Artistic Freedom Vouchers Proposed

Corvus writes "Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research has written a paper proposing a system giving everyone a voucher which they could use to support the creative artist/writer/etc of their choice, as a way of avoiding the intrusiveness and inefficiency of the current copyright system." I'm sure I'd use mine on MC Chris.

Comments

Just Wondering

[Jameth]

How they determine who you can give it to?

I mean, my kid made this awesome finger-painting, so I wanna give the money to him, and thus to me, so I can use it, and I'm not being greedy or anything...really.

Seriously. How do they define someone who can receive these? Can I give mine to Linus?

Re:Just Wondering

[jadavis]

Agreed!

This really would just create a "buddy system" where everyone registered with the feds and everyone exchanges with their friend.

We live in a demand-based economy. Demand is measured with money. It's really hard to determine the demand for something creative with money, because it's not exclusive property. It's not worth $1M to me to develop some some software to use, but it's worth $1 to 1M people to have the software available.

The solution to me seems to be large groups supporting the system by agreement and pledges. Some people equate this like a government with taxes, but I don't think that's the right approach. The problem with that approach is that the powers we've conceded to the government were designed to protect us against more substantial harm, like someone stealing from us or hurting us physically.

Maybe the copyright idea will work, but we need to organize into large groups. Maybe the techies organize a software group that develops software, and anyone inside the group has copyright, but has to apy a yearly fee. No legislative changes, just citizens acting in an organized way.

We don't want to get the government involved with laws an so forth... they will skew demand, and they have powers entirely unnecessary for this type of situation (i.e. jail time and guns aren't really appropriate for this type of situation). The government will still have to enforce the copyrights to encourage people to join these groups (and pay the fees that support, e.g. software), but it's going to be an entirely different scene, I can promise that.

U.S. citizens need to stop relying on the federal government to perform every citizen organizational function. We're free, and we need to excercize our freedom to associate. If we let the government in on this one any more, they're just going to screw it up even more.

A good alternative to the NEA

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO, the National Endowment of the Arts is a waste of taxpayer money, because it blindly pays some unsuccessful artists. This would be a good alternative; give the funding to the artists whose work people actualy like.

Secondary Market for AFV

[G4from128k]

Interesting idea. I wonder how long it will take before a secondary market forms to buy/sell these vouchers. Since the cost of vouncher to the owner is less than voucher's benefit to the artist, there is opportunity for the sale of voucher rights. For example, an artist might pay $10 (up to $99 if the artist is in a 0% tax bracket) to people to sign their $100 voucher over them. The voucher owner gets cash and a tax break, the "artist" gets $100 minus what they paid to buy the vouncher.

Re:I love it, but...let's be realistic

[mutewinter]

"In exchange for receiving AFV support, creative workers would be ineligible for copyright protection for a significant period of time (e.g. five years)"

Though I am a strong advoate of copyright/patent reform myself, that does not mean copyright is useless. Without copyright Microsoft could take GPL'ed code, slap it in their software and sell it. Without copyright I, as a painter, could post images on a message board and some 15 year old could rip it off and win some art contest with it (ok, so this has happened anyways.) The point is, abolishing copyright altogether is going to solve very few problems. Copyright needs to be a tool for society as a whole.

Vouchers? I'm not sure if I can use any adjectives to describe this without a lot of %&#@! To put it bluntly this idea is just dumb. If I want to be a n artist I shouldn't have to register with the government to get re-imbersed. "Sorry Mr. John Doe, but your song 'Fuck Bush' disqualify's you from recieving vouchers." Hell, forget censorship, perhaps the makers of GTA3 will just be ineligable for vouchers.

$40k a year? Music, ok, but movies? With budgets in the hundreds of millions whose going to be getting all that capital? What a mess.

Lets take a step away rather than a step toward becoming more dependant on government.

Re:copyright != feudalism

[geekee]

In the world I live, socialism is slowly creeping over the US and Eurpoe. They haven't learned a thing from the USSR collapse. The only services regulated in the US currently, involve some scarce resource, such as wiring infrastructure for power and phone, roads, airwaves, etc. It's not difficult to show that govt. involvement has caused as many problems as solutions in these areas. Nationalizing health care and regulating drug prices are a big mistake. Regulating drug prices will kill incentive to invest in drug companies. Regulating health care will kill incentive to become a doctor. who the hell wants to spend all that time in school to end up a govt. employee. There's no reason my tax dollar should pay to support authors, particularly those I dislike. Let free market decide, not the govt. That's the principle that the US was founded on. People claim the love the US, but they constantly try to change it from what was intended, think they know better than the founding fathers. If authors want to give up their copyright to some foundation that hands them a bone, fine. But that foundation better not use my tax dollars.