I am 100% for Sci-Hub; I think it and sites like Arxiv are the natural evolution of professional journals and the future of academic publications. But I do understand why Elsevier is fighting this. It's not a disconnect, it's not like they don't see the writing on the wall, they just want secure their benefits as long as they can and enjoy the good life while it lasts. If their lawyers succeed, then there's no worry, the party continues.
If they fail, at least they have plenty to rest on. If they're going to lose it all by not fighting, then it makes perfect sense to bet it all by fighting, because with Sci-hub and distributed systems (Tor, bit torrent), there is no winning in the long run. At least, not living with the revenue they are now.
So you don't have to be ignorant or emotional to make such a decision, you just have to make a calculated gamble and figure out which is going to hurt the least in the long run all things considered.
The music industry saw a revival of sorts, with Spotify and other streaming services offering a reasonably priced and extremely convenient alternative to piracy. That sort of an arrangement, while still not ideal, is probably the best Elsevier can hope for in the long term - provided they can offer a sufficiently interesting alternative to scihub.
That position is not what is "unreasonable", their existence is what is unreasonable. The fact that a company like Elsevier needs to be toppled by piracy at all is unreasonable.
The legal framework that has allowed Elsevier to profit from public research is unreasonable
>>But I do understand why Elsevier is fighting this.
I also understand why a serial killer would fight going to prison, that does not make the serial killer reasonable, ethical or just
>>If their lawyers succeed, then there's no worry, the party continues.
I disagree here, if their lawyers succeed then they do a great disservice to humanity, and further entrench copyright law, possibly even expanding it with legal precedent
The core problem seems to me that ethics has way too low impact on university courses, no matter if in STEM, finance, law or everything else.
For example, it is certainly justified for a lawyer to defend a serial killer (after all the right to representation in court is a basic human right, or at least should be) but a company has no moral right to legal assistance. No lawyer is bound by code or law to assist a company - but many do because of individual profit and ignore the loss that society has to shoulder.
Wow. That is harsh.
The current state of music is that artists need about 4 million Spotify plays per month to make minimum wage ($1160) [1]. That's assuming the artist does not have to share the revenue with anyone and not counting the time needed to break even on the initial investment (if you even manage to break even before the recording is 'old' and you're up for a new one).
Realistically there is no money in recorded music anymore except for the John Mayers and Taylor Swifts, so nothing has been solved in that industry and there is no 'clue' to get.
There was a legitimate source of income, then technology devaluated the product to oblivion. It's not worthy of damnation that those in an industry that is being levelled with the ground are caught off guard and attempt to fix their problems.
It would do us good to empathise with the people in these industries, because there are going to be a heck of a lot of them in the coming years. If we value the product of their labor we should want to offer them an alternative source of income instead of berating them.
[1]: https://informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-ar...
If you wanted to figure out the wage, you would have to take the number of hours spend creating the music (writing, practicing, recording), then divide by (revenue from streaming - costs to record). Since that streaming revenue can keep going long after they are done recording, you are going to hit minimum wage if you wait long enough and people keep streaming your music.
Artists deserve to be compensated for their work, but we should be thinking about it in terms of income per hour worked. No other job expects to be paid forever for work done years ago; if someone hires me to build a fence, I don't expect to keep being paid for every year that fence is up.
I completely agree. The minimum wage figure was just a reference point that aligns with the way we pay for it: monthly. It's ridiculous music has (been) moved into this area.
The same problem is in the software industry now. More and more companies move to subscription business models simply because a pay-upfront model isn't viable anymore. Sure, it's great to support developers in their endeavours, but what if I just want to buy this exact version of the app and decide for myself if I want to pay for bug fixes and extra features later? Maybe this version is fine for me. But the new business reality doesn't allow for this.
Anyways..
> No other job expects to be paid forever for work done years ago; if someone hires me to build a fence, I don't expect to keep being paid for every year that fence is up.
The entire intellectual property licensing space works in this way, and that space is badly broken. I agree that there's no moral requirement to pay someone for work done years ago, and the reality is that most musicians really aren't. A quality recording takes a long time to make and its average lifespan is about a year (if that) before attention (if any) dies out.
On top of that it requires a big investment to record, produce and promote an album (consider also a new website, logo and album art) and then after all you have to share the $0.00029 per song play with about five people and the label. You're lucky to break even at all.
1. Everyone could afford access to all the music in the world.
2. Tons of new music is being created. Creativity seems fine. Creators are still highly motivated to release their music and even without making a living through music there are still many benefits to being a musician.
And yes, it's hard to make a living through music. So what ? Why is this a necessity ?
Just because people keep doing something doesn’t mean it’s all “fine”. People make music in spite of the hardship. All of society benefits from their irrational, self destructive drive for creation. We could show some empathy and at least acknowledge that. Maybe even help find a way to make this beautiful gift they bestow on us less painful?
Currently it feels like we’re making them shit roses for us. Maybe let’s help trim the thorns :)
Source : I know several musicians first hand, and it’s not “fine”. :/
It would still be correct. Low average incomes for musicians and most apps not breaking even is a signal in both cases that the current supply is more than enough, and you should consider other opportunities.
People make music in spite of the hardship. All of society benefits from their irrational, self destructive drive for creation.
There's a difference between the total and marginal benefit to society. If all musicians spontaneously quit and nobody replaced them, we'd be worse off. But in the actual world, if somebody is deciding whether to pursue a career in music or engineering, the latter probably has a higher expected benefit.
That has ended.
As a programmer I sometimes reflect just how lucky I am to be born right at the historical moment when my abilities align with the economic demand. A few decades earlier or later and I'd be lucky to be an accountant or something.
Yet, what form should empathy and compassion take? Empathy isn't a policy prescription. It doesn't come with technical requirements. Artists have alternate sources of income available, but this often runs into the basic problem that they aren't structured like the album sales of yesteryear. Different skills and approaches are required.
So what's an empathetic lover of music and culture to do? I only know that the previous system didn't work any better - Courtney Love doing the math made that clear.
If you're pulling those numbers, and know what you're doing, you will almost always have opportunities to make (much) more money doing shows and placements.
Additionally: while the distribution of musical success was and still is bimodal, thanks to the fragmentation of culture caused by the Internet there is a growing middle creative class.
Have you seen Patreon?
Patreon, Bandcamp and Tunecore collectively pay out about $25 million per month [1]. That's minimum wage for 21 000 people, assuming each artist gets an equal share (which they obviously don't). This doesn't seem like a lot to me.
[1]: http://musically.com/2015/02/16/what-are-musicians-making-fr...
Yes, it isn't a lot, but it's a good start that has already had some success. Hopefully it will continue to grow.
[1] e.g. the recent drama with Patreon changing their payment model
I would (and do) advise an artist (and a friend, or a random person off the street) to have income from more than one revenue stream.
> It would do us good to empathise with the people in these industries
there's no reason to be empathetic towards the industry, even if we are entirely and wholly in support of artists, their work, and expression.
to put a finer point on it: the fact that there is an "entertainment industry" frightens me. this is not to say we shouldn't find entertainment, and share artworks/creativity/etc... but that our need (or training) to be distracted from the horrors of modernity presents sufficient demand for An Industry of this scale is troubling. The existence of this Industry may be seen as an indicator that our civilizations are performing acts of violence upon ourselves and our homes that we would be better served by ending.
Imagine the area under the curve, and how much money that adds up to, if we went from a market with CDs and DVDs and happy cable subscribers to Spotify and Netflix and internet-only broadband as they are today overnight instead of over the course of the years.
Depends on just exactly how rational you want to be. If your planning horizon is quarterly and annual numbers it makes perfect sense. If you want your company still do business in the coming decades then holding on and denying change can make you blind to the necessary adaptions.
I think their planning horizon is Retirement
Thanks.
If large parts of the population disagree with a business model, they have the collective power to change it.
As a former scientist, I can't wait to desecrate Elsevier's grave. But I'm still uneasy about the prospect of people taking matters into their own hands simply because their technical capabilities are more advanced than those of their opponents. There are also journals, such as Science, that finance the valuable non-profit foundations publishing them.
Of course, this is to a large extend the fault of scientists and university administrators themselves, because they have all the power to refuse to publish in for-profit closed-access publications (as they are apparently doing in Germany.) And the political process in the US is basically broken.
But look at other examples of the same principle, and you might find one where you land on the other side: The Federal Reserve seems the safer bet vis-a-vis the libertarians that jumped on Bitcoin to topple it. Uber has a litany of problems from their "rule-breaking DNA". Or, for the political right: should "illegal" immigrants receive citizenship simply for evading border checks?
* stifled laugh *
our actions are governed by the reality of enforcement. our planning is governed by the expectation of enforcement of the rule of law.
this should be apparent by now.
But science publishers? These guys haven't made an honest buck in decades now. Their business is entirely due to inertia and regulatory capture. The short to medium term goal of all stakeholders is their entire elimination.
There is some kind of weird disconnect between the reality of distributed communications, and people/companies who seem to think that they have a prayer of stopping them. You’d think that the near implosion of the music industry would habpve be a clue though. Where there is demand and anti-consumer practices, there will be piracy.
Is it just that people making these decisions are ignorant, or emotional? Does anyone know?