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Harvard Study Says Weak Copyright Benefits Society
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist summarizes
an important new study on file sharing from economists Felix
Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf. The Harvard Business School working paper
finds that given the increase in artistic production along with the
greater public
access conclude that 'weaker copyright protection, it seems, has
benefited society.' The authors point out that file sharing may not
result in
reduced incentives to create if the willingness to pay for
'complements' such as concerts or author speaking tours increases."
But ... their bottom line *could* benefit if they add value to the physical items they sell (eg. if their CD comes with an official t-shirt, sew-on patch, etc).
No sig today...
What if you're an artist but only want to create art and not tour all over the place just to make money? I realise that most musicians seem to like doing concerts, but what if that's not what you want to do and just want to record albums?
You just got troll'd!
You know, that's something I just simply don't understand: Why don't they bundle some crap with the CDs? Cheap trinkets that cost close to zero but make the fans happy?
You needn't go fancy. How about the "official, signed photograph"? Of course the signature is printed, but who cares? You can ONLY get it with THIS CD! (sure, others may exist, but THIS very special autograph picture is only available that way)
It's not like this would break the bank. But then again, they don't even include booklets anymore in CDs, why would I assume they could spend half a buck for a cheap crappy picture print?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Personally, I couldn't give a crap who the artist is, much less about having their signed photograph. To paraphrase a common saying, "It's the information, stupid." People want information, because they know information is power. Anything that gets in their way will be mown down. It's really that simple.
What can big media distribution companies do for money now that the internet has replaced their distribution model? Well, it's simple: they do the same thing spinning wheel operators did when the industrial revolution made it easy to get quality thread. They retrain, and get a new job --- one that's relevant and useful to the newer, more evolved society. They could become specialist, old-school, niche-market distributors for a select few, much like you can still go to a craft store and find hand-woven fabrics etc., but in that case, they'll need to be happy with their niche status, and their much reduced income. Not least, because people in hobbyist niche markets expect their suppliers to be decent people doing it for the love of tradition, rather than hate.
This is one way the game industry have attempted to over come piracy I think but to a slightly larger extent and I think we will see more and more of it.
Look at games like Guitar Hero, excellent, fun games that could quite easily be pirated but what is the point of having the game without the nice guitar to play it with. Same goes for rock band etc. More bespoke controllers and extras that make the game worth playing and consumers are quite happy to pay through the nose for it and not bother trying to pirate it.
Maybe as you said, something similar could be done by the music industry to provide an extra incentive to get out there and buy the cd's as opposed to pirating, or even downloading the mp3's legally.
Actually, no we don't know this, but, most importantly, it does not matter. This misses the point. The copyrights ought to exist, because the creators of things, that are hard to create but easy to replicate -- like software, literature, music, video, fashion design, what have you -- ought to enjoy to lesser control of their creations, than creators of things tangible.
Didn't you read the last post I made responding to you? Fashion design is not copyrightable, at least in the United States, and never has been, so why do you keep bringing it up, and perhaps pretending that it is? It's very odd. And it's certainly an unusual example to bring up in any case, since most people wouldn't think of it as a creative work, particularly around here.
Anyway, assuming you misspoke when you said that "creators ... ought to enjoy lesser control," you're wrong. This has nothing to do with fairness. The world, it is well known, is not fair. And while it might be a good idea to make it more fair, surely we must prioritize our efforts such that we make things more fair for the most people before moving on to increased fairness for smaller groups, all the while not making things less fair for anyone, nor reducing the amount of increased fairness we've already brought about. Well, there are more readers of books than there are authors of books. So not only do the readers have more power in a democratic society, but making things fair for them surely must take precedence, if fairness is truly your goal, as opposed to, say, pandering to special interests while disguising yourself in noble-sounding lies about fairness.
The world seems to be made in such a way that things that are hard to create, but easy to copy are, well, easy to copy. If I come up with a good story which entertains and enlightens people who hear it, then surely it would be most fair to those who have not yet heard it if they could hear it from more than one person. After all, even if I went on the speaking tour from hell, and printed a lot of books, and distributed them all over, I'm sure to miss some people who cannot take the time to see me, cannot afford to buy a book, can't read, don't know the language I work in, etc. Letting others fill in the gaps that I, a mere one person cannot possibly fill myself, is a better method than letting them go unenlightened and unentertained. Copyright would prohibit this.
A lack of copyright, OTOH, certainly wouldn't prohibit me still going on tour and selling books, it would merely mean I'd face more competition. Since copyright didn't exist anywhere until the 18th century, and didn't exist most places until well into the 19th and 20th centuries, yet world literature got along okay, and has likely benefited more from things like improved printing technology, increased literacy, increased leisure time, improved methods of transporting books, etc. than it has from mere copyright, we can be pretty confident that the lack of copyright would not be a big deal.
Of course, it's not fairness, per se, that copyright is interested in. The goal of copyright is to promote the progress of science (i.e. knowledge) by encouraging the creation and publication of more original and derivative creative works, and having those works be as minimally copyrighted in both scope and duration as possible in the process, and fully in the public domain as rapidly as possible, since it is only then that the people of the world can take advantage of the easy-to-copy nature of the world that you have noticed, and help themselves the most. Since there are more of them than there are of authors, this is appropriate. Since it aids authors as well (e.g. Disney making films based upon public domain fairy tales), it's even more appropriate.
This derives not from it being economically beneficial (which it may or may not be), but from simple fairness. A book-writer ought to be no less protected from thieves, than a shoemaker...
An author and a cordwainer are pretty much protected the same. A tangib
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.