Oh? And how does that explain the expensive baseballs?
And limited editions signed by the artist would not rely on copyright laws. Even in the absence of copyright laws, trying to pass off a copy as one signed by the artist and a past of an artist issued limited edition when it was not would still be fraud.
I am not making any of the arguments you claim I am.
As an example:
"You will never convince me that people shouldn't have the right to seek compensation for their work."
I make no such claim and would never try and convince you os something like that.
"You have yet to convince me that the demand would continue being met if there were no copyright laws."
And you have yet to convince me that no one would make art unless there are copyright laws.
Please note though, you are mistaken if you think I am making these arguments as part of a call to do away with copyright laws.
Or because I want to get things without paying for them.
I do want to see these crazy copyright laws that I am told we have done away with.
For reasons like the punishment should fit the crime and consistency and such.
Like, the penalty should be smaller for buying a blank CD and copying your friend's CD than for going into a store and stealing one like your friend has.
The penalty for rape should be higher than the penalty for copying even a hundred CDs.
I would rather see people go Free and copyleft whole hog, but steps in that direction help. Trying this will only be possible where you are not building on or incorporating another's copyleft works though.
I think photography and painting are likely to be tough for pulling something similar.
For video... Hmmm...
What about putting up the raw materials (all the raw video, all the raw audio, etc.) as BY-SA and the edited work as BY-SA-NC. Again, I would rather we find ways to go straight BY-SA and still earn a decent amount on our works if that is what we wish, but...
One idea I began to try in the past before I got advice that made me put on the breaks and that in the end may have been incorrect advice was this: (this relates to photos and paintings)
Take a photo at high resolution. Process it down to various lower resolutions. Make the lowest resolution version, say 640X480 BY-SA, the rest BY-NC-ND.
Sell copies of all resolutions. Let everyone know in advance that when you reach $X in sales, the next highest resolution goes to BY-SA, when you reach $Y, the next and so on. Set the numbers to make you happy.
Sorry, we are not going to reach agreement on that one. Can you give your examples from things able to be easily and cheaply digitally copied in millions of current homes?
I ask this because we are not speaking of people going in to stores and demanding that the DVDs be sold off the shelves for nothing.
"That's exactly my point. The buyer is going to go buy the cheapest DVD possible."
I know, and that's one place to attack to overcome the problem even if copyrights should be done away with.
http://ghosts.nin.com/images/popup_product_ultradeluxe.jpg Pay $300.00 for music you are allowed to download for nothing? Sorry, limited edition of 2,500 and already sold out. Sold out in under two days. That's $750,000.00 sales from freely downloadable music.
The creators can do things other than copyright the work to give added value to what they are selling. To make enough people care to but from them and not the copiers that it is worth their while to produce their art.
"If you take away their other options, they're not going to sell the movies cheaper, they're just going to stop producing the movies at all."
That remains to be seen doesn't it? Perhaps the market will come up with innovative funding options? Necessity being the mother of invention and all that.
For instance Swarm Of Angels intends to raise a million pounds up front and are well on their way. They could have used a Free license instead and I see no reason why their model could not have handled it.
Getting rid of copyrights might kill business as usual, but I don't think it will kill business as you seem to think and I especially don't think it will kill the creation of art that is in demand in the market. And it almost certainly will not touch the rate of creation for art for which there is no current market.
Even without copyright, what is to stop a movie being made now, distributed to movie houses under contract, admission to movie houses to forbid taping and earning back costs and a decent profit before going to dvd? Then you are on an equal footing with the copiers and you have advantages that they don't.
Please, you cannot take products where the value is based on the physicality and compare to copyrighted works.
You are trying to have this both ways.
In the absence of copyright, people will either sell DVDs with movies on them or they won't.
But you can't say that the reason they won't is because others will. What does the buyer care who sells them to him so long as someone does? (Think about this some because there may be some subtle things going on with this angle.)
Naturally, I would prefer if you cut me in for a share, but the license does not require it. Let me know how you make out.
Also, this is exactly what is done all the time with GPL code.
"and sell it as my own, so long as i mention that you wrote it in the fine print."
Nah, read the license again. The fine print play is covered.
"there needs to be some sort of condition saying that a work is non-commercial if it is used as-is, but commercial use is fine when the context is changed somehow."
You could get close to pulling this off for your own original works by dual licensing different bits.
Put the lyric and sheet music under BY-SA and your recording under BY-SA-NC.
Personally, I am not calling for a complete repeal of copyright although I think I would prefer that to what we have now, especially as it related to the criminal and other over the top stuff and the way crazy long terms.
I was simply pointing out that the objection was not proper and that better objections are needed to convince some of us.
The Theater Experience" can remain better than the home theater experience for many people for quite some time if they pay attention to details. I think I might be more likely to go myself if the movies were free of copyright or used a Free license. I tend to stay away as much as reasonable now partly because of the bad attitudes towards copyrights.
"No, this won't happen overnight but it WILL happen were copyright to go away, thus making it extremely difficult, if not impossible financially, to make films without the backing of advertisers."
Have you looked at what the swarm of angels folks are trying? Do you see why such a model could not work for a copyleft film or one where copyright is abolished. (Note, I do see a difference between putting a work in the public domain where copyright still exists and there being no copyrights available on works.)
"Any more stupid questions you want answered?"
Not from someone with that attitude. It wasn't stupid in the first place but you are entitled etc.
"Your understanding of supply and demand sucks. If it were legal to copy a DVD and sell the copies, then the price of DVD movies would drop to the price of a writable DVD. There would be no way for the people actually making the movies to make a profit. Therefore, they wouldn't sell DVDs. "
Don't bet on it, last I checked, you could buy books for which the copyright has expired.
"It's unlikely they would create DVDs even for purely artistic reasons, because it would be completely legal for somebody else to copy it and claim they made it."
You make a common mistake of lumping these two things together. It is quite possible to have copying be legal while claiming creation / authorship falsely is a crime.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize the film studios started making art."
You may have me on that one but I try to be generous...
"There are tons of products that have huge market demand yet aren't produced because there's no way to sell them profitably. Without copyright law, DVDs would be one of those things."
Care to give other examples? As I say, in light of what I see with books, I doubt this is so for DVDs.
"i believe that if the 'creative commons attribution share-alike non-commercial' was the default license that creative works would be released under; and people had to register for 'copyright, all rights reserved', we would all be much better off."
It would need to be 'creative commons attribution share-alike' or there would be very little change from what we have today. The NC you suggest would bring back the need for permission.
But I think you are looking at interesting angles. See:
"If we had a world without copyright, then you could say goodbye to mass media as we know it. All the book companies would dry up tomorrow. As would the music studios and the movie companies."
Since you put in the "as we know it" you may be right, but many of us have serious problems with the "as we know it" bit and are trying to make a change in the business as usual part of things.
That said, supposedly the reason publishers need copyright is to prevent the making of cheaper copies...
"The part I don't get about this talking point is, instead of using someone else's work, why not make your own? Isn't that more creative than just copying someone else's work?"
OK, then let's run with that for a bit...
From now on, and retroactively, no work is entitled to copyright if it builds in any way on previous works. That should go a long way to clearing up these problems we are discussing.
"It's impossible to make a blockbuster movie without charging for it. Not because of the reason you think, but because the definition of "blockbuster" is that the film makes more than USD$100 million."
Nah, just redefine blockbuster...
Let's see... 100 million divided by 5 is 20 million. So now a blockbuster can be be a movie that is seen by more then 20 million people in X amount of days...
Even so. Why wouldn't people pay to go to a theater to see a movie even if there was no copyright on it?
"In the hope they'll get noticed and make it big."
Some... Some because they love what they are doing. Some for other reasons. Do you maintain that none would work for less than the big name folks do now? Or even middling name folks do now?
That and there are other possibilities for funding.
I am sure no one writes Free Software unless they get paid to do so... ~;-)
"If there was no copyright law nobody would sell VHS/DVD/BluRay because it would be impossible to make money from them."
This smells of:
"Oh that place? Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded!"
There are places where you can buy a baseball for about $500 and a basketball for over a thousand. Seems they sell. Go figure. I don't think baseballs have copyrights on them these days.
You are correct that all costs to make a movie will not magically go away in the absence of copyright, but to think that all/most/many costs will stay inflated in the absence of copyright seems odd. And to think that art will not be produced in the absence of copyright also seems odd. And to think that the market cannot find a way to meet market demand in the absence of a government granted monopoly also seems odd. At least in the Free Market America.
"Honestly, though, I do agree with you. As much as running Linux may be an answer to the "problem", it's not the answer. I've tried converting people over to Linux, and it takes a lot of effort to get their mindset shifted over from Windows to Linux. I've found that if they're apathetic to Windows, they're not going to switch... it takes actual desire on their part to move to something better."
and
by Anpheus
"I'd rather not have to deal with the quirks of Linux on someone else's hardware."]
My original suggestion was aimed at someone who wanted to switch people to linux instead of windows but was running into resistance. So, I suggested offering those people free linux support or paid windows support (guessing they were currently getting free windows support.)
So, are you worried about your computer and linux or supporting other people running linux at your suggestion? naturally, my advice would not be aimed at a preson who prefers running windows to linux on their own boxes in the first place.
I am interested in hearing the tales of people who run linux on their own machines but would prefer to give gratis support to friends and family on windows boxes instead of linux boxes though.
Shhhh. Don't give away all your secrets. Plus, they will probably consider that a copyright violation right? Subject to a nice long jail term and a felony record which will keep you from changing things in the next election.
"Why? The people who wrote the music aren't there slogging through 4 sets to 1:30-2:30AM, 3-4 nights a week in a smoke-filled bar sweating their butts off, and didn't invest in the instruments and equipment needed to play it."
Hey, I agree with you, I was putting forth the industry party line.
"Bars pay a flat rate that really isn't that much comparatively-speaking."
Somehow I don't think so. Can you provide backup for this?
"Bars, to my knowledge, pay the same flat rate whether the band plays covers or original material."
Well, this leads me to believe that we might be seeing "flat rate" differently. In this context, I see a flat rate as being something like $500 per month while a non-flat rate might be something like 5% of gross.
I do think that they pay the same whether bands do covers or originals though and I think this is one of the big problems in the industry... This needs to be fixed for the benefit of the small bands. And to make what is going on clearer to musicians.
"They compress it hard so most of the dynamic range is not there, plus they EQ it for some pimply faced 16 year olds cheap car stereo and speakers propped in the back window."
And why have they missed this business model?
Sell multiple versions mixed the same but mastered differently? Let people chose the one they prefer or buy them all.
And hey, you can have multiple mixes each with multiple masters like the above as well. Imagine!
Slashdot Mirror
Oh? And how does that explain the expensive baseballs?
And limited editions signed by the artist would not rely on copyright laws. Even in the absence of copyright laws, trying to pass off a copy as one signed by the artist and a past of an artist issued limited edition when it was not would still be fraud.
all the best,
drew
I am not making any of the arguments you claim I am.
As an example:
"You will never convince me that people shouldn't have the right to seek compensation for their work."
I make no such claim and would never try and convince you os something like that.
"You have yet to convince me that the demand would continue being met if there were no copyright laws."
And you have yet to convince me that no one would make art unless there are copyright laws.
Please note though, you are mistaken if you think I am making these arguments as part of a call to do away with copyright laws.
Or because I want to get things without paying for them.
I do want to see these crazy copyright laws that I am told we have done away with.
For reasons like the punishment should fit the crime and consistency and such.
Like, the penalty should be smaller for buying a blank CD and copying your friend's CD than for going into a store and stealing one like your friend has.
The penalty for rape should be higher than the penalty for copying even a hundred CDs.
Things like that.
all the best,
drew
You are most welcome and good luck.
I would rather see people go Free and copyleft whole hog, but steps in that direction help. Trying this will only be possible where you are not building on or incorporating another's copyleft works though.
I think photography and painting are likely to be tough for pulling something similar.
For video... Hmmm...
What about putting up the raw materials (all the raw video, all the raw audio, etc.) as BY-SA and the edited work as BY-SA-NC. Again, I would rather we find ways to go straight BY-SA and still earn a decent amount on our works if that is what we wish, but...
One idea I began to try in the past before I got advice that made me put on the breaks and that in the end may have been incorrect advice was this: (this relates to photos and paintings)
Take a photo at high resolution. Process it down to various lower resolutions. Make the lowest resolution version, say 640X480 BY-SA, the rest BY-NC-ND.
Sell copies of all resolutions. Let everyone know in advance that when you reach $X in sales, the next highest resolution goes to BY-SA, when you reach $Y, the next and so on. Set the numbers to make you happy.
all the best,
drew
"Sure you can."
Sorry, we are not going to reach agreement on that one. Can you give your examples from things able to be easily and cheaply digitally copied in millions of current homes?
I ask this because we are not speaking of people going in to stores and demanding that the DVDs be sold off the shelves for nothing.
"That's exactly my point. The buyer is going to go buy the cheapest DVD possible."
I know, and that's one place to attack to overcome the problem even if copyrights should be done away with.
http://www.sportsmemorabilia.com/sports-memorabilia/autographed-baseballs/ Buy a baseball for $499.00
http://www.sportsmemorabilia.com/sports-products/michael-jordan-autographed-basketball1.html A basketball for $1,350.00
http://ghosts.nin.com/images/popup_product_ultradeluxe.jpg Pay $300.00 for music you are allowed to download for nothing? Sorry, limited edition of 2,500 and already sold out. Sold out in under two days. That's $750,000.00 sales from freely downloadable music.
The creators can do things other than copyright the work to give added value to what they are selling. To make enough people care to but from them and not the copiers that it is worth their while to produce their art.
"If you take away their other options, they're not going to sell the movies cheaper, they're just going to stop producing the movies at all."
That remains to be seen doesn't it? Perhaps the market will come up with innovative funding options? Necessity being the mother of invention and all that.
For instance Swarm Of Angels intends to raise a million pounds up front and are well on their way. They could have used a Free license instead and I see no reason why their model could not have handled it.
Getting rid of copyrights might kill business as usual, but I don't think it will kill business as you seem to think and I especially don't think it will kill the creation of art that is in demand in the market. And it almost certainly will not touch the rate of creation for art for which there is no current market.
Even without copyright, what is to stop a movie being made now, distributed to movie houses under contract, admission to movie houses to forbid taping and earning back costs and a decent profit before going to dvd? Then you are on an equal footing with the copiers and you have advantages that they don't.
all the best,
drew
Please, you cannot take products where the value is based on the physicality and compare to copyrighted works.
You are trying to have this both ways.
In the absence of copyright, people will either sell DVDs with movies on them or they won't.
But you can't say that the reason they won't is because others will. What does the buyer care who sells them to him so long as someone does? (Think about this some because there may be some subtle things going on with this angle.)
How much would you pay for a baseball?
all the best,
drew
"but when you allow commercial use of your work, it allows people to take your work, burn it and sell it as is."
Yes, you can. Have at it then:
http://www.kompoz.com/compose-collaborate/userName-zotz/profile.member
http://packet-in.org/wiki/index.php?title=RPM08_Final_Tracks
http://packet-in.org/repo/user_drewRoberts/
Naturally, I would prefer if you cut me in for a share, but the license does not require it. Let me know how you make out.
Also, this is exactly what is done all the time with GPL code.
"and sell it as my own, so long as i mention that you wrote it in the fine print."
Nah, read the license again. The fine print play is covered.
"there needs to be some sort of condition saying that a work is non-commercial if it is used as-is, but commercial use is fine when the context is changed somehow."
You could get close to pulling this off for your own original works by dual licensing different bits.
Put the lyric and sheet music under BY-SA and your recording under BY-SA-NC.
all the best,
drew
I think you are reading too much into my post.
Personally, I am not calling for a complete repeal of copyright although I think I would prefer that to what we have now, especially as it related to the criminal and other over the top stuff and the way crazy long terms.
I was simply pointing out that the objection was not proper and that better objections are needed to convince some of us.
all the best,
drew
The Theater Experience" can remain better than the home theater experience for many people for quite some time if they pay attention to details. I think I might be more likely to go myself if the movies were free of copyright or used a Free license. I tend to stay away as much as reasonable now partly because of the bad attitudes towards copyrights.
"No, this won't happen overnight but it WILL happen were copyright to go away, thus making it extremely difficult, if not impossible financially, to make films without the backing of advertisers."
Have you looked at what the swarm of angels folks are trying? Do you see why such a model could not work for a copyleft film or one where copyright is abolished. (Note, I do see a difference between putting a work in the public domain where copyright still exists and there being no copyrights available on works.)
"Any more stupid questions you want answered?"
Not from someone with that attitude. It wasn't stupid in the first place but you are entitled etc.
all the best,
drew
"Your understanding of supply and demand sucks. If it were legal to copy a DVD and sell the copies, then the price of DVD movies would drop to the price of a writable DVD. There would be no way for the people actually making the movies to make a profit. Therefore, they wouldn't sell DVDs. "
Don't bet on it, last I checked, you could buy books for which the copyright has expired.
"It's unlikely they would create DVDs even for purely artistic reasons, because it would be completely legal for somebody else to copy it and claim they made it."
You make a common mistake of lumping these two things together. It is quite possible to have copying be legal while claiming creation / authorship falsely is a crime.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize the film studios started making art."
You may have me on that one but I try to be generous...
"There are tons of products that have huge market demand yet aren't produced because there's no way to sell them profitably. Without copyright law, DVDs would be one of those things."
Care to give other examples? As I say, in light of what I see with books, I doubt this is so for DVDs.
all the best,
drew
The music industry also falls into this trap.
They promote rebellion and the breaking of rules. But respect my copyright!
all the best,
drew
"i believe that if the 'creative commons attribution share-alike non-commercial' was the default license that creative works would be released under; and people had to register for 'copyright, all rights reserved', we would all be much better off."
It would need to be 'creative commons attribution share-alike' or there would be very little change from what we have today. The NC you suggest would bring back the need for permission.
But I think you are looking at interesting angles. See:
http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2007/04/some-thoughts-on-copyright-offensive.html
all the best,
drew
all the best,
drew
"If we had a world without copyright, then you could say goodbye to mass media as we know it. All the book companies would dry up tomorrow. As would the music studios and the movie companies."
Since you put in the "as we know it" you may be right, but many of us have serious problems with the "as we know it" bit and are trying to make a change in the business as usual part of things.
That said, supposedly the reason publishers need copyright is to prevent the making of cheaper copies...
all the best,
drew
"The part I don't get about this talking point is, instead of using someone else's work, why not make your own? Isn't that more creative than just copying someone else's work?"
OK, then let's run with that for a bit...
From now on, and retroactively, no work is entitled to copyright if it builds in any way on previous works. That should go a long way to clearing up these problems we are discussing.
all the best,
drew
"It's impossible to make a blockbuster movie without charging for it. Not because of the reason you think, but because the definition of "blockbuster" is that the film makes more than USD$100 million."
Nah, just redefine blockbuster...
Let's see... 100 million divided by 5 is 20 million. So now a blockbuster can be be a movie that is seen by more then 20 million people in X amount of days...
Even so. Why wouldn't people pay to go to a theater to see a movie even if there was no copyright on it?
all the best,
drew
"Lesser known actors will work for cheap/free"
"In the hope they'll get noticed and make it big."
Some... Some because they love what they are doing. Some for other reasons. Do you maintain that none would work for less than the big name folks do now? Or even middling name folks do now?
That and there are other possibilities for funding.
I am sure no one writes Free Software unless they get paid to do so... ~;-)
all the best,
drew
"If there was no copyright law nobody would sell VHS/DVD/BluRay because it would be impossible to make money from them."
This smells of:
"Oh that place? Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded!"
There are places where you can buy a baseball for about $500 and a basketball for over a thousand. Seems they sell. Go figure. I don't think baseballs have copyrights on them these days.
You are correct that all costs to make a movie will not magically go away in the absence of copyright, but to think that all/most/many costs will stay inflated in the absence of copyright seems odd. And to think that art will not be produced in the absence of copyright also seems odd. And to think that the market cannot find a way to meet market demand in the absence of a government granted monopoly also seems odd. At least in the Free Market America.
all the best,
drew
A bit of context"
[by the_bard17
"Honestly, though, I do agree with you. As much as running Linux may be an answer to the "problem", it's not the answer. I've tried converting people over to Linux, and it takes a lot of effort to get their mindset shifted over from Windows to Linux. I've found that if they're apathetic to Windows, they're not going to switch... it takes actual desire on their part to move to something better."
and
by Anpheus
"I'd rather not have to deal with the quirks of Linux on someone else's hardware."]
My original suggestion was aimed at someone who wanted to switch people to linux instead of windows but was running into resistance. So, I suggested offering those people free linux support or paid windows support (guessing they were currently getting free windows support.)
So, are you worried about your computer and linux or supporting other people running linux at your suggestion? naturally, my advice would not be aimed at a preson who prefers running windows to linux on their own boxes in the first place.
I am interested in hearing the tales of people who run linux on their own machines but would prefer to give gratis support to friends and family on windows boxes instead of linux boxes though.
all the best,
drew
--
http://zotz.kompoz.com/
"I don't want to spend eight hours staring at a terminal entering esoteric commands to fix someone else's."
You have done this in the last few years on linux machines? Details?
all the best,
drew
"They will choose another person to solve their windows problem."
That's cool... Then you have your time to do other things. And you don't get blamed when things go south again.
all the best,
drew
You could just charge for windows support but give free linux support and see what they choose.
drew
and I think it may even be good advice. What is it worth to you though?
I was going to give it at no cost, but then I checked the license on your book and it has the NC clause in it.
So, Use BY-SA or BY instead and drop the NC and I will give the advice gratis. Or let me know if you are interested in paying for some advice.
I know this may sound snarky, but it is not meant in that way.
all the best,
drew
Shhhh. Don't give away all your secrets. Plus, they will probably consider that a copyright violation right? Subject to a nice long jail term and a felony record which will keep you from changing things in the next election.
drew
"Why? The people who wrote the music aren't there slogging through 4 sets to 1:30-2:30AM, 3-4 nights a week in a smoke-filled bar sweating their butts off, and didn't invest in the instruments and equipment needed to play it."
Hey, I agree with you, I was putting forth the industry party line.
"Bars pay a flat rate that really isn't that much comparatively-speaking."
Somehow I don't think so. Can you provide backup for this?
"Bars, to my knowledge, pay the same flat rate whether the band plays covers or original material."
Well, this leads me to believe that we might be seeing "flat rate" differently. In this context, I see a flat rate as being something like $500 per month while a non-flat rate might be something like 5% of gross.
I do think that they pay the same whether bands do covers or originals though and I think this is one of the big problems in the industry... This needs to be fixed for the benefit of the small bands. And to make what is going on clearer to musicians.
all the best,
drew
kompoz is a fun place.
drew
--
http://www.kompoz.com/compose-collaborate/home.project?projectId=5264
She Took Me Nowhere
"They compress it hard so most of the dynamic range is not there, plus they EQ it for some pimply faced 16 year olds cheap car stereo and speakers propped in the back window."
And why have they missed this business model?
Sell multiple versions mixed the same but mastered differently? Let people chose the one they prefer or buy them all.
And hey, you can have multiple mixes each with multiple masters like the above as well. Imagine!
all the best,
drew
--
http://zotz.kompoz.com/
try "She Took Me Nowhere"