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I have a bad feeling about this

raganwald.posterous.com

151–160 of 184 posts

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#151
post #85
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your mistake is thinking about brands like Charles Dickens and Disney. Of course they make money, and of course they would continue producing work if copyright was only 20 years. What you have to think about is the author who is not famous, but who makes his living off of selling books. Not the millionaires, the ones with a regular salary. They often sell old stories to short-story collections, for example, for a few…

Do you really think it makes difference for a poor unknown author, whether he has exclusive rights for his book for 20 or 70 years? He can still sell his book after 20 years, after all. And regular people are not evil for the sake of it, if they want to buy a book, they would prefer to buy it from author, than from some opressive company. BTW new economy makes it easy to extract value from the long tail. How much doe…

> 10 % of final price? Probably less

The only two people I know personally who have published books make more money from the amazon affiliate link on their blog/website to their book than they get from the publisher. I think it's standard to get 10% of the net per book which works out to between 0% and 5% of final price depending on the publisher.

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

creating artificial scarcities to sustain someones business model is ridiculous I read your words, but all I hear you saying is "I want free media". Do you fundamentally disbelieve in the concept of paying someone for the use/enjoyment of IP they produced?

>I read your words, but all I hear you saying is "I want free media". All the media I consume nowdays is free, news, learning resources, youtube vids etc. Apart from going to cinema (but even that started to suck), and music from local bands that I pay for to support the artist. So nope, I don't want any media. >Do you fundamentally disbelieve in the concept of paying someone for the use/enjoyment of IP they produced…

That's a great idea! Provide funding for movies solely with advertising! I'm sure that will result in no conflicts of interest that will severely compromise artistic vision and reduce people to no better than buying machines.

I'm all for free flow of information and such, and the abolition of software patents and other substantial types of patent reform, but this kind of naive radicalism against all IP protection dilutes any reasonable demands for patent reforms and makes any activism look like a joke.

When you make a movie you can fund it and distribute it as you please. But it's extremely selfish and arrogant to want to benefit from other people's expensive endeavors, for which they are requesting a small fee to view, and give jack shit in return. By viewing the material you are admitting that there is at least some potential value in it, but by refusing to pay for it you are basically saying the movie studios and artists and writers and others can go ahead and close shop already, because you don't consider their business model viable and refuse to contribute anything.

I agree nice entitlement complex you have going there.

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#153

The BBC commissioned a study [1] that claims the Charles Dicken's brand brings in about £280m/year to the UK's economy. This from a public domain "brand". Meanwhile companies like Disney lobby for perpetual copyright to protect their own interest at the cost of all the lost opportunities that will never exist. I don't understand how politicians in the free enterprise countries, especially American republicans with th…

The stated goal of copyright protection in the United States is to "...promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Given Disney's fierce protection of ancient copyrights and attempts to have their length endlessly extended AND the importance Disney places on their old properties... would a shorter copyright term in fact meet this goal better by forcing Disney to produce new characters and new series? There is l…

Actually, disney makes very poor use of the characters that they keep rehashing. If mickey mouse was freed, we'd see tens of thousands of creative works every year based on him, instead of the handful we're getting now.

The value to society of leaving disney the ownership of mckey mouse is a net negative. More people would make more money on a freed mickey mouse.

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#154
post #149

Excellent article, but I found this paragraph unclear: " And that’s just how they run politics. If you want to create the future, the possibility of successfully navigating a patent minefield is approximately 3,720 to 1. And I noticed earlier, the electoral motivator has been damaged. It's impossible to go to political innovation speed. "

[deleted]

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#155
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on how the person wishes to be rewarded (within reason) hence my previous comment about how "value" differs per person.

The simplest way to do that is to reward that person with money, which the person may latter exchange for whatever is "valuable" to him.

Until the seller decides to monopolise the valuable items (Monsanto).

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#156
post #113
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remove money from the picture entirely and ask yourself what you'd like to recieve in exchange for your work. If there is not a "fair value" then it probably shouldn't be being done. If it's for personal interest, don't expect a fair value for it. People expect and somehow manage to get money at the moment for shit which is the problem. When you put something on the free market, you are opening it to opinion and othe…

I want the things I can exchange money for: food, housing, gadgets, bicycles, cars, stuff for my family, vacations, and so on. Edit: I'll add the most important one, too: time. I like my job, I like coding, but I also like to do things like ride my bike, spend time with my kids, and so on. The more money I have, the more I can choose to do those things (simplifying a lot).

You have missed a bit there. The less responsibility you have, the more time you have. You are paying to lose some of your artificial responsibility. Cut some of the middle-man out (money) and some real responsibility and the net effect is the same. Less things, less ownership, less dependency.

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#157
post #156
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want the things I can exchange money for: food, housing, gadgets, bicycles, cars, stuff for my family, vacations, and so on. Edit: I'll add the most important one, too: time. I like my job, I like coding, but I also like to do things like ride my bike, spend time with my kids, and so on. The more money I have, the more I can choose to do those things (simplifying a lot).

You have missed a bit there. The less responsibility you have, the more time you have. You are paying to lose some of your artificial responsibility. Cut some of the middle-man out (money) and some real responsibility and the net effect is the same. Less things, less ownership, less dependency.

What with two children, I can assure you that my responsibility is anything but artificial. And no, I don't think I'm going to give them up anytime soon.

Now, do you have something concrete to discuss or not?

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why is money the sole metric of wealth. How much value does open source provide - take linux for eg. which is used in pretty much every aspect of computing these days - from cell phones to super computers - how much value has it provided to the consumers and allowed developers/researchers/manufacturers to produce ?" What unit would you use to measure the value it provides, if not money? "Apply that to every major op…

>What unit would you use to measure the value it provides, if not money? I'm against quantifying it at all because, while useful, price is a very limited metric. There are numerous cases where you can increase the transaction sum and achieve 0 value increase, eg. monopolistic pricing in a market with inelastic demand or bad investing (destroying capital) or externalities, etc. >I don't understand the point you're mak…

> knowledge is a non-rivalrous non-excludable good

You sound like you know what you're talking about here. What you're claiming is that digital media is a public good. I can live with that definition. It's certainly non-rival, and in practice is fairly non-excludable.

You then go on to claim that companies should just find a way to survive without copyright. The problem with this approach is that the creation of these public goods will be far below the social optimum without some sort of market interventions [1].

I definitely don't think that aggressive copyright law is the correct way to address the free rider problem. However, I think that it's shortsighted to create a necessarily inefficient market. It makes sense that companies like Disney want longer copyright, as that's how they capture the positive externalites of their work, and are able to keep producing it. Someone who is politically savvy and trying to solve this problem would look through possible solutions to the free-rider problem [2] and use them to formulate a way that producers and consumers can both benefit from relaxed copyright laws.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#The_free_rider_prob...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Possible_solutions

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#159
post #157
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have missed a bit there. The less responsibility you have, the more time you have. You are paying to lose some of your artificial responsibility. Cut some of the middle-man out (money) and some real responsibility and the net effect is the same. Less things, less ownership, less dependency.

What with two children, I can assure you that my responsibility is anything but artificial. And no, I don't think I'm going to give them up anytime soon. Now, do you have something concrete to discuss or not?

I have two children too. They are the only non-artificial responsibility.

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#160

The BBC commissioned a study [1] that claims the Charles Dicken's brand brings in about £280m/year to the UK's economy. This from a public domain "brand". Meanwhile companies like Disney lobby for perpetual copyright to protect their own interest at the cost of all the lost opportunities that will never exist. I don't understand how politicians in the free enterprise countries, especially American republicans with th…

> American republicans with their distaste of market regulation

Don't confuse constituents with politicians. Politicians esp at national level want whatever their corporate campaign donors desire. They are all for regulation that benefits their "friends".

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