The ethics of enjoying large collaborative works of art and entertainment

[Travis B.]

And Epic destroyed Bandcamp...

[zompist]

of course artists etcetera should get paid: they should be able to sell their paintings too, and tickets to their concerts etcetera etcetera. books take decades to pay off? okay, then, life of the author for royalties then, or a hundred million, whatever happens first. that's totally different from no one can make a spinnoff for a a century and a half, or the mule from asimov being exclusive property of comcast or whoever.

Life of the author is fine; so was the old regime of 56 years. Was that so hard? Maybe do some research on author incomes the next time you decide that authors having income is a huge problem.

Besides, experience seems to show that people will often pay for works, even if they can get them for free relatively easily at a relatively low risk, as long as the works are affordable for them, the price is reasonable, and the format isn't cumbersome.

Quite true. Piracy should be taken as the market clamoring for a better, less rent-seeking distribution system.

However, the former is exploitation by capitalists of creators, hence why I believe copyrights should be non-transferable, to prevent capitalists from essentially forcing creators to give up their copyrights.

That's essentially what we have, with the exception of team products like TV, movies and AAA video games. In some cases this is the result of behind-the-scenes struggle; e.g. Calvin & Hobbes is © Bill Watterson, while Peanuts is © United Feature Syndicate. (Though Schulz was paid well.)

The movie industry is certainly a way of funding movies. I'd certainly be fine with copyright going to a consortium of the creators, cast, and crew. That's how at least some movie companies started.

* Of course, one alternative option would be to have the government fund creators, who are voted on by consumers of content.

The problem with schemes like that is that the bulk of the money goes to the people who don't need it. (E.g. there are licenses you can buy if, say, you have a venue that plays a lot of music. The money is not distributed to the artists actually played at the venue, but is based on music sales overall; that is, the money goes to the richest artists. See Jamie Zawinski on how this works.).

The simplest system is that consumers pay creators directly. This is now possible with things like Patreon, but the suits are always trying to ruin things like this.

[Travis B.]

The simplest system is that consumers pay creators directly. This is now possible with things like Patreon, but the suits are always trying to ruin things like this.

I had thought of Patreon, but then thought that it would only work as a model if everyone voluntarily individually pays the creators whose works they personally enjoy, and what fraction really does?

[Torco]

if people who make cool things get paid adequately [big if, of course], what difference does it make if it's from a few fans who are very enthusiastic or wealthy and pay six bucks, rather than from every consumer of their stuff paying one thousandth of a buck? unless the thing we want to maximize is not, in fact, authors getting paid, but rather people who don't have much money not having access to this or that.

patreon is pretty rentseeking, though: it takes 5% of transactions, which is even higher than what credit cards skim off the top.

Life of the author is fine; so was the old regime of 56 years. Was that so hard? Maybe do some research on author incomes the next time you decide that authors having income is a huge problem.

tell that to the imaginary person who said that. my point is that copyright as she exists in reality is all kinds of fucked up. reminds me of conservatives: if you go "you know maybe we shouldn't run our society on the principle of what makes the most money for rich people" they'll go OMG YOU COMMIES WANT TO ABOLISH ALL ECONOMIC TRANSACTIONS.

[Travis B.]

The key thing is that copyright as it exists really works to enrich huge corporations, rather than individual small authors who barely make anything even in the current copyright scheme. Doing away with transferable copyrights that practically last forever and replacing the current economic model with something like Patreon (even though taking 5% off the top is questionable IMO) would be a huge improvement in my book (but as I mentioned, the problem there is trying to get people to pay with Patreon creators whose works they enjoy...).

[alice]

It's a bit tangential, but Charles Stross's blog has a very interesting entry on a similar subject.

[zompist]

if people who make cool things get paid adequately [big if, of course], what difference does it make if it's from a few fans who are very enthusiastic or wealthy and pay six bucks, rather than from every consumer of their stuff paying one thousandth of a buck? unless the thing we want to maximize is not, in fact, authors getting paid, but rather people who don't have much money not having access to this or that.

patreon is pretty rentseeking, though: it takes 5% of transactions, which is even higher than what credit cards skim off the top.

Worse than that, it's 8%. But compare that to Kindle, which takes 30% for e-books. Patreon is still a good deal for me, as I don't have a way of getting micropayments from around the world. But my fear is that the VCs will come in and ruin it.

Patreon is not any kind of solution for the world, but like a lot of capitalist inventions it would undoubtedly work better as a public utility.

Life of the author is fine; so was the old regime of 56 years. Was that so hard? Maybe do some research on author incomes the next time you decide that authors having income is a huge problem.

tell that to the imaginary person who said that. my point is that copyright as she exists in reality is all kinds of fucked up. reminds me of conservatives: if you go "you know maybe we shouldn't run our society on the principle of what makes the most money for rich people" they'll go OMG YOU COMMIES WANT TO ABOLISH ALL ECONOMIC TRANSACTIONS.

I predicted you'd pretend I was talking about corporations, and here you go. No, you are not supporting The Workers when you propose fucking over authors. If you were actually going after rich people I'd say go for it, but you just want to fuck over authors and pat yourself on the back for it.

[Travis B.]

To me copyright, FLOSS versus proprietary, and whether creators get paid are entirely different things. Copyright could be done away with if an alternative means of compensating creators stepped in its place, such as Patreon-as-a-public-utility. Personally I have copyright* to my works outside of what I do for my day job, but I don't get a cent for them -- and if I decided to make my software proprietary payware, I almost certainly still would get very little from it**. For me, nothing would change if tomorrow copyright disappeared from the face of the Earth, except that my software would be public domain rather than FLOSS. And even in that scenario, I could still set up a Patreon asking people who appreciate my software to donate a small amount of money per month. I would still not get much money out of it, but not because my works would now be public domain but rather because my works are rather niche and hence appeal to a small audience.

* Alongside a number of other people, because a number of people have made smaller contributions to zeptoforth, and I did not ask them to sign their copyrights over to me (except that they would license their code as MIT so zeptoforth could be under one license as a whole).
** All that would accomplish is dissuading people from using my software, as there are plenty of alternatives which are both libre and gratis, and I care more about people using my software than making money from it.

[zompist]

To me copyright, FLOSS versus proprietary, and whether creators get paid are entirely different things. Copyright could be done away with if an alternative means of compensating creators stepped in its place, such as Patreon-as-a-public-utility.

This is the usual line— "oh we'll compensate authors somehow"— but 1, this is never thought through, and 2, no anti-copyright activists actually create or even push for such an alternative. I'm all for conworlding, but what annoys me are people who are dead set on removing my income in order to get back at Mickey Mouse somehow. It is not enough to say that once luxury space communism comes authors could get minimum wage like other unvalued classes.

As I said, Patreon, even a public version, is not a universal solution. It's effective for a certain type of artist, ones who are willing to provide a high volume of output and have (or can develop) a fan base for that. It's not effective for, say, a novelist who has nothing to show until his book is done, which may take years. Also, frankly, most fans don't want to (and shouldn't have to) support a creator every month. They should be able to buy a work when it comes out.

All the propaganda about "copyright is for rich companies" is simply wrong; copyright existed long before corporations; the US constitution allows copyrights and patents specifically to benefit "Authors and Inventors". I'm absolutely happy to rein in abuses of these by corporations. (One of which, in fact, is ignoring copyright when it benefits them— e.g. to train LLMs.)

Personally I have copyright* to my works outside of what I do for my day job, but I don't get a cent for them -- and if I decided to make my software proprietary payware, I almost certainly still would get very little from it**. For me, nothing would change if tomorrow copyright disappeared from the face of the Earth, except that my software would be public domain rather than FLOSS.

I have no problem with how you develop zeptoforth, but you know, you have a day job so that makes it a lot easier to devote effort to the project for (nearly) free. You'd have a very different perspective, I imagine, if you were an indie developer trying to pay the rent with a project.

[Travis B.]

To me copyright, FLOSS versus proprietary, and whether creators get paid are entirely different things. Copyright could be done away with if an alternative means of compensating creators stepped in its place, such as Patreon-as-a-public-utility.

This is the usual line— "oh we'll compensate authors somehow"— but 1, this is never thought through, and 2, no anti-copyright activists actually create or even push for such an alternative. I'm all for conworlding, but what annoys me are people who are dead set on removing my income in order to get back at Mickey Mouse somehow. It is not enough to say that once luxury space communism comes authors could get minimum wage like other unvalued classes.

In the FLOSS world, as I presume you already know, the typical answer to this question is paid support, and I'd consider it for zeptoforth if it weren't so niche by its nature -- after all, I spend my spare time supporting people's issues with zeptoforth even when they are not bugs in zeptoforth at all, so one could argue that I ought to be compensated for this time spent. I don't do this because zeptoforth is niche, and I would rather encourage its use by helping users out even if it is using my spare time, than potentially drive people out of a relatively small userbase away, when there are other alternatives, by asking for money in return for support.

As I said, Patreon, even a public version, is not a universal solution. It's effective for a certain type of artist, ones who are willing to provide a high volume of output and have (or can develop) a fan base for that. It's not effective for, say, a novelist who has nothing to show until his book is done, which may take years. Also, frankly, most fans don't want to (and shouldn't have to) support a creator every month. They should be able to buy a work when it comes out.

Hence my idea that, more elaborated, of that each person gets one vote that they can split any way they want amongst any number of creators (with them being able to give different proportions of said vote to different creators), and the fraction of the vote each creator gets out of the total sum of votes being used to determine public funding of creators. If you like an author, you could give that author a part of your vote every year even if you only buy their books every so often.

All the propaganda about "copyright is for rich companies" is simply wrong; copyright existed long before corporations; the US constitution allows copyrights and patents specifically to benefit "Authors and Inventors". I'm absolutely happy to rein in abuses of these by corporations. (One of which, in fact, is ignoring copyright when it benefits them— e.g. to train LLMs.)

Hence why I support non-transferable copyrights*, as the transferability of copyrights is a large source of such abuses, even though I am personally open to abolishing copyright provided a suitable means for compensating individual creators replaces it.

* And yes, I am personally for expropriating copyrights from companies that have purchased them and returning them to the original creators.

Personally I have copyright* to my works outside of what I do for my day job, but I don't get a cent for them -- and if I decided to make my software proprietary payware, I almost certainly still would get very little from it**. For me, nothing would change if tomorrow copyright disappeared from the face of the Earth, except that my software would be public domain rather than FLOSS.

I have no problem with how you develop zeptoforth, but you know, you have a day job so that makes it a lot easier to devote effort to the project for (nearly) free. You'd have a very different perspective, I imagine, if you were an indie developer trying to pay the rent with a project.

Were zeptoforth not niche, as I mention above, I would highly consider charging for support. The most practical approach to do this on a personal level would likely be to start a Patreon with multiple levels, ranging from basic support to personalized help with creating software for specific hardware and like.

[Torco]

but as I mentioned, the problem there is trying to get people to pay with Patreon creators whose works they enjoy...

the way people who make something obtain sustenance and prosperity is always going to have an effect on that thing, innit? We're already seeing a lot of media being shaped by novel monetization schemes: constant reminders to subscribe, sponsorships, and "extra stuff" for those who pay. I'm actually in the other camp: sure, it could be better, and probably should... I really oughta donate to wikipedia again every month, but I'm amazed that *anyone* gets to live off donations... then again, that's how culture workers sustain themselves in some other historical societies, so I suppose I shouldn't be. yeah, nationalize patreon to turn that 5-8% into a 0.3%, which is more reasonable... or maybe turn it into like a p2p or blockchain protocol, if such a thing is viable. but it has a big advantage too, over ads: an advertiser's easiest strategy is broadcast to a vast base of people hoping someone is interested in tungsten carbide drill bis or whatever, so media made for, say, TV, tries to appeal to as broad an audience as possible: media made to get donos is inherently incentivized to be more niche: sure, this means you get conmen living off telling idiots that birds aren't real, but you also get media who speak to some remarkably specific experiences: I think that's good.

I predicted you'd pretend I was talking about corporations, and here you go. No, you are not supporting The Workers when you propose fucking over authors. If you were actually going after rich people I'd say go for it, but you just want to fuck over authors and pat yourself on the back for it.

course I was going to talk about corporations, how do you think we got the copyright laws we have in the first place? who you think wrote them and passed them to the lobby office etcetera? I get that you think some deep reform to it would be bad for culture workers but that isn't obvious: there's a lot of stuff creators suddenly can do under in a no copyright world that they can't do in presently. and abolition is just one of the options, but it's worth at least considering it: are we really sure that the copyright regime makes them better off? are they, for example, better off now than they were in historical societies previous to the introduction of copyright? not obvious: the distribution of wealth made by art has always been very concentrated, you know, the rockstar effect, but just like now there were a lot of prosperous culture workers, many famous today.. but was the mean relative social status, or wealth or whatever, of artists really lower? the median? the proportion of culture workers to other kinds of workers?

at least the individual culture worker didn't have to compete against vast ultraproductions that would bankrupt most countries being broadcast for free to every potential patron so they'd watch a coca cola ad instead of watching, reading or listening to, you know, *their* thing. and I think a lot of theater companies would be glad to put on their own production of forrest gump, or an alternative ending to game of thrones in the local town square. you know you'd pay to see that. I grant that books in particular, and probably other specific artforms, do need some form of copyright inherently, though, at least while lives depend on redeeming points, but it sure isn't this one.

[zompist]

course I was going to talk about corporations, how do you think we got the copyright laws we have in the first place? who you think wrote them and passed them to the lobby office etcetera?

Printers and authors, of course. Copyrights go back to around 1500, long before corporations existed in any form we would recognize.

[Ares Land]

at least the individual culture worker didn't have to compete against vast ultraproductions that would bankrupt most countries being broadcast for free to every potential patron so they'd watch a coca cola ad instead of watching, reading or listening to, you know, *their* thing. and I think a lot of theater companies would be glad to put on their own production of forrest gump, or an alternative ending to game of thrones in the local town square. you know you'd pay to see that. I grant that books in particular, and probably other specific artforms, do need some form of copyright inherently, though, at least while lives depend on redeeming points, but it sure isn't this one.

This is probably utopian. The likely consequences would be various corporations (the music or publishing industry, Amazon) making money off peoples' work -- unlicensed toys, sub-par prequels or sequels, let your imagination run wild without the author getting a single penny off their work.
GRRM is probably rich enough at this point, granted (though there's still the question of what people can do with his own creation), granted, but moderately well-known artists can be struggling. I'm reminded of Tolkien's struggle with unauthorized editions in the US; the man was living off a smallish pension at this point.

I don't see any struggling artists demanding the abolition of copyright; if anything they're asking for stricter enforcement.

Hence why I support non-transferable copyrights*, as the transferability of copyrights is a large source of such abuses, even though I am personally open to abolishing copyright provided a suitable means for compensating individual creators replaces it.
* And yes, I am personally for expropriating copyrights from companies that have purchased them and returning them to the original creators.

I'm not that familiar with intellectual property laws; but copyright under common law systems (American and British law, for instance) is different from author's rights under European civil law systems (French or German law, for instance). If I'm not mistaken author's rights are not transferable here, which is sounder.

In the FLOSS world, as I presume you already know, the typical answer to this question is paid support, and I'd consider it for zeptoforth if it weren't so niche by its nature -- after all, I spend my spare time supporting people's issues with zeptoforth even when they are not bugs in zeptoforth at all, so one could argue that I ought to be compensated for this time spent. I don't do this because zeptoforth is niche, and I would rather encourage its use by helping users out even if it is using my spare time, than potentially drive people out of a relatively small userbase away, when there are other alternatives, by asking for money in return for support.

Software, though, is very different thing from art. Free software offers an answers to questions, such as 'what does it mean, exactly, to own a piece of software?' which really doesn't apply to art.
Although I use and promote free software wherever possible, I'm still not sure the economic model makes sense. I can't say I'm entirely happy with the idea that programmers should code because they love it, not say, to pay rent, or the expectation that coders should keep coding even in their free time, but that's another issue entirely.

[zompist]

Hence why I support non-transferable copyrights*, as the transferability of copyrights is a large source of such abuses, even though I am personally open to abolishing copyright provided a suitable means for compensating individual creators replaces it.
* And yes, I am personally for expropriating copyrights from companies that have purchased them and returning them to the original creators.

I'm not that familiar with intellectual property laws; but copyright under common law systems (American and British law, for instance) is different from author's rights under European civil law systems (French or German law, for instance). If I'm not mistaken author's rights are not transferable here, which is sounder.

For the most part authors and screenwriters retain their rights here. The exception is work for hire, which would come up for things like documentation, or guidebooks, or other stuff commissioned by a company.

The big exception is comics. There's been a movement for creators to own their own works, but Marvel and DC do their best to avoid this. Checking a few French comics, I see that the publishers grabbed the copyright there too.

I'm not sure how magazines work. I have a book of essays by John McPhee which originally appeared in The New Yorker. It's copyright by McPhee, though issues of the magazine are copyright by the publisher.

[Ketsuban]

Printers and authors, of course. Copyrights go back to around 1500, long before corporations existed in any form we would recognize.

I felt like this might be a bit of a semantic argument - like maybe early printers were a guild or joint ventures or something, since I imagine a printing press wasn't cheap - so I tried to look it up. Caxton was a member of a London guild (the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London) but the funding for his English printing press came from the aristocracy, so that's probably not a relevant line of argument... but I did find out something interesting:

The printing press came into use in Europe in the 1400s and 1500s, and made it much cheaper to produce books. As there was initially no copyright law, anyone could buy or rent a press and print any text. Popular new works were immediately re-set and re-published by competitors, so printers needed a constant stream of new material. Fees paid to authors for new works were high, and significantly supplemented the incomes of many academics.

Given most authors won't make a significant amount of money off royalties whether copyright is five or five hundred years (citation: I mean, the 2022 survey I posted earlier, but also you tell me, zomp, you're a published author) this would suggest struggling artists should want shorter and laxer copyright if their motivation is getting compensated for their work.

[Ares Land]

The big exception is comics. There's been a movement for creators to own their own works, but Marvel and DC do their best to avoid this. Checking a few French comics, I see that the publishers grabbed the copyright there too.

Typically here the publisher get the copyright in all cases, not just comics. There are a number of rights that the authors retain anyway -- they can get full rights back if the book is out of print, for instance -- but honestly this all looks like a legal morass which I don't really understand

[Ares Land]

Given most authors won't make a significant amount of money off royalties whether copyright is five or five hundred years (citation: I mean, the 2022 survey I posted earlier, but also you tell me, zomp, you're a published author) this would suggest struggling artists should want shorter and laxer copyright if their motivation is getting compensated for their work.

As for books anyway, as far as I know, it takes years for royalties to add up to something like a half-way decent income -- book sales run on word-of-mouth, which is slow, and then there are foreign rights, translations, all of which take a lot of time, for obvious reasons. All in all this doesn't speak in favour of shorter copyright.

[zompist]

The printing press came into use in Europe in the 1400s and 1500s, and made it much cheaper to produce books. As there was initially no copyright law, anyone could buy or rent a press and print any text. Popular new works were immediately re-set and re-published by competitors, so printers needed a constant stream of new material. Fees paid to authors for new works were high, and significantly supplemented the incomes of many academics.

Given most authors won't make a significant amount of money off royalties whether copyright is five or five hundred years (citation: I mean, the 2022 survey I posted earlier, but also you tell me, zomp, you're a published author) this would suggest struggling artists should want shorter and laxer copyright if their motivation is getting compensated for their work.

Not sure how you conclude that. No copyright basically means you don't get paid for your work. Pirates don't pay you anything.

If you're referring to the "high payments" of the 1500s, well, it's not the 1500s any more. There are a lot more writers these days than outlets. I'm envious when I read about publishing a hundred years ago, when a new author would get a personalized note even if they were rejected. When I tried to submit stories, decades ago, there would be a thousand competitors and you just got a form letter. And that was when magazines accepted short stories; most of those magazines are gone. It's almost impossible to get a publisher to read your novel unless you already have an agent.

If you go to a publisher, you get royalties, which are a set fee per book sold. Most books you've heard of and read are sold by publishers-- those are the books that get reviewed, appear in bookstores, get bought by libraries, so most authors want to get a publisher. Royalties are the per-book payment made by the publisher. Most books don't sell a great number of copies, which is why most authors have day jobs.

Or you can self-publish, which is what I do. I sell enough books (over 50,000) that a traditional publisher would be interested... but only in retrospect; I don't think anyone would have taken a chance on the LCK. Also, my books are what publishers call midlist... which means they are not bestsellers, but they sell pretty consistently year after year. And that is, by the way, why Torco's three-year proposal is so ignorant and insulting: to make a living, authors, even big ones, need to write many books.

[WeepingElf]

I largely concur with zompist here. But let me add a bit of my own experience. I have written a non-fiction book about progressive rock music, and I couldn't find a publisher for it. Part of the problem is certainly that my opinion on the matter differs from that which is prevalent in the music press. So what does an editor at a publishing house do when they get a manuscript by a certain Mr. Jörg Rhiemeier, whose name they have never heard before, about progressive rock? Well, they ask Google about "jörg rhiemeier progressive rock" to check whether that guy has already written anything about that subject, and what. And voilà, the first hit is this, and that one reveals an opinion that differs quite a lot from the received mainstream opinion. Hence, they reject the manuscript before reading it So I have to self-publish it, and I am still trying to find out how best do do it.

[Raphael]

So I have to self-publish it, and I am still trying to find out how best do do it.

Good luck!