And in short you deny artists of ownership of anything else than the physical representation (unethical!) But in the next sentence you make the creation "other people's property". If I think of something you did not, this robs me of rights and automatically gives entitlement to you?
I'm trying very hard to avoid an ad-hominem, but I wonder how many people who espouse this "everything should be free" mindset actually create stuff and hurt themselves with this argument. Even software developers who strictly write software for other people benefit from copyright in a work-for-hire arrangement.
With Steam, you're still paying a one-time fee to purchase a license to use the software.
However your creation manifests itself. A live performance or the physical media of a recording, for example.
> Because as soon as I make a record I have to "guard that physical manifestation" ... how?
The same way you guard your other possessions: with a lock and a door.
> you make the creation "other people's property"
The physical manifestation. The matter, as it were.
> If I think of something you did not this robs me of rights and automatically gives entitlement to you?
If you come up with an idea, it is yours to guard. If you communicate this idea, then you cannot ethically use force to prevent others from acting upon it. I do not believe I am robbing you of any right, because I do not believe that information can be property - only the physical manifestation of information (the media) can be property.
The fundamental point is that I don't think that you have a right to make a living as an artist. If you can find a way to get people to pay you for it, that's great. Just don't take away people's rights in the process.
It's the same in software. I'd love to be able to get paid for every little thing I ever wrote, but that's not reality. I only get paid for things that can be packaged into some kind of product, something with a business model where people feel like paying me.
Copyright is one of the things that allows artists to get in a position to go on the road and do these shows.
Or maybe someone wants to make a film, so she hires a music writer for the score.
I see the value of copyright (or other intellectual property protection, such as the "terms of use" I mentioned above) in this case, for two reasons.
First, the value for the creative doesn't scale. Suppose a conductor commissioned some music to be written for six summer evening performances. How should the music writer value the work to be written? The negotiations would probably consider how much revenue the performances will generate, and result in a (presumably) fair compensation for the writer.
But suppose the conductor, after the piece has been written, uses the it for eight performances? Or switches to a much larger venue that generates much more revenue? If you don't allow for a way for the writer to be fairly compensated you run the risk of not being able to attract good writers to the field. We could argue that geniuses and top talent would still be there, but it would be difficult for merely talented to make a living (or for the unknown to start out).
The second reason I see is to protect the reputation of the writer. John Williams is a brilliant composer who has written some of the best and most-recognizable movie themes. He wrote, for instance, the theme for the movie "Jaws."
Suppose someone took his music and used it as a soundtrack for a movie that he found very distasteful (a porno, or a movie advocating the rise of the Aryan Nation, for example). He would then be associated with these other ideas, even against his will. You could argue that his ability to use music to conjure emotions could be used to rally people for causes with which he vehemently disagrees. Copyright can help protect against that (but can't completely stop it, of course).
Write a song for Metallica? Sell it to them in exchange for some amount of cash up front, and partial ownership in the company that is selling that particular album/single/whatever.
Clumsy perhaps, but if big money is involved the overhead should be minimal.
Now I wouldn't cry if the era of multi-million-dollar entertainers is over, but I think that it would be a mistake to throw all copyright out. Rework it maybe, but keep the idea that mental creations are assets just like physical creations are. The concept of copyright arose because there appeared to be a need to protect those rights when that protection was absent, so I would be very hesitant to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes time to reexamine our IP laws.
For me, the SOPA/PIPA issue is about due process. Taking a site offline can be damaging in ways that may be hard to quantify, so the standard of proof should be pretty high IMO.
[1] - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3468027
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Work-for-hire is a concept that, sure, can work in some cases. It does not solve the problem of the development of significant, large-scale creative works--and making it economically viable to do so. As I've said elsewhere in this comment tree, I find it extremely unlikely that one will fund a Half-Life or a Skyrim through Kickstarter. Can you honestly and with good faith say that you consider it more reasonably feasible for projects to raise multiple millions of dollars on a Kickstarter-esque platform than for private investiture to take the risk of profitability on such a project?
You tell us to "use our imagination" to defend your argument for you. I reject this: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and while I don't expect that you have extraordinary evidence, more than handwaving would be nice. How are large-scale creative works made economically feasible to produce in this utopic world without copyright? To the best of my knowledge, even open-source game projects have never managed this. You can bring up a Wesnoth or something, but the coherence of the game experience is poor at best and for the most part these games simply fail to credibly measure up to the focused, designed experiences of the aforementioned commercial titles. The argument of "settle for Wesnoths" doesn't ring true to me.
Were I to assume bad faith, as you so regularly seem to do (really, you're among the more abusive regular posters here, I'm kind of surprised you get away with it), I would charge that you lack respect for creatives and seem content for them to subsist off the inconsistently extant angels of consumers' better natures. But instead I would rather assume good faith and expect you to have some sort of insight into this world that you imply would be superior. So, put up or shut up.
Similarly, dhimes claiming to not know how a work for hire business plan for a song writer could work strains credibility. Hence my snark.
If you honestly believe the answer is not trivial, then feel free to respond to fabjan above.
I have responded briefly to your Valve Software point here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3481338
These threshold pledge systems all have the weakness that the work must be paid for up front, after which (since one assumes a lack of copyright) the work is public domain. In some ways this may not actually be a weakness, though; it transforms users into investors, making them say, "I would like something that does / has X and Y, and I would be willing to pay $Z to get it." Of course, this system does not entail any per-copy price... however, nowadays the cost to create a copy of something is approaching zero anyway. Does it really make sense to continue to charge a per-copy fee? Charging a subscription fee, however, would still be possible in many circumstances, if a service was actually being offered.
What are your thoughts on such systems?
It's serendipitous that you bring this up, as I am currently working on a startup that uses this very method!
Hit me back at the address in my profile, if you would.
Today, I can self-bootstrap by making smaller games and building up cash reserves, if I want. Or I can put away some money in my day job, like I am now, to actually build what I want to build and what I think will be well-received and make more value back for me than the money and time I'll need to sink into it to create it. Why would I risk my own money, and that much time, in a system where I'll get nothing back for it? (Subscription services are not a solution; not every game is World of Warcraft, and I'd argue that none should be.)
"I'm going to need $100,000 (or, for something where you'd actually have to hire multiple people, $X,000,000) to make a video game."
"Yeah, right. Don't let the door hit you on the way out."
While I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, every rebuttal to this I've ever seen requires a lot of handwaving and an assumption of active and knowledgeable participation on the part of end consumers. To be honest, I don't expect investor-level behavior out of consumers; I expect a lot of yelling about how something is X when they "already paid for" something very slightly but to them critically different than X, but not much in the way of useful, constructive development-centric criticism. It's not their bag.
While I acknowledge that it doesn't seem to make economic sense, I have a great deal of respect for how people seem to be actually behaving. True nobodies can raise six figures on Kickstarter right now. I can only imagine what would happen if a somebody tried.
If Valve put HL3 on Kickstarter, might they raise the necessary funds? I kinda think they might.
Valve, with the original Half-Life didn't come completely out of nowhere, but it was pretty close. I am confident enough to say that it wouldn't have happened if they had to use a Kickstarter clone. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but I can't think of a case where a creative work running, say, $5,000,000 (which is a moderate movie budget, if you have examples from that medium) was pre-funded by a crowd of consumers (i.e., excluding patronage, which I think most would agree is not a desirable model to return to) as opposed to profit-seeking investors.
The recent success of numerous "indy" games, smartphone app games, and in particular Zynga indicate to me that success in the market with a low budget (read: not making 'AAA games') is still not only feasible, but common.
But the issue is how to do so without the ability to extract money from an "easily copied" work--that is, how to make it economically viable without copyright protections on the published end result. I find it unlikely that in this idealized no-copyright world, it is economically viable to devote a lot of time to building something that requires significant multidisciplinary effort (also read as "cash outlay for things you can't do yourself") with a relatively small investment up-front.
I find it likely that the Kickstarter/creatives-as-contractors model would end up not being worth my time, nor that of probably most people on HN; spending my time stumping for donations that barely cover production costs (else people ask why you aren't doing it for barely enough to cover production costs, why you're keeping "so much" in order to do those "eating" and "paying for gas" and "sleeping under a roof" things). Somebody else is more likely to pay me well enough to live--subsisting off the angels of consumers' better natures does not strike me as a winning proposition.
With copyright protections, it becomes economically plausible (not a guaranteed success, but plausible) for me to spend my time making something, even sinking my own money into it, because of the conviction that enough people will like it that I'll make back my nut and turn a profit as well. Y'know--capitalism.
And I find it extremely unlikely that those 'AAA titles'--which, as it happens, are often really really spectacularly good--would exist at all. Which would be a grievous, grievous shame. Skyrim is a beautiful game. Loads of fun, but more than that--just beautifully crafted.
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Alternatives such as Zynga are, to me, unpalatable, and are the "Facebook monstrosities" to which I referred elsewhere in this thread. Freemium games offer a terrible user experience and subscription games almost as bad. They may make a lot of money, but while I've talked a lot about economic viability in this thread, I do still have a vested interest in making great stuff. Making money and building great stuff are more at odds in the freemium and subscription models than in the more standard, "buy a license, play it" model.
It is my thought however that the harm done to society by these industries becoming diminished would be vastly outweighed by the positive aspects. We'll likely have to agree to disagree there.
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"Alternatives such as Zynga are, to me, unpalatable"
Oh trust me... I have no argument there.
Transaction costs include legal stuff, distribution, and advertising. The later is probably the largest block. There's only a very small minority who likes to engage in the creation of works. The majority just wants to be entertained. For this, they need signals of quality, and the perceivable amount of advertising is such a signal.
I could not disagree more. If someone creates a work of art, they only own the physical manifestation of that creation. They can guard that physical manifestation, thereby preventing its release into the public domain until such a time as it may profit them. What they do not own is other people's property, so to force other people to not do with their property what they please simply because someone else had a thought first is unethical. It's an understandable, knee-jerk, brute-force means of providing a business model to artists, but it is still unethical.
Find. Another. Way.