.
As someone who has released open source code I don't think this analogy translates very well.
I write code because I need it, I can then release it so hopefully others will use it and make it better.
I can see how maybe a biographer would write a book because they wanted it to exist, but my belief is that the vast majority of authors don't write for this reason.
> Data must be free
I don't think you can just state this as a fact anymore than I can state, no person should be able to own more than $10,000,000.00.
Yes, but they make a choice about whether to keep writing or how to distribute. If their work is saleable, then they may get an advance from a publisher or some long-term revenue in the form of royalties. On the other hand, if there's no way to protect a written work, it becomes a lot harder to make a living. In previous periods of where publishing was a relative free-for-all, many authors relied either on inherited wealth, the economic extraction of colonial wealth, or the like. Dickens was a rare exception insofar as he was financially successful from exceeding humble beginnings, but he lived in constant anxiety about a decline in his circumstances.
What about passion? Sense of accomplishment?
Perhaps the author could make money on book signing, interviews, or even donations. Writing a good story could open doors to writing a movie scenario...
To be honest I don't really care how the authors can get some revenues, nor the programmers.
Data must be free, and this is far more important than how someone can make money on it.