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Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money

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Re: Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money

#31

Post by CJefferson »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #20
Silhouette wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't mistake the fact that I didn't bother debunking each individual point from the article here on Hacker News for either ignorance or apathy with regard to IP laws. I'm well aware of the opposing point of view and the common arguments made in its favour. I just haven't yet seen any real evidence that supports the kind of absurdly generic claim made by Falkvinge in this article. And to be frank, I'm unlikely…

I'd make a blanket response to your "Shame if you..." points as follows: Maybe those ships have sailed and society has no need of those things anymore. If society needs those things it will find a way to pay for them. If it can't, it doesn't need them. An industry's failure to create a sustainable business model in the face of the reality that technology has created isn't a failing of the technology. It would be nice…

Clearly society wants AAA games and blockbuster movies, people spend huge amounts of money playing / watching them. Society has already found a way to pay for them, it's called copyright.

I would be interested in a survey of the public, which said we can dump copyright, in return for losing almost all high cost games, movies and TV. I would guess the majority of people would vote to keep copyright.

Re: Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money

#32

Post by njs12345 »

rayiner wrote: post #28
njs12345 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright isn't about incentivizing innovation. "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." -- United States Constitution

The Constitution was written long before copyright and patent were put on sound economic footing.

Can you provide a citation for your opposing view? Here's a more recent quote from the Supreme Court:

Creative work is to be encouraged and rewarded, but private motivation must ultimately serve the cause of promoting broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts. The immediate effect of our copyright law is to secure a fair return for an author's creative labor. But the ultimate aim is, by this incentive, to stimulate artistic creativity for the general public good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogerty_v._Fantasy

Re: Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money

#33

Post by icebraining »

rayiner wrote: post #23
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Copyright isn't about incentivizing innovation. It's about preventing free-riding. Why is free-riding bad unless it reduces the incentive for innovation? If half the world can free-ride on something with no marginal cost that will be produced regardless of the free-riding, the result is greater economic efficiency. >You think any sensible VC would have invested in Microsoft if there was nothing preventing Tandy, etc…

> Why is free-riding bad unless it reduces the incentive for innovation? Free-riding is a narrower concept than simply reduced incentives. There are lots of different incentives and lots of different ways to increase or reduce incentives, but free-riding addresses the specific case of where the ability to copy a design cheaply and easily and thus undercut the inventor reduces or eliminates the incentive to invest in…

I disagree with your Android example:

- It's not technically true that you can't make money selling Linux, but even if it wasn't, it's a red herring; Google could certainly sell Android. The reason they don't has to do with their business model, nothing else.

- It's not true that you can't make money selling it to cell phone developers. What you do is not charge for current software, but for future development. As an employee of a company which sells GPL licensed software, I can tell you it's a very viable business model.

- Google could also charge for access to their services, including App Store.

Secondly, the idea that you are spied upon because it's free is very naive; how do you think Apple's Ad network (iAd) can target Demographics, Application preferences, Music passions, Movie, TV and audiobook genre interests and even Location? Guess what: the consumer is paying with cash and their privacy.

Re: Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money

#34

Post by stevewilhelm »

manaskarekar wrote: post #8
vibrunazo wrote: post #4

Imagine if, before intellectual property, you put 20 smart people in a room, and tell them to come up with solutions to add incentives for creative works. None of them would have come up with "Hey! Why don't we grant inventors monopolies over inventions! We could increase the ammount and quality of inventions by limiting what others can invent!". No one would ever think that's a good idea. It's completely backwards a…

"The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying." -- John Carmack. http://web.archive.org/web/20010124060000/www.voodooextreme....

Or when presented with a problem, one could do a patent search, license the existing technology, and build something even more innovative.

Re: Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money

#35

Post by rayiner »

icebraining wrote: post #33
rayiner wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is free-riding bad unless it reduces the incentive for innovation? Free-riding is a narrower concept than simply reduced incentives. There are lots of different incentives and lots of different ways to increase or reduce incentives, but free-riding addresses the specific case of where the ability to copy a design cheaply and easily and thus undercut the inventor reduces or eliminates the incentive to invest in…

I disagree with your Android example: - It's not technically true that you can't make money selling Linux, but even if it wasn't, it's a red herring; Google could certainly sell Android . The reason they don't has to do with their business model, nothing else. - It's not true that you can't make money selling it to cell phone developers. What you do is not charge for current software, but for future development. As a…

> What you do is not charge for current software, but for future development. As an employee of a company which sells GPL licensed software, I can tell you it's a very viable business model.

It's a viable business model in the small, not when you're developing software for a huge market where a handful of customers can't bankroll future versions of the software.

> Secondly, the idea that you are spied upon because it's free is very naive; how do you think Apple's Ad network (iAd) can target Demographics, Application preferences, Music passions, Movie, TV and audiobook genre interests and even Location? Guess what: the consumer is paying with cash and their privacy.

The point is that when companies cannot sell the software directly, they need to rely on alternative monetization models. A lot of those monetization models involve privacy-invasion through advertising, etc. Paying for software doesn't eliminate that obviously, but rather when software can't be sold as a product the equilibrium moves to a very different place.

Re: Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money

#36

Post by EvanAnderson »

CJefferson wrote: post #31
EvanAnderson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd make a blanket response to your "Shame if you..." points as follows: Maybe those ships have sailed and society has no need of those things anymore. If society needs those things it will find a way to pay for them. If it can't, it doesn't need them. An industry's failure to create a sustainable business model in the face of the reality that technology has created isn't a failing of the technology. It would be nice…

Clearly society wants AAA games and blockbuster movies, people spend huge amounts of money playing / watching them. Society has already found a way to pay for them, it's called copyright. I would be interested in a survey of the public, which said we can dump copyright, in return for losing almost all high cost games, movies and TV. I would guess the majority of people would vote to keep copyright.

I don't know that the public realizes what they're giving up in "consideration" for what they're receiving. I think that arguing about absolute positions on copyright is silly. Throwing out copyright is a bad idea, but what we have in the US now-- de facto eternal copyright starving out the public domain-- is at least equally as bad.

Re: Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money

#37

Post by EvanAnderson »

Silhouette wrote: post #21
EvanAnderson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd make a blanket response to your "Shame if you..." points as follows: Maybe those ships have sailed and society has no need of those things anymore. If society needs those things it will find a way to pay for them. If it can't, it doesn't need them. An industry's failure to create a sustainable business model in the face of the reality that technology has created isn't a failing of the technology. It would be nice…

If society needs those things it will find a way to pay for them. If it can't, it doesn't need them. I don't accept your premise. The situation is too similar to a tragedy of the commons, with a large dose of ignorance mixed in: most people outside the creative industries have no idea how much hard work by how many different kinds of people ultimately contributes to that smash hit music recording or novel or computer…

I can't accept the premise that society simply wants "higher creative values". Just because the technology exists to make movies, for example, that feature photorealistic CGI robots throwing buildings at each other doesn't mean that such technology (and its requisite expense) _has_ to be incorporated into every movie. High production values exist, but that doesn't mean every creative product must have them. Consumers still purchase licenses for works with lower production values if the work is compelling. It may be that the factors supporting the finance of works with large creation expense are just an aberration and will disappear. I'm not arguing morality or a position on copyright-- I'm simply saying that if it becomes impossible to profit with works that cost a lot to make then nobody will make those works anymore. Technology has changed the landscape, and unless you're willing to live in a police state with strict regulations on general purpose computing and communications technology, that genie isn't getting back in the bottle.

Re: Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money

#38

Post by rayiner »

njs12345 wrote: post #32
rayiner wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Constitution was written long before copyright and patent were put on sound economic footing.

Can you provide a citation for your opposing view? Here's a more recent quote from the Supreme Court: Creative work is to be encouraged and rewarded, but private motivation must ultimately serve the cause of promoting broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts. The immediate effect of our copyright law is to secure a fair return for an author's creative labor. But the ultimate aim is, by this…

Mark Lemley's paper on the subject is my go-to: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=582602

Re: Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money

#39

Post by doug363 »

petegrif wrote: post #12
manaskarekar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying." -- John Carmack. http://web.archive.org/web/20010124060000/www.voodooextreme....

I may be horrifying but rediscovering something is not the same as inventing it.

Why do you say they're not the same? I would tend to think that they are essentially the same.

Re: Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money

#40

Post by chii »

stevewilhelm wrote: post #34
manaskarekar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying." -- John Carmack. http://web.archive.org/web/20010124060000/www.voodooextreme....

Or when presented with a problem, one could do a patent search, license the existing technology, and build something even more innovative.

this will work if the tech is sufficiently innovative, and is difficult to implement, and is not at all obvious that such piece of tech is the solution to such a problem.

However, some of the patents i've seen being battled out in court is about the _shape_ of a phone. Rounded corners. Swipe, pinch to zoom, and bounce when reached the end of a list.

These things are not worthy of being patented, and none of them are non-obvious enough to be called innovative. it is at these patents that ruin the system.

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