Re:Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'
by vidarh on Thursday December 11, 2014 @11:57AM
(#8735758)
I'd very much expect most authors that focus on literature rather than short-form paid-by-the-word non-fiction-work to fail or only receive a minority of their income from writing.
Becoming a writer to make money off literature is pretty much like playing the lottery - the odds are badly stacked against you; if you have "success" most of the time you'll make a pittance, and only a tiny proportion of the people who are successful make it big.
If anything, current incentive structures created by current copyright are bad for most people in the creative fields, as the "hit culture" means they're heavily geared towards disproportionally rewarding a very small subset of people. While the hope of striking it big may lure some people to create, I'm more concerned that the bad odds of being able to make ends meet puts a lot of very creative people off those career choices.
That's a strange assumption. Many authors fail, or only produce works in their spare time and work other jobs. I mean there's no fundamental right to be a successful author who can live off selling books.
Of course as a society we find it desirable to create an environment where artists can make a living from their works and create more art. That's why copyright exists. It's a tradeoff, all citizens are required to respect the creations of others in exchange for the opportunity for everyone to dedicate their lives to it and make an income with it. (Note: It's just an opportunity to make profit, not a right to profit)
But that societal contract gets perverted by commercial interests to the point where people stop seeing copyright as something positive and instead will refuse to adhere to it.
The internet making copying so much easier than ever before also skews that tradeoff by making it much more difficult for everyone to respect copyright. Breaking copyright is even easier than jaywalking and I don't think private citizens will stop anytime soon.
So ultimately that scheme to incentivize people to be creative used to be "fair", but now that view has somewhat shifted. And the system needs an overhaul.