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IP as a vehicle to reward social advancement - is there a better way?
I am an artist and have been an artist all my life. I observe the legislations that purport to protect the likes of me, but always I see the beneficiaries of these attempts fall to advantage takers - me and my kind are rarely honoured. If we, the artists are of value to you - how may you honour what we have to give?
Kevin Brian Carroll
What may end up being the case is that ego-driven wannabes will always be handing their sophomoric drivel out for free and hit totals, and what gets promoted to the public a large will be the stuff that product marketing firms have culled from established professional sources in exchange for the songs being ad jingles for stores, cars and smart phones.
Oh...wait.....that's already how it is.
Oh well, it could always get worse. But hey, as long as everyone can pretend that they're a recording, movie or literary star until they get bored with it , then what the hell. If art hasn't ever been experienced then it can't ever be missed.. .right? Besides, it gives the old people more of an excuse to complain that they just don't make music/art/books like they used to. That'll make everyone happy.
Mitch SMith 50+
Um .. I'm not sure how to respond to this - you seem to have answered your own assertion.
I'd like to help you by saying .. cyclic thinking gets trapped while the context moves on.
What I am trying to do is find way forward.
As an artist with a lot of friends who are artists - I'm not interested in the way we used to do things - I'm more inclined to assist the effort now.
And truly .. saying "IP is property" .. that's like saying an artist is a traitor to the state.
It's just law - the USSR had laws against artists too.
Watch out for that dangerous little word "is" it reveals you rbiases and assumptions. In this case, I am hoping it's just blind ignorance.
Krisztián Pintér 200+
Mitch SMith 50+
I think the internet is asking us to have another look at the functional application of monopoly rights.
As I have said elsewhere - all that the artist or creative truly owns is their effort. To me it seems like natural justice to make sure that effort is honoured - our fixation on the products of that effort is unballanced.
The whole monopoly assertion has, at its foundation - advantage. The notion of IP is to impose advantage globally at the stroke of a "fiat". THe proponents of this advantage offer the lone artist as the example to justifiy the advantage on behalf of the artist - sounds all just and nice, however, it is rarely the artist who gets the benefit of this advantage - advantage is accumulated by mechanisms of market distribution - providing massive advantage for those who are not artists or creatives.
IP is a fiction - told to us by manipulators to gain overwhelming advantage over us.
I am not at all worried about upsetting the apple-cart - I am not convinced by those who assert that the economy will crash if advanage is not protected for the advantage-taker. By their argument, they identify themselves.
The internet is destroying the advantage takers - this is cause for celebration.
At last we get a chance to decide for ourselves - what advantage are we willing to give away?
Uday Pasricha 100+
AN IP CANNOT CLAIM to have a price linked to its cost because if there is No demand then is No value given for your cost.
SO it is the DEMAND from consumer that determines cost.
NOW suppose you have designed for your chosen target which is the super rich; BUT the ONLY ones who really love it are students ?? Your product will be on the streets in weeks pirated totally due to the fact that the students will pay ten dollars and not the USD 100 you believe you must charge.
Finally as long as the creator of IP is very clear and conscious of economic logic and not legal logic, then the creator must know a fundamental. The value of an IP is created by demand and NOT COST. Of course we must struggle to use the Law but cannot depend on it because weeks later the VALUE is gone anyway. I hope we all notice that IT products have to be given away free and only charged when the user demand is established.
Oh Oh I hope no drug company is part of TED and listening!! Second thoughts - Unlikely to be in TED
Mitch SMith 50+
What is requied is a quantum leap in the law to get ahead of the economic reality.
THe alternative is to find another legal process to circumvent the latent void between reality and law.
I propose that we look to iterative processes. THese are not easily understood by humans who tend to think in terms of static models.
Concepts like "before" and "after" need to be comprehended in terms of the cycle over time - over many cycles.
When you talk of demand as a static concept, you miss the dynamic of how demand and supply interact over time.
On the itterative patronage model:
It is true - the first cycle consists of unpaid effort for an initial product. This is a demand-tester with the product granted free in perpetuity. The resulting demand can then be transcribed to the artist's next offering - with payment in advance of release. THus the market will automatically adjust the price of each offering - it is a function of cost-of-production and reputation - with reputation being the critical variable. Reputation might be tracked by counting downloads, but I hardly think it needs to be tracked because the value is being tracked subjectively in each person representing the demand. THis model requires no new legal underpin.
What I would like to avoid is the "free-to-play/pay-to-win" model that is currently in action with some game software - this is the economics of addiction.
Then there is the "benevolent fund" model - it works the same, except interposes a broader funding "catchment". It can be institutionalised at national and global levels. Downside is that the metrics of funds-release would become highly politicised and might require new laws to avoid conflicts. Upside is that patronage could be made universal through taxation or levy - this would avoid the case of the fund "running dry", but I would argue that a dry fund would indicate a market glut.
Mitch SMith 50+
WIth the old physical media, the means of production can only have a finite output. THe rules of physical scarcity are always in operation to determine value (with or without IP). The economy still operates within a closed system.
Now consider a medium that can potentially supply infinite output?
The system is no longer closed.
If I apply a monetary charge to anything produced infinitely, then that product has teh potential to drain every single dollar out of the old closed system - the natural checks and measures inherent in teh old closed system break-down. It follows that this infinte product must be valued by cost of production, not per-unit consumption. It then also follows that there must be limits aplied to counting demand to prevent market imballance.
From that I conclude that any new treaty or legislation MUST go in the opposite of acta/pipa/sopa or the economy itself will crash .. or simply serve to place all value into the hands of the "rights" holders - in effect they will become the emperors of earth - they will have all the money and everyone will have to serve them or exit the economy.
I state once again - it is the creative effort(cost) that should be honoured - not the resulting product. Demand can only be applied to quality considerations (reputation) and the application of consumption (download counts) cannot be linear per unit - there must be upper thresholds to keep the economy finite.
henk doorlag
Unfortunately, there is no consideration of cost in any of the current legislation I'm aware of.
Assume I'm construction worker. When I build a road that serves millions and significantly improves the local quality of living I get paid based on my costs to produce that piece of road, plus a profit margin. I do not own the road.
Even contracts where the contractor pays the bills himself and then charges a toll, the monopoly provided to the producer of that road ends after he/she has recouped their costs. afterwards the exploitation of the road is subject to competitive procurement.
Now the case where I'm an artist. The problem of course is determining the cost of creating my masterpiece. It's definitely more than the raw resources of pen or paint & paper - or whatever medium you chose. But should an artist be able to retire on the income from a single piece of pop music? I don't think so. So what is a good measurement. Should an artist be able to live a year of a single song and a decade on an album?
Should a singer/songwriter doing all the work herself be allowed to earn more than a hit factory like a boy band.
What is the value of creativity. It may be hard to determine, but I'm sure there must be a better method than the completely arbitrary fixed time currently used.
Mitch SMith 50+
I have no problem with the attempt to give artists a better deal - but copyright was broken from the start - it delivers the artist to the distributors, the distributors commodify it and lower the standards - since it is the product that is valued, the value of the artist's time is supplanted for the price of the product, and the attempt to enrich the artist has failed - instead we have these artificially wealthy "stars" .. but not for long - not when any kid with a webcam can publish a piece that gets 3 million views in a week - it kinda refects on the standard the industry sold us all these years ;)
I am thinking on some variations of the patronage model. It's early days, but I think people will get used to going to sites like kickstart, or subsribe to youtube artists - only need to add a donate button .. or pay into escrow until a budget target is reached. Over time, some players might be drawing large budgets based on their reputations - and of course, whatever gets released on the net is free - who cares if someone downloads for nothing - so long as the patrons gets what they want. I beleive it will be fashionable
Krisztián Pintér 200+
Jonathan Gronli
Mitch SMith 50+
At the basis is the notion that the creator has the right to control what he/she created. Sounds pretty fair on the face of it .. but it supposes that one can actually control Ideas(IP) once they have been published. By their nature they cannot be controled, so a bunch of legal infrastructure was set in place to artificially impose such control (through the legal mechanism supporting the civillisation principle) - initially for the lifetime of the "creator", but now it is extended 70 years beyond in the USA and trading partners. These mechanisms are intrinsically invasive and create an avenue into a natural person's life by subtracting a "right" by default. The concept is "window-dressed" by softenners like "fair use" but "fair use" is not written into the laws. THe laws themselves admit their falacy by honouring a return to public domain (term of patent and expiry of copyright). By that admission, we can see that the law makers themselves knew they were violating natural justice, but I presume were swayed by the need to ring-fence the arts and invention to get it to flourish. After all, a nation is made strong by its technology, and, at a time of collonisation and ubiquitous warfare between nations,it was probably essential for a nation to survive.
@Jonathan - any law that violates natural justice is quickly adopted by exploiters. The companies you mention made their fortunes on the back of IP during the 20th century.
THat period demonstrated a bubble IP economy - yet we are urged to treat that bubble as "the way it's always been