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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.
Can be found here.
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.
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."
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!
"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.
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.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
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?
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.