How to make creative work financially viable without being annoying?
(I just posted the following content in this forum thread on TV Tropes.)
Regardless of our opinions on digital piracy, I'd say that current copyright law is...non-optimal. Issues with it include the following:
* Doesn't deal very well with derivative work. Except for works of parody, which are (usually? I'm not familiar with legal precedent in this field) allowed under fair use (and only in the United States, as apparently Canada doesn't agree), current copyright law does not provide well for the production of derivative works. What different people do about it seems to be somewhat influenced by culture; it seems that the Japanese don't care as much as the Americans on the production and presentation of derivative work, for example (though please correct me if I'm wrong). But creative works are also a form of information, and information itself does not abide by a fixed quantity--you can't force someone to pay for something on the threat of making them "un-know" it and not think about it. And many artistic traditions depend on the use of derivative material--from fanfiction and fanart people posting videos of their piano or guitar arrangements of pop songs to professional productions based on others' works (such as covers).
* Doesn't fit the demand curve optimally. Inefficiencies include:
** try-before-you-buy (or the typical lack thereof): The classical system of buying things before you use them does not, strictly speaking, include ways to do this. However, it's hard to get a sense of whether one likes creative work before trying it out, in many cases. Of course, in reality, people watch each others' copies of movies and TV shows, play each others' games, but the current system incentivizes preventing this from happening--or at least it seems to. Some content producers/publishes opt not to care about this; note that this practice disproportionately helps lesser-known producers/publishers. Also, note that bookstores have been providing this service for hundreds of years (though one difference is that many books can't be read in one sitting, while movies and music can be experienced once through in a single sitting).
** dissatisfaction (oversupply) and opportunity cost (undersupply) problems: A simple market-based price system--i.e., everyone pays the same for the same product--trades demand-fitting for the convenience of fungibility. Some solutions to this problem include things like downloadable content and "pay/donate whatever you like" schemes (possibly with minimum, such as in the case of xkcd's signed prints).
* Perverse structures and results: Many people have criticized the way the mainstream music industry rewards the artists far less than the businesspeople (such as the publishing and management houses that supposedly serve these ). Similar situations may exist in other industries (possibly with publishers vs. developers of video games). The result is that those with the money control the business rather than those who produce the content on which the business is based. This sometimes leads to perverse results, such as investing in legal bullying rather than carrots to expand the fandom, as well as this strange (albeit citation-needed) practice mentioned in Wikipedia, of destroying older books for publisher credit.
However, like it or not, we humans live in an economy-based society (yes, even those DirtyCommunists), and releasing everything to the PublicDomain does not pay. (Asking for donations might pay, but probably not well at all.) Not having some sort of financing system in place would stifle the production of creative work. What is good is that everyone wants music, and literature, and visual media, and games, so there definitely exists demand for these products, that can (and will) be translated into financial resources in our money-based civilization.
My question here is: How should intellectual property policy be changed or redesigned in order to better serve the needs of producers and consumers of creative content?
Regardless of our opinions on digital piracy, I'd say that current copyright law is...non-optimal. Issues with it include the following:
* Doesn't deal very well with derivative work. Except for works of parody, which are (usually? I'm not familiar with legal precedent in this field) allowed under fair use (and only in the United States, as apparently Canada doesn't agree), current copyright law does not provide well for the production of derivative works. What different people do about it seems to be somewhat influenced by culture; it seems that the Japanese don't care as much as the Americans on the production and presentation of derivative work, for example (though please correct me if I'm wrong). But creative works are also a form of information, and information itself does not abide by a fixed quantity--you can't force someone to pay for something on the threat of making them "un-know" it and not think about it. And many artistic traditions depend on the use of derivative material--from fanfiction and fanart people posting videos of their piano or guitar arrangements of pop songs to professional productions based on others' works (such as covers).
* Doesn't fit the demand curve optimally. Inefficiencies include:
** try-before-you-buy (or the typical lack thereof): The classical system of buying things before you use them does not, strictly speaking, include ways to do this. However, it's hard to get a sense of whether one likes creative work before trying it out, in many cases. Of course, in reality, people watch each others' copies of movies and TV shows, play each others' games, but the current system incentivizes preventing this from happening--or at least it seems to. Some content producers/publishes opt not to care about this; note that this practice disproportionately helps lesser-known producers/publishers. Also, note that bookstores have been providing this service for hundreds of years (though one difference is that many books can't be read in one sitting, while movies and music can be experienced once through in a single sitting).
** dissatisfaction (oversupply) and opportunity cost (undersupply) problems: A simple market-based price system--i.e., everyone pays the same for the same product--trades demand-fitting for the convenience of fungibility. Some solutions to this problem include things like downloadable content and "pay/donate whatever you like" schemes (possibly with minimum, such as in the case of xkcd's signed prints).
* Perverse structures and results: Many people have criticized the way the mainstream music industry rewards the artists far less than the businesspeople (such as the publishing and management houses that supposedly serve these ). Similar situations may exist in other industries (possibly with publishers vs. developers of video games). The result is that those with the money control the business rather than those who produce the content on which the business is based. This sometimes leads to perverse results, such as investing in legal bullying rather than carrots to expand the fandom, as well as this strange (albeit citation-needed) practice mentioned in Wikipedia, of destroying older books for publisher credit.
However, like it or not, we humans live in an economy-based society (yes, even those DirtyCommunists), and releasing everything to the PublicDomain does not pay. (Asking for donations might pay, but probably not well at all.) Not having some sort of financing system in place would stifle the production of creative work. What is good is that everyone wants music, and literature, and visual media, and games, so there definitely exists demand for these products, that can (and will) be translated into financial resources in our money-based civilization.
My question here is: How should intellectual property policy be changed or redesigned in order to better serve the needs of producers and consumers of creative content?