Copyright vs. Expectation of profit from efforts
I'll have to revist this later, but, I've been thinking for a while about the madness that is current copyright law... when people ate beign fined $80,000 per song as a casual user who for whatever reason didn't buy them for $2 each off of iTunes, then there's clearly something terribly wrong with the law. The I read [ this post ] and thought ("hey, I should write something, too!").
I'm open to feedback on this essay, and have no firm position because I am still gathering information. They will be more, hopefully better written essays in the future which expand and maybe even contadict this one.
Nonetheless, just about every other unfairness was legally sanctioned (Hitler was legally elected, Slavery was legal, etc.), so the relatively harmless and quite debatable problems with copyright law and its enforcement are probably not going to be solved by the current legal framework.
Although I write a bit, and probally put some "created by" notices on some of my work, I don't do so professionally, or create music or anything like that... I did work as a programmer in day gone by, and that plus other jobs in the IT arena convinced me that they are lot of crazy people making contracts, and it seems that fear of losing their jobs or something makes people sign away rights which I would consider basic human rights, not just legal rights.
That's another tangent though....
I haven't fully thought it through, but I think that three things should feature in a "fair" set of laws to cover protection of author's rights but also allow for innovation in the marketplace and protection of customer rights.
Mandatory Royalties
Currently, there's only one royalty paid, when a book or music or whatever is origionally sold. Many times, excess fees are taken out of royalties "out of the top" so that a band or author ends up getting much less than what they expected... but, what if there was a VAT-like system whereby anything that was sold had a portion of the proceeds sent back to the author?
The logistics would have been too complicated before, but, with the universal product code (barcodes) and everything on the Internet, a product could be linked to a database (in practice, probally a series of databases) which eventually gets information like:
- sold 3 copies of bob's book today $20 each, $0.60 due in royalties from wallmart
at the close of every business day or whatever. This could be pooled in an author's guild or publisher's association and the settled in aggregate every month or so. It probally won't be done in the US, since they're bad at IT (:P) but anywhere progressive would see it as an excuse opportunity to create more econmic activity, and less socially costly than starting yet another war.
Sale of Derived Work
Currently, it is a hassle to get permission and negotiate for inclusing of portions of one publicaiton in another... to get around this, a high but reasonable royalty could be set in the case of a derived work. Similar to the retail / resale system, if it was say 20% of the gross price for the sum of the derived works, then someone could mix two music vidoes together, sell them (does anyone actually sell music videos, btw? It's always seem weird to me how they seem to sell the music but give away the videos for free or just use them for "promotion". That's like giving a way a movie for free and then making people pay to listen to the radio. what the heck, man?), and then just pay the percentage to the relevant guild or association.
This would be better than the current case where no-one can sell an obviously derived work, no matter how good it is. They're lots of "mashups" that I would pay as much for ans an original work, esp. if they were in a nice DRM-free format, but the legal mess that is involved means that in all cases I've seen, they're only provided for entertainment and to build fame for the author... but not money, for anyone.
Except maybe some advertiser.
The Right to Derive
Currently, the general attitude of copyright holders, large or small, is "this is my work! you can't do anything with it without asking first!".
Now, I can understand the attachment to something that you put a lot of effort into, and my aim with all this is to create a system that allows more people to make more money, and more customers to get more access to more entertainment (or education or wallpaper, whatever you use a "creative work" for).
So, we need to step back a bit and consider: if no-one ever sees or "consumes" you work, then you will never ever get paid, or get fame, or get any validation. On the other hand, if everyeone consumes for free, then you might get validation and fame, but not compensation (money). The reason why I started with sales systems above is that you can only get paid if a sale is made... even if a publisher gives you and advance or something, the mass market is the final customer, not the publisher... so instead of thinking of playing by existing publishers' rules and living withing the current system, I started thinking about alternate systems.
They're three main reasons to create a derivative work:
- Utility/convience (personal problem-solving)
- fun (personal experimentation)
- profit (copying part of whole of something and reselling the derived product)
Utility
The whole "mp3 p2p sharing" thing actually sprung out of the fact that there was no iTunes, or anything like that. In fact, even now, there are serious gaps in the sale of "digital content". Apparently this has something to do with ironclad contracts of the industry, when it comes to major labels and old movies, but for whatever reason, it is sometimes not possible to directly buy music, movies, or books in a format that is useful to the customer.
Many e-books are limited to use with only some readers, a restriction which customers tend to find annoying at best and in some cases disabling (e.g. some ebooks don't work with readers that vision-impaired people use).
In this case, the solution to "how do I make money" is a combination of availability and price-point. The whole $2 song thing on iTunes seems fairly popular (I've never used the service) and even lower prices now for some things seems to really help product to move (which means authors make money).
Fun
A lot of people who are new to technology (possibly because they're new to the socioeconomic world, the tend to be in their early teens) make derived works by combining their favourite songs and videos, or pictures from their favourite fandoms or whatever. There's probably a market in providing digital fan-packs of pictures and so on, because that supply is currently being satisfied by a variety of fan-sites which are run as hobbies for the most part and thus, can't provide as reliable an experience as a serious commercial, official site would. For some reason, however, commercial websites tend to totally fail to be useful to customers.
Profit
As I mentioned before, none of the derived works of the type that people do for fun, no matter how professional and buyable, are actually sold.
However, in the void between blank discs of less than $1 and commercial movies of $20 or more, there's plenty of space for derived copies of movies, especially in places with a lot of manufacturing (China) or low salaries (everywhere in the world, thanks to uneven distribution of wealth).
The laws do not keep widescale sales of unauthorized copies in check, and they never will, because the problem is created by the studios themselves by not obeying the laws of economics. In some of the world, they do actually release multiple price-points of movies (e.g. China, Russia), in order to compete with this widescale competition. That's really the only viable way to profit... price, and timely availability. Waiting for months between a cinema release and a DVD release is a silly habit.
The Framework
Well, it seems I spread my talk about this throught the essay
Some of the framework already existd, although I'm not too familiar with the details. They are already associations of publishers and authors which act as "clearing houses" for royalties.
They are already systems which track sales taxes, so it would be a matter of adding another "tax" but this time it goes to a private enterprise rather than a goverment agency. Actually, the IRS in the US is a private enterprise anyhow so it's another hand in the pot.
Digital distribution is not something that is impossible to do... it is more hampered by traditional thinking and continuing to honor old laws and contracts, than it is by any technical problems. Various platforms, such as iTunes, youtube, have show how easy it can be to make massive collections of audio or audiovisiual information and server them up at an obvious profit or at a hidden profit.
So, it can be done... but the thinking that it needs to be done would have to be there... I don't think that a country that moves all of its manufacturing to China will do it, but there doesn't necessarily have to be a government-mandated change... one of the problems of information flow in this age is that the authors are often not aware of how important (and profitable) the distribution systems are. Just as Hollywood was built, iTunes was built, other systems can be built. It just needs someone who can work out a benefit to both the customers and the authors, and make it an actuality.
Attitudes and implications
It seems that "big studios" think of customers as "consumers" who you just shovel stuff at, and who don't deserve any rights, existing only to fuel said studios with money. Doing anything else is not only a threat to their profit marging, but they consider it immoral and want to make it as illegal as possible - or, as illegal as ludicrust if the current fines system is to be any guide.
The current Hollywood setup actual came out of a rebellion against Edison and company and their monopolistic policies... although the current climate in the US might seem to make that more difficult, but the current system of persecution doesn't work to help anyone, except a few executives at the big studios who might feel validated when they bully someone.
I can't predict what will actually happen... clearly they are many other people working directly on it, e.g. the Creative Commons movement and various alternative labels have sprung up for music.... but I do know that the current system isn't benefiting the authors as much as it should. The main problem is getting people to buy your work, and bullying people is never effective marketing.
Conclusion
It is reasonable to expect to be able to profit from you effort, but in order to do so, you need to be working with a system which will enable this to happen. The current legal and commercial framework mostly benefits the publishers at the expense of both the authors and customers, and especially in the mainstream US market, leaves much of both group unsatisified.
So, although I don't know enough about the details, I thought up some ideas that might work... it was fun, so, I thought I'd share.
I'm open to feedback on this essay, and have no firm position because I am still gathering information. They will be more, hopefully better written essays in the future which expand and maybe even contadict this one.
Nonetheless, just about every other unfairness was legally sanctioned (Hitler was legally elected, Slavery was legal, etc.), so the relatively harmless and quite debatable problems with copyright law and its enforcement are probably not going to be solved by the current legal framework.
Although I write a bit, and probally put some "created by" notices on some of my work, I don't do so professionally, or create music or anything like that... I did work as a programmer in day gone by, and that plus other jobs in the IT arena convinced me that they are lot of crazy people making contracts, and it seems that fear of losing their jobs or something makes people sign away rights which I would consider basic human rights, not just legal rights.
That's another tangent though....
I haven't fully thought it through, but I think that three things should feature in a "fair" set of laws to cover protection of author's rights but also allow for innovation in the marketplace and protection of customer rights.
- The provision for a mandatory minimum royalty on resale of a work or derived work.
- The right to derive work for personal, non-commerical use; and the right to derive work for profressional use, once credits and disclaimers are properly attached or embedded.
- An contractual framework, and practical information system to tie it all together.
Mandatory Royalties
Currently, there's only one royalty paid, when a book or music or whatever is origionally sold. Many times, excess fees are taken out of royalties "out of the top" so that a band or author ends up getting much less than what they expected... but, what if there was a VAT-like system whereby anything that was sold had a portion of the proceeds sent back to the author?
The logistics would have been too complicated before, but, with the universal product code (barcodes) and everything on the Internet, a product could be linked to a database (in practice, probally a series of databases) which eventually gets information like:
- sold 3 copies of bob's book today $20 each, $0.60 due in royalties from wallmart
at the close of every business day or whatever. This could be pooled in an author's guild or publisher's association and the settled in aggregate every month or so. It probally won't be done in the US, since they're bad at IT (:P) but anywhere progressive would see it as an excuse opportunity to create more econmic activity, and less socially costly than starting yet another war.
Sale of Derived Work
Currently, it is a hassle to get permission and negotiate for inclusing of portions of one publicaiton in another... to get around this, a high but reasonable royalty could be set in the case of a derived work. Similar to the retail / resale system, if it was say 20% of the gross price for the sum of the derived works, then someone could mix two music vidoes together, sell them (does anyone actually sell music videos, btw? It's always seem weird to me how they seem to sell the music but give away the videos for free or just use them for "promotion". That's like giving a way a movie for free and then making people pay to listen to the radio. what the heck, man?), and then just pay the percentage to the relevant guild or association.
This would be better than the current case where no-one can sell an obviously derived work, no matter how good it is. They're lots of "mashups" that I would pay as much for ans an original work, esp. if they were in a nice DRM-free format, but the legal mess that is involved means that in all cases I've seen, they're only provided for entertainment and to build fame for the author... but not money, for anyone.
Except maybe some advertiser.
The Right to Derive
Currently, the general attitude of copyright holders, large or small, is "this is my work! you can't do anything with it without asking first!".
Now, I can understand the attachment to something that you put a lot of effort into, and my aim with all this is to create a system that allows more people to make more money, and more customers to get more access to more entertainment (or education or wallpaper, whatever you use a "creative work" for).
So, we need to step back a bit and consider: if no-one ever sees or "consumes" you work, then you will never ever get paid, or get fame, or get any validation. On the other hand, if everyeone consumes for free, then you might get validation and fame, but not compensation (money). The reason why I started with sales systems above is that you can only get paid if a sale is made... even if a publisher gives you and advance or something, the mass market is the final customer, not the publisher... so instead of thinking of playing by existing publishers' rules and living withing the current system, I started thinking about alternate systems.
They're three main reasons to create a derivative work:
- Utility/convience (personal problem-solving)
- fun (personal experimentation)
- profit (copying part of whole of something and reselling the derived product)
Utility
The whole "mp3 p2p sharing" thing actually sprung out of the fact that there was no iTunes, or anything like that. In fact, even now, there are serious gaps in the sale of "digital content". Apparently this has something to do with ironclad contracts of the industry, when it comes to major labels and old movies, but for whatever reason, it is sometimes not possible to directly buy music, movies, or books in a format that is useful to the customer.
Many e-books are limited to use with only some readers, a restriction which customers tend to find annoying at best and in some cases disabling (e.g. some ebooks don't work with readers that vision-impaired people use).
In this case, the solution to "how do I make money" is a combination of availability and price-point. The whole $2 song thing on iTunes seems fairly popular (I've never used the service) and even lower prices now for some things seems to really help product to move (which means authors make money).
Fun
A lot of people who are new to technology (possibly because they're new to the socioeconomic world, the tend to be in their early teens) make derived works by combining their favourite songs and videos, or pictures from their favourite fandoms or whatever. There's probably a market in providing digital fan-packs of pictures and so on, because that supply is currently being satisfied by a variety of fan-sites which are run as hobbies for the most part and thus, can't provide as reliable an experience as a serious commercial, official site would. For some reason, however, commercial websites tend to totally fail to be useful to customers.
Profit
As I mentioned before, none of the derived works of the type that people do for fun, no matter how professional and buyable, are actually sold.
However, in the void between blank discs of less than $1 and commercial movies of $20 or more, there's plenty of space for derived copies of movies, especially in places with a lot of manufacturing (China) or low salaries (everywhere in the world, thanks to uneven distribution of wealth).
The laws do not keep widescale sales of unauthorized copies in check, and they never will, because the problem is created by the studios themselves by not obeying the laws of economics. In some of the world, they do actually release multiple price-points of movies (e.g. China, Russia), in order to compete with this widescale competition. That's really the only viable way to profit... price, and timely availability. Waiting for months between a cinema release and a DVD release is a silly habit.
The Framework
Well, it seems I spread my talk about this throught the essay
Some of the framework already existd, although I'm not too familiar with the details. They are already associations of publishers and authors which act as "clearing houses" for royalties.
They are already systems which track sales taxes, so it would be a matter of adding another "tax" but this time it goes to a private enterprise rather than a goverment agency. Actually, the IRS in the US is a private enterprise anyhow so it's another hand in the pot.
Digital distribution is not something that is impossible to do... it is more hampered by traditional thinking and continuing to honor old laws and contracts, than it is by any technical problems. Various platforms, such as iTunes, youtube, have show how easy it can be to make massive collections of audio or audiovisiual information and server them up at an obvious profit or at a hidden profit.
So, it can be done... but the thinking that it needs to be done would have to be there... I don't think that a country that moves all of its manufacturing to China will do it, but there doesn't necessarily have to be a government-mandated change... one of the problems of information flow in this age is that the authors are often not aware of how important (and profitable) the distribution systems are. Just as Hollywood was built, iTunes was built, other systems can be built. It just needs someone who can work out a benefit to both the customers and the authors, and make it an actuality.
Attitudes and implications
It seems that "big studios" think of customers as "consumers" who you just shovel stuff at, and who don't deserve any rights, existing only to fuel said studios with money. Doing anything else is not only a threat to their profit marging, but they consider it immoral and want to make it as illegal as possible - or, as illegal as ludicrust if the current fines system is to be any guide.
The current Hollywood setup actual came out of a rebellion against Edison and company and their monopolistic policies... although the current climate in the US might seem to make that more difficult, but the current system of persecution doesn't work to help anyone, except a few executives at the big studios who might feel validated when they bully someone.
I can't predict what will actually happen... clearly they are many other people working directly on it, e.g. the Creative Commons movement and various alternative labels have sprung up for music.... but I do know that the current system isn't benefiting the authors as much as it should. The main problem is getting people to buy your work, and bullying people is never effective marketing.
Conclusion
It is reasonable to expect to be able to profit from you effort, but in order to do so, you need to be working with a system which will enable this to happen. The current legal and commercial framework mostly benefits the publishers at the expense of both the authors and customers, and especially in the mainstream US market, leaves much of both group unsatisified.
So, although I don't know enough about the details, I thought up some ideas that might work... it was fun, so, I thought I'd share.