From: Billy Brown (bbrown@conemsco.com)
Date: Wed May 05 1999 - 10:16:10 MDT
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> That's partly true, in practice. But a finding of fraud would not
> require harm to the author--it would require harm to the consumer,
> also hard to prove but not impossible. In a world without copyrights,
> the author's physical availability, timeliness, and other intangibles
> will have significant monetary value beyond the mere product. One
> who represents that ey can provide those values when ey cannot has
> done measurable, prosecutable harm to customers and to the reputation
> of the original author. In a world without copyrights, these things
> would have to be taken more seriously by the courts; today, authors
> rely on copyrights instead.
Under current law, the customer can't do a thing about it unless he can
prove monetary damages. In most cases there is no such harm, or it is
purely hypothetical (and thus almost impossible to prove). If the purloined
item is a peice of software you might conceivably have a case, but for
something like a book or a song you're going to be laughed out of court.
What you are realy looking for here is a new, much more expansive fraud
statute that makes lying about the origin of a work illegal per se.
> > If I post someone's work as my own, we have the case mentioned above.
> > If I publish it with no attribution at all, the only law I have
> > violated is the copyright.
>
> And your point is?
You claimed that copyright law is purely a matter of forcing payment. I'm
pointing out that this is not the case. Copyright is the only law that
prevents wholesale alteration and misattribution of intellectual property by
anyone who cares to do so. If you want to abolish copyright, you will need
to set up some other system to handle these issues - unless you favor making
all of these activities legal.
> That's two different contentions that you intermix: (1) destroying the
> value of the work itself, and (2) destroying the artists' means of
> making money.
There is no such thing as intrinsic economic value. The amount of money you
can sell a work for depends entirely on the context (social, legal and
economic) in which you are making the sale. Changing copyright law changes
this context, and can easily have very large effects on the outcome.
Abolishing copyright makes it almost impossible to establish any meaningful
property right to a work, and therefore makes it very difficult to make
money by selling it.
> Today, because of copyright, it is assumed that they
> are the same thing--artists make money by selling their works. In a
> world without copyrights, things change, but artists still
> make money--probably more--just in different ways. Value is created by
> demand, and the creative talents of artists will always be in demand.
Really? How? If you abolish copyright, their products are no longer even
recognized as property.
In a medium that is difficult and expensive to duplicate, you might be
correct. However, we are rapidly moving towards a world where just about
anything can be duplicated quickly and easily. This creates a world in
which some sort of copyright enforcement far more important than in the
past.
For an example, lets look at the music industry. Here we have a product
that can be duplicated for just about zero cost, sold over the Internet, and
stored and duplicated ad infinitum by the customer. If mass duplication
were legal, who exactly would have enough bargaining power left to actually
get paid?
Well, music distribution companies could earn a small return by offering a
convenient place to find high-quality recordings. Music production outfits
could earn a meager living making recordings for the distributors. No one
can get a competitive advantage by originating new content, because it can
be copied by all the major distributors within a matter of hours. So, the
distributors still want a stream of new products to sell, but they can't
afford to spend much money on them.
The most likely result is a world where composers and musicians are paid
tiny sums of money (propably on an hourly or salaried basis), profit margins
are razor-thin for the entire industry, music is very cheap - and really
talented individuals find something more profitable to do with their lives.
So, do you disagree with my analysis, or is this the kind of world you want?
> Today, authors do free tours to support book sales. Without
> copyright, they'd probably sell books to advertise profit-making personal
> appearances or other services. Books and movies would have more
> advertisements.
Personal appearances have profit potential only for a tiny group of
especially famous authors. For everyone else, they are an advertising
expense that the publishers fund in order to boost sales.
Without copyright, the publishing industry would still be controlled by the
publishers (since actually manufacturing the books would be the major
expense). Popular authors would make a little more than musicians, since it
takes longer to copy a new book than it does to duplicate a new album.
However, the basic dynamic is the same - the content creators loose all of
their bargaining power, and end up being owned by distribution and/or
manufacturing companies.
> There would be a lot of cheap knock-off works, so official
> endorsements and recommendations would carry more weight (and therefore
> more value).
So I, the consumer, will pay extra for a book that's endorsed by a famous
author, and he'll get a kickback? I don't think so. I'll walk over to the
next rack, and buy an identical book from a different company for $1 less.
After all, it would be perfectly legal for a different company to duplicate
the endorsement without paying for it.
> Without copyrights, the artist's research is cheap and easy.
Most research is already cheap and easy. Where it is not, the costs have
more to do with technological limitations than copyright issues. Software
development is the only field I can think of where getting rid of copyrights
would have a meaningful benificial result in this respect - and I've already
said I think that is a completely different case.
> Ey gets hired for a lot more one-off work doing things like news and
> commercials.
How exactly would the absence of copyright make content creators bigger
celebrities? Or are you saying celebrity appearances would be more in
demand for some reason? Unless one of these things is true, you are simply
saying "they'll go find work in some other idustry". Presumably true, but
it is not a benificial result.
Billy Brown, MCSE+I
bbrown@conemsco.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:03:40 MST