Speaker: Copyright Must Change
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I know Simon will immediately say it's not this simple ;-) -but remember, we're not just talking about music.
Here's a question-
Do you want all this wonderful content- books, films, music- to be mostly created by amateurs?
Or should it be funded by Govt grants?
Or funded by a tax or levy on internet use, distributed by a Quango?
Should 'creative content' be carefully crafted to incorporate a sponsor's message?
Or how 'bout the people who consume it pay a reasonable price back to the content creators?
The last seems so evidently the best option in so many ways, I'll be sorry to see it go. -
nicely simplified though
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I know Simon will immediately say it's not this simple ;-) -but remember, we're not just talking about music.
Not just Simon, it's not that simple, and I've never just been talking about music. It's others who tend to drag the conversation in that direction ;-) (and then complain that all we ever talk about is music - ah, the irony)
Here's a question-
Actually, it's a bunch of questions.
Do you want all this wonderful content- books, films, music- to be mostly created by amateurs?
FFS Rob! Everyone's an amateur until they get that first paycheck, regardless of the training they've had, their passion to succeed, whatever. Some never move beyond that in their chosen field, because they have other priorities, because they don't want the thing they love doing becoming a drag through having to be done to pay the bills, or for an absolute multitude of reasons.
Most of that wonderful content you refer to is created by people who have 'day jobs', mainly because content creation, except at the very peak of the business, doesn't actually pay that well consistently.
Or should it be funded by Govt grants?
I think grants can have a big enabling place in the scheme of things. It's not an either/or proposition.
Or funded by a tax or levy on internet use, distributed by a Quango?
Total strawman, not even going to bother with this.
Should 'creative content' be carefully crafted to incorporate a sponsor's message?
If you want to, as a creator, it's your choice. If your question is "should it be required?", then that's as silly as your last point.
Or how 'bout the people who consume it pay a reasonable price back to the content creators?
That happens too, but as a business model, it's based on a paradigm of scarcity which doesn't pertain any more, and not just on the Internet. If we're restricting the discussion to just digital material, it doesn't pertain at all. The playing-field has changed and the goalposts ar on a different paddock. You want to continue playing rugby, but this field has been set up for bull-rush.
The last seems so evidently the best option in so many ways, I'll be sorry to see it go.
It won't go, but it must change. That's the whole point. Regardless of Tussock's cri de coeur , he's got a good point: The Internet allows much opportunity, for creatives as well as "consumers". The "consumer side has got their head around the difference, the creative side (the business part of it) have theirs buried in the sand hoping for it all to go away.
Sad, Rob, because I think you're smarter than this naive little piece suggests.
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The playing-field has changed and the goalposts are on a different paddock. You want to continue playing rugby, but this field has been set up for bull-rush.
Nicely simplified.
Some actual evidence about downloading/purchasing behaviour from that land of ill repute, Norway (ta to Sidney Markowitz from KiwiFoo):
Ratio between unpaid and paid downloading, age 15-20 group
Those who have used unpaid downloading have paid to download music an average of 75 times, compared with 7 times for those who have NOT used unpaid downloads. "In other words, the people who use unpaid downloading have ten times the consumption of paid downloads than those who do not use unpaid downloading. This confirms that, even with declining CD sales, people do understand that copyrighted music recordings costs money," concludes Assistant Professor Audun Molde.
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FFS Rob!
excellent, there we go modifying the conversation to mr hair trigger's temper. Was it not you who just lectured tussock on how to behave here? Is that kind of response really necessary?
You obviously don't understand the point that rob was trying to make.
Amateur in the instance refers to the situation of doing the first one or two efforts for nix and then giving up. Nothing to do with training or expertise. its to do with the amount of time you can devote to the exercise.
Amateur level in this context means devote whatever time you can between income earning work. It means instead of producing crafted masterworks you produce predominantly budget, best you can do under the circumstances works. It means instead of producing 1 work a year or 2 producing one in eight years as we've seen with a number of our local music legends (verlaines, bats, etc). That's the concept you didn't get before you let that pushy mr angry shout down Rob's comment.
and then complain that all we ever talk about is music - ah, the irony
uh, actually I was noting that it is common to make the problem music's only when film and games are hit hard by it.
I speak about my area of experience, you're apparently are an expert in all areas. colour me jealous. -
Most of that wonderful content you refer to is created by people who have 'day jobs', mainly because content creation, except at the very peak of the business, doesn't actually pay that well consistently.
What are you basing that comment on?
Iron and wine don't have day jobs yet their latest album is up for download.
The doves do music full time and you can grab their new one easy enough.major motion pictures are made by full time workers and there's plenty of that up there.
plenty of people used to devote their full day to the making of 'content'. if you take the return from sales away how many can achieve it now, that's the question.
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If you want to, as a creator, it's your choice. If your question is "should it be required?", then that's as silly as your last point.
another point you didn't understand. he's not making the comment as a creator, he's asking if we as consumers want that in our content, cos by not paying for content that's one of the options we push creators toward.
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RS
Or funded by a tax or levy on internet use, distributed by a Quango?MH
Total strawman, not even going to bother with thisits a favoured solution of peter jenner, and one being discussed seriously, but you go right ahead and pretend its some kind of imagined solution.
I think it has it's merits when recoginising that hi bandwidth users are predominantly pushing media down the line.
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Not a lot of film and television is made by amateurs, Mark. Some. Music, yep- but not that much that I'm listening to at present ;-)
Novels? Well, some, for sure. But even when the odds are low, the possibility of making money is quite a motivator, even for artists.
And then there are newspapers and magazines, software, games... mostly currently produced by professionals who do- or hope- to make money.
I'm quite aware that currently "content creation' is funded by a melange of funding models. I just favour the last, because it seems eminently the fairest on all concerned- and I think it'll be a shame if it's over.
The 'scarcity' model you're talking about is based on the scarcity of copies. Yes, that's over. There are amazing opportunities to lower the cost of copies, cut out middle-men and reach wide audiences. Some of these have been completely missed, or mis-managed- granted.
The cost of production, however, has not changed much. Mostly it's people's time. The question you've rather failed to answer is- how else do we fund that?
Seemed like a simple enough question.
I can't see any reason in principle why consumers can't get much lower prices, and creators also still get a reasonable return- since copying and distribution costs have been so reduced.
As it happens, I'm more on the consumer side of things than you think- and yeah, I've got my head around it. Like tussock- and, let's face it, probably half the 5-year-olds out there- I have the 'professionalism' to make digital copies of other people's work. Click, click.
Mark, you said you were a creative, and didn't download copyright material yourself because you thought creative work deserved a fair return.
So how do we pay content creators fairly?
Your answer is simply that we don't. Sorry. That's yesterday's model.
I think you're naive to think that won't have profound effects on what culture gets produced, by whom, and for what end.
And I also think whenever we give up being fair for convenience, we lose something else with it. -
based on a paradigm of scarcity which doesn't pertain any more
straw man fights back after suffering savage home invasion!!!
ah, yeah, right. taking something you haven't paid for is so irresistible, even for those who can afford to pay. how...revolutionary. actually, unauthorised downloads/rips are not the problem, imo. not paying for legit versions of the music you get enjoyment from is a severe problem, imo, threatening the sustainability of a lot of creative output. surely the people who feel no moral obligation to contribute to the costs of the music they enjoy need to be convinced it is in their own interest to pay a fair price for the music they enjoy listening to...
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Do you want all this wonderful content- books, films, music- to be mostly created by amateurs?
Most of my life's content is either amateur/community, add supported, or tax and rates supported already: firefox, Slackware/KDE, and a shed load of other free software, plus PAS, blogs, newsgroups, webcomics, open source RPGs, youtube, wikipedia, google, angband, openTTD, podcasts, free to air TV, radio music, the local library, ....
I think [folks are] naive to think that won't have profound effects on what culture gets produced, by whom, and for what end.
Of course it will! It already has! The internet is dramatically changing the who, what, and why of information. Commercialised entertainment will survive, but the market (you know, porn) will show us what funding and production models work best for it from here.
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surely the people who feel no moral obligation to contribute to the costs of the music they enjoy need to be convinced it is in their own interest to pay a fair price for the music they enjoy listening to
Stephen, read the quote I posted above from the research - people do already make that connection. Convincing them is not the issue.
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i agree with you Sacha. but there is an issue of some people not recognising any obligation to pay for music recordings. the question remains: is this a significant number of people? more research in various markets would be useful in determining the weight of this problem. it might turn out to be insignificant compared to people who do buy.
the Norwegian research is useful in that it suggests that the reality of unpaid downloads is that it results in higher levels of purchased music. i wonder why this type of consumer research is so difficult to find in other markets? is the research really so expensive to undertake? seems unlikely to me.
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Iron and wine don't have day jobs yet their latest album is up for download.
Iron & Wine (Samuel Beam) is an individual, not a band. Way to keep overheads down. Until around a couple of years ago he taught film in Florida, before moving to Austin, Texas, where he's currently a full-time musician.
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Sacha, that's not what the figures say, unless you speak some statistical language I am unaware of. For a start, it's a phone survey- so it's not a record of what happened, but of what people told researchers over the phone. Second, it was intended to look at trends relating to general economic health- not absolute numbers. Third, it would seem quite unsurprising that people who are interested in music, both download and buy more music than people who are not. Not that the figures tell us this- but it's a possible interpretation.
It's amusing to hear the repeated assertion there's no credible evidence anyone's sales are being hurt by downloads- yet it's simultaneously urged "the creative community" is foolishly hiding its head in the sand for not embracing the 'digital culture of abundance' and looking for new business models- essentially based on giving their content away.
If there's no credible evidence sales are being hurt, they'd be pretty stupid to change a business model based on sales, wouldn't they? -
It's amusing to hear the repeated assertion there's no credible evidence anyone's sales are being hurt by downloads- yet it's simultaneously urged "the creative community" is foolishly hiding its head in the sand for not embracing the 'digital culture of abundance' and looking for new business models- essentially based on giving their content away.
It's been the basis of my gripe with Mark's position throughout. One of the responses to this changed environment has been to claim that copyright is too restrictive anyhow, and not serving society nor the creators, so let's do away with it, take the guilt out of the downloading and embrace the new. Which never made a lot of sense to me: even if it were true that new technologies don't hurt creators in the pocket, why would you respond by taking measures - shortening copyright terms and reducing copyright provisions - designed to do just that?
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Rob, yes I am aware of the research limitations but we have been exhorted to find some evidence - and frankly there's stuff all to back up the claims from the middlemen whose position has been eroded by technological change. It seems intuitively obvious if you adopt a zero sum approach that unpaid downloads must reduce paid sales, but I believe we have seen recent figures showing total sales have increased haven't we? And that's without the other revenue streams like licensing that Simon talked about.
I read those Norwegian figures as showing in a very small way a correlation between levels of unpaid and paid consumption of recorded music, by age. That the research wasn't primarily set up to focus on downloading/purchasing behaviour reassures me actually. Sure it is not enough to establish a solid case, but it is evidence that the market may not work in the way that the record industry who see their cushy ticket-clipping disappearing want us to believe it does.
I've never advocated a solution that dismantles copyright - check back to page one of this thread of you like. I want creators to succeed, but that does require more than locking the stable door long after people have started using jet planes. And I would prefer it if creators and consumers were in the driving seat, thanks.
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I think the reason this thread has gone on for sooooo long is because the root of the discussion is so polarised.
On one hand we have a person who believes the world owes him a living for being a middleman and on the other, people who like to listen to music, or enjoy other entertainments, and really don't give a stuff about how it is produced. A parallel on the latter would be people eating mutton and not giving a damn about the fact that a sheep died for their satisfaction. The former is akin to a financier complaining about poor people not working 24 hours a day to pay his 29% interest rate.
It is unfortunate that our middleman comes from the part of our loverly country that only has bagpipes to listen to and the rest of the country despises bagpipes.
Then there is the distinction between Art (note capital A) and commercial content. An Artist strives to convey a concept to the rest of the world in the, sometimes erronious, belief that the world would be a better place if viewed through the eyes of the Artist. The driving force is not material gain but acceptance of an ideal or the destruction of a fallacy and the recognition that such work can garner.
The commercial artist, on the other grubby little hand, is motivated by the desire for fame and fortune, although these days fame can be found in less creative ways, dying of cervical cancer diagnosed on a reality TV show springs to mind.
To demand that the general public should pay some kind of premium just in case a random teenager may copy an autotuned fart and giggle insanely with his schoolyard chums is patently ridiculous. As ridiculous as claiming you have the right to continue to be the only people allowed to depict a cartoon mouse. As ridiculous as composing the most beautiful piece of music that will bring an end to all suffering and enlighten the entire world. Then locking it up in a drawer in case someone copied it. -
Wow, you managed to caricature every position at once. Kudos!
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Stephen
ah, yeah, right. taking something you haven't paid for is so irresistible even for those who can afford to pay.
How does recognition that a fundamental principle of economic exchange (i.e. that scarcity is inversely proportional to value [or at least price]) has changed become advocacy for not paying for content. Hint: it doesn't, and I haven't said so.
Copyright law has been about restricting other people's ability to copy your work, not about getting paid. You might get paid if enough people decide to pay money to obtain your work, but that's not guaranteed by copyright. It only guarantees that other people can't profit from your work without paying you or gaining your permission (or both).
In an analogue world, wholesale copying of any work is a commercial prospect. You need equipment (a printing press, a manufacturing facility, a large-scale CD duplicator - depending on whether you are copying books, handbags or music) which means a capital outlay- in effect, you are a "rogue" publisher. Copyright law is built with this in mind - to maintain your desired level of scarcity by punishing or preventing others from producing work based on yours and thus diluting your value.
In a digital world, everyone has the capability to be a publisher. No special equipment or huge capital outlay is needed (other than a computer and Internet connection), and each copy will be exactly the same as the original. Most of the infringing will be done by individuals with no commercial infringement (i.e. making copies for sale).
To note this is not advocacy of one position or the other. It's merely to acknowledge that scarcity no longer exists, and this is the main problem that faces publishers - they can't control scarcity and therefore revenue streams. The clock isn't going to be wound back to a point where they can - you can't do that without destroying the Internet and the value it has created far outweighs even the losses the industry says it has sustained.
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Cheers Gio, We try.
;-) -
the Norwegian research is useful in that it suggests that the reality of unpaid downloads is that it results in higher levels of purchased music. i wonder why this type of consumer research is so difficult to find in other markets? is the research really so expensive to undertake? seems unlikely to me.
Most of the information required to verify or disprove such a connection is in the hands of the industry who really don't want the connection to be made, as it spoils completely their argument against piracy.
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Rob
The cost of production, however, has not changed much. Mostly it's people's time. The question you've rather failed to answer is- how else do we fund that? Seemed like a simple enough question.
Costs have changed and continue to change. Funding models will change too, as people look for new ways. The Metric example I posted is one of those ways. The arguement against costs coming dow seems to revolve around doing things the way they were always done only with downloads instead of CDs. Digital distribution can mean doing things differently to achieve a similar end, i.e. revenue. This is called the business model and the old ones don't work any more. The problem I rail against is that the industry is not in the main fixing their broken business model. Instead, they're using copyright to try to prop it up and that has significant flow-on effects for society. They don't care about that.
Mark, you said you were a creative, and didn't download copyright material yourself because you thought creative work deserved a fair return.
So how do we pay content creators fairly?I don't have all the answers to funding music creation - I'm not in the music business, and I've never pretended to be. I do note that there appears to be more music being created than ever, so I have to wonder where this fear that no-one will create music is coming from. The people who succeed will be the ones who find new methods. I think it will be a grass-roots approach, as I can't see a top-down government-based approach being ultimately successful (I used to be in the government business), despite the luminaries that might favour it.
You use the word "fairly"? What has "fair" ever had to do with content creation and remuneration??? Stuff gets bought because people want to buy it. There's nothing fair in that. Some music has sat unlistened to because it was ahead of its time or behind its time or people didn't like the fact that the lead singer was a screaming queen or that the bass player had the wrong sort of guitar - all sorts of reasons. It' might be very good music - some of it undoubtedly is genius. Where is the fairness in that? Answer: there isn't any.
When you introduce "fair" to the argument, rational analysis tends to go begging. What does "fair" mean? Should we reward people because they painted a picture? Which begs the question, should we reward everyone who paints a picture? What criteria would we use to evaluate that picture and thus the amount of recompense? Should a picture that took 7 years to complete be worth more than a picture that took an afternoon? How do we judge quality? Do we pay a stipend to anyone who says they're an artist on their census form?
This may well be a valid argument to have, but it has nothing to do with copyright. As long as people regard copyright as an earner of revenue, instead of what it is (see comment to Stephen Walker above), this issue will never be resolved.
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Rob, you also wrote:
Your answer is simply that we don't. Sorry. That's yesterday's model.
No, it's not my answer. My position is that we shouldn't break the social contract that is copyright in order to allow the old business models to continue. Ultimately, that will be at a cost to the content creators.
I think you're naive to think that won't have profound effects on what culture gets produced, by whom, and for what end.
Ri-ight. You assert that only "professionals" are allowed to create culture. Sorry for forgetting that. Tell, me Rob, who are these professionals? Where do they come from? What qualifies them to be professionals?
And I also think whenever we give up being fair for convenience, we lose something else with it.
Define "fair" please.
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Sacha, that's not what the figures say, unless you speak some statistical language I am unaware of. For a start, it's a phone survey- so it's not a record of what happened, but of what people told researchers over the phone.
Pretty much how EMR did their survey as well. The industry doesn seem to have a problem with methodology when they get the result they want.
It's amusing to hear the repeated assertion there's no credible evidence anyone's sales are being hurt by downloads- yet it's simultaneously urged "the creative community" is foolishly hiding its head in the sand for not embracing the 'digital culture of abundance' and looking for new business models- essentially based on giving their content away.
Well, I've asked and have yet to see any evidence of sales being hurt by downloads. Only generic anecdotes. You'd think if the industry had credible data, it would be all over the place, but it's not.
I'm not saying that the internet hasn't changed business practice - it manifestly has. But the publishers are saying "doom and gloom" without presenting evidence, and they're persuading lawmakers to buttress their failing business models. It the publishers, in any format, that I accuse of having their heads in the sand, not content creators.
<quote>If there's no credible evidence sales are being hurt, they'd be pretty stupid to change a business model based on sales, wouldn't they?<quote>
In music, for example, sales of CDs are down. I accept and admit that. But music sales are not. Revenue is, possibly, because the market is shifting from CD-based packages of music to individual tracks that are downloaded. Individual tracks sell at a lesser amount than CDs (duh) which may well have a downward impact on revenue.
If you look at the stats that are available, you can see a large spike in CD sales around 1993-2003 when it starts to taper off. The music industry attributes that to "piracy", specifically file-sharing. I and others disagree with that assessment or, rather, ask for some proof that so far has not been forthcoming. When evidence appears, like the Norwegian study (and it's not alone, just the latest), the industry (and you, it seems) pooh-pooh it as unconvincing.
What I have said, again and again, is that old business models are broken, not because they're based on sales, but because they're based on scarcity. What creators and publishers need for the future is to base their business models on abundance.
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