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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."
These kind of studies are largely pointless. We already know this, and the media industry will not believe it regardless of how many studies come to this conclusion.
The media industry is not society. Why would they care if society benefits if their bottom line does not also benefit?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
laws are not passed to benefit society, laws are bought to protect business models.
+1 fashionably cynical
A similar study has been conducted before in the Netherlands: Downloading benefits the Dutch economy (in Dutch, Google Translation). This study had been ordered by the department of Education, Culture and Science, the department of Economic Affairs and the Justice department.
A downloaded movie, CD or game is not equal to a product not sold, say the researchers. Also, "Amongst downloaders of music and film, the percentage of buyers is as high as with non-downloaders, in games, the percentage of buyers even higher. Music downloaders are also more likely to concerts and buy more merchandise. Downloaders buy more games than gamers who never downloaded and movies downloaders buy more DVDs than non-downloaders."
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!
Copyright was invented to allow creators to get an income from their creations before the creations are released to the public domain. The state should have stood firm in keeping the copyright protection short. However they didn't, but instead succumbed to the "industry" interests. This resulted to turning every creation in a cash-cow with no expiry date, which obviously hinders innovation and creation: there is little incentive to create a second good work since the first one you created will provide you and your descendants with a steady flow of cash for the next 200 years.
I understand that the above is a bit simplified because it omits the role of the "industry" in the flow of cash. The "industry" pimps will absorb much of the cash intended for the creator (after all, they forced him to sell them for pennies the copyright of his work). This will keep the creator going because he doesn't really earn that much to retire. But it will also degrade his output because he knows that even if he does really-really good with his next creation, it is the "industry" pimps that will get the most out of his work.
Still quite simplified, but I think you get my point: You can't grant quasi-perpetual copyright protection (google "The Mickey Mouse Protection Act") and still expect the same amount of innovative creations.
Nope, it is not a differing view on "society", but rather a differing view on "good".
For the society outside of the corporations, "good" is, generally, more creativity, i.e. less copyright. Less copyright means less monopoly, and less monopoly provides generally a better allocation of the resources of society. Of course, it'll make those lawyers, who want to succeed in the creative business work harder, but ain't that the American way anyway? Incidentally, this freedom may make people who invest in art more focused on the art itself as opposed to taking the easy way out -- owning copyrights and doing a failed remake after remake.
For the corporations, "good" is exactly the opposite. A corporation doesn't give a damn about what is good for society, as long as it benefits the corporate bottom line. Monopoly is the best way to insure a bottom line, especially in the view of the corporate owners (see, e.g. concepts like "economic moat"). So, a corporation will allocate resources not for new art, but for protection of lucrative copyrights, and for politics. Neither of which is good for art, or society.
If you take a look, you'll see that's exactly what's been happening in the decades since the ifpies and the wipos of the world came about.
Get a job like the rest of us? You can't just label yourself an artist and go around whining about loss of income if you don't want to go the extra mile. I'm terribly sorry for people's overly romantic view of stardom, but it just sucks, especially if you're not a star (yet).
By the way, pretty much any artist has a side job. In my experience, the more serious the job is, the less serious the artist is about being an artist and vice versa. There is only a very limited subset of artists that can make a living from their art.
It is truly crippling to see the mental fails that keep being propogated by the press and even supposedly academia here. "Piracy (filesharing) was the driving force behind increased creative output". It's simply not true that one caused the other. There isn't an artist or an amorphous group of artists who are outputting more per artist because they are thinking ex-ante "shit I'm going to get paid less than I used to so I better produce more". That might work for widgets and industry but for artistic output? Total rubbish. I'm not entering into the debate about the pros and cons of filesharing by the way but this sort of causative fail is just depressing and so utterly prevalent.
No, they need to be paid in a different way. Selling copies of something that can be copied at zero cost is not a maintainable business because everyone can make those copies. You can't magically make that go away.
So the artists need to find a way to get paid in some other way. Most smaller bands don't make any appreciable money fom record sales anyway (if they even produce recordings of their shows) but work on a per-gig basis: You hire them, they play at your venue. So bigger bands have to do this as well, only they call it a tour. Or you produce stuff of intrinsic value and sell that - for example by bundling your CDs with something physical your fans are going to like. Or even auctioning off the gold master of your studio album if you're big enough. Or just by selling your music on vinyl.
The problem bands face is that the current distribution model has become obsolete. Extending copyright is not going to change that, especially as the labels now have the copyright for longer than the artist lives, so they'll keep profiting off his work when he won't be able to benefit from that profit (leaving aside that the artist only sees a small fraction of what the label makes).
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
I wish people would actually read the constitution.
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts," : not to promote the interests of monied pockets of power.
"securing limited Time to Authors and Inventors," : limited time (we've gone over this time and time again), but *Authors* and *Inventors*
The people that wrote the constitution were damn smart people. Too bad we stopped listening. Copyright is supposed to benefit all of us so of course a limited copyright span that balances the rights of *Authors* (not Corporations) vs. the public is the best. Here's to another study that didn't need to be done.
This working paper is distributed for purposes of comment and discussion only. It may not be reproduced without permission of the copyright holder.
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold