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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.
Before we get a whole bunch of people bitching about how this might be a kind of popularity contest, note this quote from the article: "Under plausible assumptions, the savings from reduced expenditures on copyrighted material would vastly exceed the cost of the AFV."
Public domain software saves everyone money. It's about time something like this AFV came along and hammered out the details on how to achieve it in a way that's cost effective.
I don't know about you, but my first voucher will go to the person who invented AFV.
From the article: "There would be two alternative mechanisms through which individuals could use their voucher. As one option they could have the funds paid directly by the government to the creative worker or intermediary of their choice, by indicating their selection on a tax form. Alternatively, they could pay an amount equal to the voucher directly to the creative worker or intermediary of their choice, and then file for a refundable credit on their tax return."
That's amazing. I hope Canada adpots this as law, and I will vote for any left-friendly politician who supports it.
Can be found here.
Can I use my voucher to support myself?
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?
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.
just my 2 cents
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
That said, I love this idea. Do actors and musicians really need millions to live on? No. $40,000 a year should be enough for most of them. Live with one car! One house! Don't buy $1,000 suits! Live like a normal American! You don't NEED to be rich to have a good life!
Beyond that...free is always good. I still don't think it will happen, but I'll support it wholeheartedly if someone tries to make it so.
/my $.02
Goo goo g'joob.
Heck No! Not a replacement at all!
Without funding for unsuccessful artists trying random crap, you get recycled crap. And, yes, I honestly prefer random crap to recycled crap.
The NEA is still useful, as the majority of people have shitty taste. Just using this vouchers system would result in most of the money going to Britney and N'Sync. And then, I'd have to kill myself (shortly preceded by a few hundred random idiots).
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.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
In the article he said that under the current system a minority of the artists are making a majority of the money. I think that under the proposed system this would not be solved and might be even worse. There is a small number of artists that most people consider their favorites, and people would tend to elect for their money to go to them rather than going to all of the people they listen to. So the most popular artists would still make tons, and few people would send money to the little guys. The proposed system of intermediaries might help a little, but I still think that come April 15, most people would just write down the first name that they think of.
We already have a system of vouchers which can be given to artists, who in turn can exchange them for goods and services. Those vouchers are called "money."
I say M.C. Hawking
"E" stands for energy, yo that's me,
I'm a brilliant scientist and a dope MC.
Before you step to me I'd think twice G,
I'm the Lord of Chaos, King of Entropy.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
The majority of important work in a book is the actual writing by the author. Other costs such as printing are incidental, and are becoming even less of a factor with digital reproduction. Therefore, it is even more important now then ever to protect copyright. An author needs compensation to pursue his trade. Copyright didn't originate with feudalism, but as an attack on feudalism. It was the merchants and craftmans that formed the middle class which helped destroy feudalism, a system in which land was owned arbitrariyl by aristocrats, who forced peasants to till the land and took most of the profits, distributing a small amount to the peasants to keep them alive. So familiar. Socialism is not much different than feudalism. A small minority (the rulling class or govt.) comtrols all the wealth, and doles out enough for the proletariat to keep them alive. Albolishing copyright is socialism, a concept where the public automatically owns the work of an author. Supporting such a concept is supporting theft, and hinders creativity and productivity by forcing the talented people to support themseves by means other than by using their real talent.
Vote for Pedro
I don't use special vouchers; just these little green paper things.
Problem with my system is the green paper things I give never get to my artists although that is my intent...
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
This idea is a silly, feel-good proposal that will not compensate artists in a reasonable way. Instead, people will assign their voucher to a friend, whether or not they'd ever pay for any of their music. Cash is a very effective way to compensate artists, and consumers choosing to use their own cash (not some free voucher that every taxpayer will subsidize) is the best way to allocate these scarce dollars.
Music consumers like these "compulsary licensing" schemes because it means that non-music listening people will be forced to subsidize their favorite things. Seems like a good idea. Let's require poor kids to pay $10 a year so the rich kid driving his dad's Ferrari doesn't have to spend an extra $100 a year on his music.
It's nothing more than a naked political grab, and the EFF is losing mainstream support because of their regressive stance.
Hate to say it, but is it really the government's role to promote the arts?
I'd rather see the government relax its regulation of various forms of communication. Deregulate LPFM, for example, and let small hobbyists operate LPFM stations that give play to local artists. This would help to break the monopoly of "Big Media," which IMO has a stranglehold on what we listen to mostly because of the scarcity of legal broadcast media.
At the same time, this would allow "open-source" music to thrive. You could just donate the money directly to artists in appreciation of their music. It (kinda) works for NPR. Under the current tax scheme (scam? hehe) artists could even unite under not-for-profit umbrella organizations that would pay them to produce music and accept tax-deductible donations to help pay the artists.
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
People who already follow the arts, are donating money to causes such as symphonies, local plays, etc. People who are less interested -- those that just turn on the radio and listen to whatever is played are not going to be bothered with finding an person or group to support.
In my view, this is an idea that will never work.
You can already give money to the artist of your choice. Just send him or her a check, purchase an album, or, better yet, go to a concert. There is no need to get the government more involved than it already is.
If you want to make a political gesture while supporting this artist make sure that you pay the thousands of artists that already offer their material in unencrypted formats. It really is as simple as that. If you don't like the media companies, buy from artists that aren't part of the media conglomerates. There are thousands of artists to choose from.
Artistic vouchers would be the worst possible solution. If you think that the credit card companies take a bite out of transactions they are involved with then you never have dealt with the government. The taxpayer would almost certainly end up paying at least $20 for a $10 voucher, and the record companies would still get all of the money because they still control the most sure method of getting the publicity that is necessary to make it big. The only difference would be that the RIAA companies would get paid in "vouchers," which, with our luck, would probably be tax-free money.
Not to mention the fact that you are volunteering my money, which I don't feel like spending on your "art."
Further government intervention in this arena would be the worst thing that could possibly happen. Anyone that thinks that this is a good idea needs to take a history class, at the very least, and a remedial economics class would probably be a good idea as well.
Under this system or any other in which copyright were abolished, indeed the GPL would lose it's might. But that is a moot point since the GPL would lose it's purpose as well. In a world where everything is in the Public domain there is no longer any risk of a corporation closing it up since their derivative would also be in the public domain.
In essence this is the ultimate GPL.
Almost everything that is run by the State is inefficient and wasteful, yet you propose nationalizing IT? Hasn't nationalized medicine in places like Canada and the UK already done enough damage to clue you in?
...is to just monitor consumption of copyrighted works. Everyone pools 200$, and each song just gets a percentage based on its "mindshare." If, say, Madonna's music constitutes 1% of all music downloads, she gets 1% of the pool. Of course, this requires huge amounts of monitoring of popular media, but it is the only way to allow art to embrace technology.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
Count me in, but here's an interesting question. I have a degree in Fine Art and a number of other experiences that I believe would qualify me for the program. What should really be the criteria for being accepted to the program?
stuff |
my first voucher will go to the person who invented AFV
...instead of any artist whose music you enjoy, demonstrating why this half-baked idea won't work. Not for artists, anyway - I have hundreds upon hundreds of names in my collection, I perfer micropayments to each rather than having to give the whole pot to one of them, shutting the others out of the music biz. If I were in a monopoly position and had a large advertising budget, like say, the RIAA, I'm pretty sure I could use this system to make it almost impossible for competitors to get paid, that's for sure.
You think commercial music's bad now, try compulsory royalties: the record industry gets paid no matter what, and with this scheme, you can only support one competing artist per year. Sounds like an RIAA wet dream to me. Hope you like Justin Timberlake and Britney.
Copyright is about ownership, not about the government or taxpayers "supporting" artists.
Art is not the only case where copyright comes into play.
Copyright and fraud are mutually exclusive ideas.
All of the material produced by these workers would be placed in the public domain where it could be freely reproduced.
Because you say so? What if an artist doesn't want her work in the public domain, or reproduced?
If either artists don't sign up for the program (maybe distrust of government, looking at their past record in funding the arts), or taxpayers fail to contribute. You would quickly have a non-program.
Even if all this is blatantly incorrect, I can't see any idea remotely like this going through the House and Senate; they're not gonna let a "Piss Christ" (remember Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe, the NEA, etc etc) become Public Domain.
I really like the general idea. Capitalism works great for material goods, but it has a lot of problems for digital goods, in the face of unstoppable copying. It would be interesting to try a whole new system and see how it works. I think you could add software to this system as well as music and movies and such.
That said, I see a few problems:
- It depends on each taxpayer to be (slightly) altruistic. You have to take the trouble to remember and then designate a recipient on your tax form, but you get no direct benefit from this. What if you don't put anyone down, is the money lost? What if 75% of the people are too lazy to write down a recipient? Maybe the unassigned money goes proportially to all the artists that people did put down.
- How do you remember which artist(s) to give it to throughout the year? I predict that every album and every movie will come out in March under this system.
- How do you define a "fraudulent" registration? What if me and my buddy both register, then we each make a finger painting and give it to each other, and then we put each other down on the tax form? Who's to say that that art wasn't good enough to qualify as a "registered" artist? I think you'd have to make people pay $100 to register, to prevent this from happening.
- Do people in other countries get to copy these works? If so, then the country that implemented this system would essentially be subsidizing
listeners in other countries.
- The gov't has no creative filter, just a system to make sure each person's only in the system once, and that real people submit their own work into the public domain in return for AFVs
- Each citizen can direct their AFV toward whoever they choose. This means that really popular artists, or groups of artists like you need to make a movie, will get vastly more than $40k a year, and that people just noodling around in their spare time might pick up a supplemental income. In other words, the government creates an alternative market system without artificial monopolies - realize that copyright is a governmental intrusion even worse than AFVs.
There is room for improvement in the proposal. A constant dollar amount (or even an inflation-pegged one) for the voucher would have the market-distorting effect of fixing the ratio of public domain artists to the population as a whole. The proportion of our dollars spent on entertainment fluctuates under the copyright regime; CD sales drop in a recession, or when people are spending their money on cell phones instead. Can anyone think of a better way to set the values for AFVs? You wouldn't want it to depend linearly on the number of artists enrolled, because that would have no mechanism to discourage entrance to a glutted market, but you do need the money available to info producers to increase as manufacturing and service industries are further automated.Even worse, they can feel free to rip off anyone, so you'll invariably get great songwriters starving to death while Britney and Justin sing their songs. Many people will abandon art as a career altogether since they can expect no protection for anything the sweat over.
;))and adds a tiny bit of free choice.
Why not just allow people to spend "money they have" on "music and art?" This "freedom" voucher (freedom from income for a lot of artists) idea takes the worst of socialism (as opposed to the less worse parts
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
The AFV program makes horribly naive assumptions about the numbers of artists that a given consumer enjoys. Between books, CDs, movies, magazines, and art, I probably enjoy the artistic output of at least 1000 "artists" per year (especially when you consider the multiple artists involved in producing a CD or movie). How am I to allocate my $100 voucher among these numerous artists?
I consume media across formats and genres, so no intermediary is likely to represent even a small fraction of my interests (and the intermediary is likely to support artists that I don't like). And listing all these artists on my tax form would be a major pain. Instead, I'd rather make a small payment to the artist when I actually buy or consume their work. Sounds like the current system to me.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
It is funny. The Canadians that can afford it come to the US for the doctors. The US citizens who can't afford the local health care buy their medicine from pharmacies in Canada.
The US has a great health care infrastructure and the best doctors. All of the problems with the US system are summed up in a single word: "Insurance." Insurance is big business at its absolute worst. Insurance is a highly regulated and politicized industry that has taken the ability to control health care expenses from the individual and given it to the bureaucrats.
Insurance is very much like this quasi government controlled content funding scheme where you introduce a corrupt middle layer into content purchases.
IMHO, the biggest problem with the current music industry is that there is a massive group of media conglomerates that have taken control of the industry. The media moguls have inserted themselves between the musicians and audience. They define what is popular and take the lion share of the profit. The same is true with health care. The problems lie with the middle layer.
I would think the solutions to our problems is to find ways around these middle layers, and to find better ways for the public to buy directly from musicians and to remove the expensive and ultimately oppressive middle layer of insurance companies and media moguls.
If we dispense with the vouchers and think of it as a change in the laws about what's allowed to call itself a charity. The IRS publishes some guidelines, the official rules aren't so easy to find. Currently you need to be an "organization" (so maybe artists would need to group together) and one of the allowed types is "literary", so this isn't entirely without precedent.
Would people collude with their friends, and declare themselves artists, cheating the system with 5-minute finger-painting exercises done in macaroni and cheese? This kind of thing doesn't happen very much now with ordinary charities. That might mean that the government would insist on some criterion of artistic quality before giving out tax-exempt status. In any event it's an interesting idea.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
I fail to see how this proposal affects non-label artists. What about painters? What about indie bands? What about unpublished writers? What protects them from being ripped off? Who keeps track of all of the artists in the world and routes money to them? What happens when the "$20 billion annually" is spread so thin that no one makes enough to have it be worthwhile? The proposal is laughable. If the music labels want to stop getting ripped off, they need to a) produce music that people respect enough not to steal, b) put serials on all CDs that people can register (like software) to get discounts, online chats, etc. and c) provide fair contracts to artists and fair prices to consumers so no one gets screwed.