The Truth is Paywalled but the Lies are Free
August 4, 2020 3:36 PM Subscribe
The Truth is Paywalled but the Lies are Free "let us briefly picture what 'totally democratic and accessible knowledge' would look like."
Let us imagine just how much time would be saved in this informational utopia. Do I want minute 15 of the 1962 Czechoslovak film Man In Outer Space? Four seconds from my thought until it begins. Do I want page 17 of the Daily Mirror from 1985? Even less time. Every public Defense Department document concerning Vietnam from the Eisenhower administration? Page 150 of Frank Capra’s autobiography? Page 400 of an economics textbook from 1995? All in front of me, in full, in less than the length of time it takes to type this sentence. How much faster would research be in such a situation? How much more could be accomplished if knowledge were not fragmented and in the possession of a thousand private gatekeepers?
Let us imagine just how much time would be saved in this informational utopia. Do I want minute 15 of the 1962 Czechoslovak film Man In Outer Space? Four seconds from my thought until it begins. Do I want page 17 of the Daily Mirror from 1985? Even less time. Every public Defense Department document concerning Vietnam from the Eisenhower administration? Page 150 of Frank Capra’s autobiography? Page 400 of an economics textbook from 1995? All in front of me, in full, in less than the length of time it takes to type this sentence. How much faster would research be in such a situation? How much more could be accomplished if knowledge were not fragmented and in the possession of a thousand private gatekeepers?
The lies are subsidized by shadowy (who funds the Federalist?) and not so shadowy actors. The truth operates within the constraints of capitalism, which also has little interest in the unvarnished truth.
posted by sjswitzer at 4:13 PM on August 4, 2020 [7 favorites]
posted by sjswitzer at 4:13 PM on August 4, 2020 [7 favorites]
I'm a sucker for this kind of utopianism, but this was the same kind of hope that abounded in the early days of the internet. Then the utopian entrepreneurs came along and here we are.
posted by mecran01 at 4:13 PM on August 4, 2020 [15 favorites]
posted by mecran01 at 4:13 PM on August 4, 2020 [15 favorites]
Once again, creative works are not fucking ideas, and therein lies the problem with this piece. The reality is that creative labor is exactly that - labor - and thus needs to be compensated for. The problem (which Robinson dodges) is that we have culturally devalued creative labor. It's telling that Robinson's "solution" is "create a system where creators are funded through taxes without the government using the power of the purse to control their output", instead of "let's pay creators."
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:21 PM on August 4, 2020 [19 favorites]
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:21 PM on August 4, 2020 [19 favorites]
Yes, but witness how on Metafilter, a site where the users care about the truth and quality more than the average person, every thread on paywalls is basically people saying they refuse to pay for content and every thread on online advertisement is, "lol, I block those." And then complain about the quality of the media.
dead people cannot be incentivized to be creative, thus at least everything ever created by a person who is now dead should be made freely available to all.
The premise of royalties is basically that you get paid out over a number of years. Copyright needs to be reformed, but a young parent shouldn't have to choose between working a reliable day job that is guaranteed to pay immediately vs. a creative work that will pay off over time but leave their child destitute if they die.
posted by Candleman at 4:22 PM on August 4, 2020 [14 favorites]
dead people cannot be incentivized to be creative, thus at least everything ever created by a person who is now dead should be made freely available to all.
The premise of royalties is basically that you get paid out over a number of years. Copyright needs to be reformed, but a young parent shouldn't have to choose between working a reliable day job that is guaranteed to pay immediately vs. a creative work that will pay off over time but leave their child destitute if they die.
posted by Candleman at 4:22 PM on August 4, 2020 [14 favorites]
I went through a big Mark Twain phase (you might say I was a Twain stan, a joke for people who know my name) but he was a real crusader for copyright protection for the estates of deceased authors and that, among other things, has soured me on him.
posted by sjswitzer at 4:24 PM on August 4, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by sjswitzer at 4:24 PM on August 4, 2020 [2 favorites]
It seems reasonable to just set a moderate copyright length and be done with it. Death is kind of an arbitrary marker, as it will depend greatly on when someone creates something (and cutting off revenue super early due to death has consequences as Candleman says).
The US standard of "life + 70 years" or "120 years" [depending on whether its creator owned or Work For Hire] is way too long.
posted by thefoxgod at 4:27 PM on August 4, 2020 [10 favorites]
The US standard of "life + 70 years" or "120 years" [depending on whether its creator owned or Work For Hire] is way too long.
posted by thefoxgod at 4:27 PM on August 4, 2020 [10 favorites]
The problem is ownership: nobody is allowed to build a giant free database of everything human beings have ever produced.
Weirdly, GPT-3 slots into this, too. OpenAI scraped the entire web and fed it into its gaping maw, and the result is an AI that can be queried on any topic that it's been informed about (which is most of them, but totally indiscriminately, so you'll get a lot of nonsense). Of course, you have to pay OpenAI a fee, never mind that quite a lot of its knowledge was siphoned out of Wikipedia.
posted by BungaDunga at 4:38 PM on August 4, 2020 [2 favorites]
Weirdly, GPT-3 slots into this, too. OpenAI scraped the entire web and fed it into its gaping maw, and the result is an AI that can be queried on any topic that it's been informed about (which is most of them, but totally indiscriminately, so you'll get a lot of nonsense). Of course, you have to pay OpenAI a fee, never mind that quite a lot of its knowledge was siphoned out of Wikipedia.
posted by BungaDunga at 4:38 PM on August 4, 2020 [2 favorites]
Really, the first time a person called themselves an entrepreneur, they should get a slap. The second time, a punch, the third time, the gallows. Burn out the infection.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:48 PM on August 4, 2020 [14 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:48 PM on August 4, 2020 [14 favorites]
I want to respond to almost every one of these great comments, but the lack of threading and my own laziness will spare you most of my bloviation. That said,
Really, the first time a person called themselves an entrepreneur, they should get a slap. The second time, a punch, the third time, the gallows. Burn out the infection.
posted by GenjiandProust
I think we found out Thomas Cromwell's Mefi username!
On Twain: Yeah, but he lost a fortune and was probably so wracked with guilt about his family that he wanted to leave them something in perpetuity.
[two minutes of Googling later]
No, I'm completely wrong. He left the equivalent of 14 million dollars to his two daughters.
posted by mecran01 at 4:55 PM on August 4, 2020 [8 favorites]
Really, the first time a person called themselves an entrepreneur, they should get a slap. The second time, a punch, the third time, the gallows. Burn out the infection.
posted by GenjiandProust
I think we found out Thomas Cromwell's Mefi username!
On Twain: Yeah, but he lost a fortune and was probably so wracked with guilt about his family that he wanted to leave them something in perpetuity.
[two minutes of Googling later]
No, I'm completely wrong. He left the equivalent of 14 million dollars to his two daughters.
posted by mecran01 at 4:55 PM on August 4, 2020 [8 favorites]
never mind that quite a lot of its knowledge was siphoned out of Wikipedia.
And a good chunk of Wikipedia has been edited, adding value, by this guy's three million edits, and you know he's not seeing any real money from that. I wish those nagging banners from the cash-heavy Wikipedia were just Pruitt's Venmo address.
posted by mecran01 at 4:59 PM on August 4, 2020 [4 favorites]
And a good chunk of Wikipedia has been edited, adding value, by this guy's three million edits, and you know he's not seeing any real money from that. I wish those nagging banners from the cash-heavy Wikipedia were just Pruitt's Venmo address.
posted by mecran01 at 4:59 PM on August 4, 2020 [4 favorites]
Yes, but witness how on Metafilter, a site where the users care about the truth and quality more than the average person, every thread on paywalls is basically people saying they refuse to pay for content and every thread on online advertisement is, "lol, I block those." And then complain about the quality of the media.
Perhaps this is because we're all being underpaid and drowning in debt. I would happily pay for subscriptions for many, many things if I had more than $50 after bills every month, but I don't. And advertisements are blocked for their history of either actively involving malicious tracking or being gross and triggering.
posted by brook horse at 5:13 PM on August 4, 2020 [27 favorites]
Perhaps this is because we're all being underpaid and drowning in debt. I would happily pay for subscriptions for many, many things if I had more than $50 after bills every month, but I don't. And advertisements are blocked for their history of either actively involving malicious tracking or being gross and triggering.
posted by brook horse at 5:13 PM on August 4, 2020 [27 favorites]
Once again, creative works are not fucking ideas, and therein lies the problem with this piece. The reality is that creative labor is exactly that - labor - and thus needs to be compensated for.
Edward R. Murrow: “Who owns the patent on this vaccine?”
Jonas Salk: “Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”
posted by mhoye at 5:27 PM on August 4, 2020 [6 favorites]
Edward R. Murrow: “Who owns the patent on this vaccine?”
Jonas Salk: “Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”
posted by mhoye at 5:27 PM on August 4, 2020 [6 favorites]
Yes, but witness how on Metafilter, a site where the users care about the truth and quality more than the average person, every thread on paywalls is basically people saying they refuse to pay for content and every thread on online advertisement is, "lol, I block those."
OK, I'll bite. The choice always seems to be between letting outlets partner with ad services for mere cents per user (me!) per month, where those ad services track, gather, collate, commodify, and exploit our data - and more than once in a while serve up a nice helping of spyware on the side, or pay a subscription to the company somewhere between 1000x and 10,000x what they otherwise make on me in advertisement.
I'm happy to give them a 10x premium on what they'd make from me for serving ads, but literally almost nobody is interested. They want their 1000x to 10,000x. Well? When a company shows what they make on me for advertising, and in exchange allows me to pay them a generous premium rather than obscene, extortionate premium to avoid ads? I'll pony up. And for some outlets? I do. Hint: it's not the ones that are trying to get more out of me per month than Netflix for a handful of stories that I read.
posted by tclark at 5:41 PM on August 4, 2020 [16 favorites]
OK, I'll bite. The choice always seems to be between letting outlets partner with ad services for mere cents per user (me!) per month, where those ad services track, gather, collate, commodify, and exploit our data - and more than once in a while serve up a nice helping of spyware on the side, or pay a subscription to the company somewhere between 1000x and 10,000x what they otherwise make on me in advertisement.
I'm happy to give them a 10x premium on what they'd make from me for serving ads, but literally almost nobody is interested. They want their 1000x to 10,000x. Well? When a company shows what they make on me for advertising, and in exchange allows me to pay them a generous premium rather than obscene, extortionate premium to avoid ads? I'll pony up. And for some outlets? I do. Hint: it's not the ones that are trying to get more out of me per month than Netflix for a handful of stories that I read.
posted by tclark at 5:41 PM on August 4, 2020 [16 favorites]
Advertiser supported media is not a bad model, per se. The Internet broke it in several ways.
First, it became insanely cheap due to near-infinite supply, meaning publishers make less per person who sees each ad.
Second, it became invasive—taking control of user's computers, opening windows, playing music, inspiring users and browser makers to
Third, it became infested with middlemen, making the industry rife with fraud and abuse.
And fourth, it became invasive again, in a new way, collecting reams of data on people who view it, correlating it with social media, all in the name of "relevance," meaning I'll get ads for cat food to feed a cat I don't have because I happened to like cat pics on Instagram.
I would love to see at least one of these new journalism websites created by fired employees of some big media company take the approach of selling their own ads in a model closer to newspaper print ads. "You get put in front of x many people. You don't know who they are. You just get to see who clicked through. No animation. No audio. No pop-ups. And you pay us, not some middleman."
posted by SansPoint at 5:45 PM on August 4, 2020 [19 favorites]
First, it became insanely cheap due to near-infinite supply, meaning publishers make less per person who sees each ad.
Second, it became invasive—taking control of user's computers, opening windows, playing music, inspiring users and browser makers to
Third, it became infested with middlemen, making the industry rife with fraud and abuse.
And fourth, it became invasive again, in a new way, collecting reams of data on people who view it, correlating it with social media, all in the name of "relevance," meaning I'll get ads for cat food to feed a cat I don't have because I happened to like cat pics on Instagram.
I would love to see at least one of these new journalism websites created by fired employees of some big media company take the approach of selling their own ads in a model closer to newspaper print ads. "You get put in front of x many people. You don't know who they are. You just get to see who clicked through. No animation. No audio. No pop-ups. And you pay us, not some middleman."
posted by SansPoint at 5:45 PM on August 4, 2020 [19 favorites]
I've always had this idea since college (so, like twenty years ago) of either (from my perspective who isn't reasonably can be expected to have annual or even monthly subscriptions to NYT, LAT, The Times, The Independent, Foreign Policy, and news from Canadian, Australian and NZ outlets, as well as English outlets regionally at the same time, considering how far my actual currency can go) 1. Why can't I at least have the option of being tolled at the gate for just that one article (or maybe max. 3?) Or, 2. Why isn't there a network where I can use the digital equivalent of a book of vouchers that I've paid to access a range of articles?
The closest I've seen is paid apps with access to some of the main papers but I don't just want that necessarily --- there's a lot of subregional papers I would never be reading otherwise except for that one piece of reporting that went viral.
Anyway, that's been an idea.
posted by cendawanita at 5:58 PM on August 4, 2020 [6 favorites]
The closest I've seen is paid apps with access to some of the main papers but I don't just want that necessarily --- there's a lot of subregional papers I would never be reading otherwise except for that one piece of reporting that went viral.
Anyway, that's been an idea.
posted by cendawanita at 5:58 PM on August 4, 2020 [6 favorites]
You can pay per article for academic articles, but they're at least $20 a pop.
posted by BungaDunga at 5:59 PM on August 4, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by BungaDunga at 5:59 PM on August 4, 2020 [1 favorite]
a creative work that will pay off over time but leave their child destitute if they die.
I sigh in agony every time the pooor sighing widers & orphelans argument is dragged out; Hey orphan: get a job.
It's just THE MOUSE wanting to eat up all of the public domain forever.
posted by ovvl at 6:05 PM on August 4, 2020 [13 favorites]
I sigh in agony every time the pooor sighing widers & orphelans argument is dragged out; Hey orphan: get a job.
It's just THE MOUSE wanting to eat up all of the public domain forever.
posted by ovvl at 6:05 PM on August 4, 2020 [13 favorites]
Jonas Salk: “Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun
And, lo and behold, the copyright statues allow for some flexibility of copyright enforcement. So if I, as a songwriter, decide that one of my songs is the equivalent of the polio vaccine (admittedly, a position of astounding egotism, but nevermind), a thing that would quite literally prevent thousands of deaths, I could choose to not bother to go after those who choose to copy and distribute that song, making it defacto free as the sun.
This would not prevent me from taking my next best song (which, in this ridiculous analogy, would be, I dunno, ibuprofen?) and make a living by receiving income from the sale of copies of that song.
This is also a bad analogy because Salk developed vaccines as part of his day job that he received a salary for. When you find a nice salaried songwriter job at $50k a year plus benefits, you be sure to let us know.
And on top of that, lawyers from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis had looked into patenting the Salk Vaccine and concluded that it could not be patented because of prior art — that it would not be considered a patentable invention by standards of the day.
I in no way disagree with the general point that copyright & patents & trademark could use a healthy overhaul and de-corporatization, but don't try to claim the moral high road based on false equivalency.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:27 PM on August 4, 2020 [7 favorites]
And, lo and behold, the copyright statues allow for some flexibility of copyright enforcement. So if I, as a songwriter, decide that one of my songs is the equivalent of the polio vaccine (admittedly, a position of astounding egotism, but nevermind), a thing that would quite literally prevent thousands of deaths, I could choose to not bother to go after those who choose to copy and distribute that song, making it defacto free as the sun.
This would not prevent me from taking my next best song (which, in this ridiculous analogy, would be, I dunno, ibuprofen?) and make a living by receiving income from the sale of copies of that song.
This is also a bad analogy because Salk developed vaccines as part of his day job that he received a salary for. When you find a nice salaried songwriter job at $50k a year plus benefits, you be sure to let us know.
And on top of that, lawyers from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis had looked into patenting the Salk Vaccine and concluded that it could not be patented because of prior art — that it would not be considered a patentable invention by standards of the day.
I in no way disagree with the general point that copyright & patents & trademark could use a healthy overhaul and de-corporatization, but don't try to claim the moral high road based on false equivalency.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:27 PM on August 4, 2020 [7 favorites]
METAFILTER: Hey orphan: get a job.
posted by philip-random at 6:43 PM on August 4, 2020 [10 favorites]
posted by philip-random at 6:43 PM on August 4, 2020 [10 favorites]
can I have some more, Mr. Bumble.
posted by clavdivs at 7:05 PM on August 4, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by clavdivs at 7:05 PM on August 4, 2020 [1 favorite]
You can pay per article for academic articles, but they're at least $20 a pop.
there is that, and then that gets into how academic publishing can use their own reform, but i'm rly just talking about news/journalism articles for now. it's not just for the big names in the anglosphere for example, but many media outlets in the global south see a lot of exposure with no immediate rise in earnings.
posted by cendawanita at 7:09 PM on August 4, 2020 [2 favorites]
there is that, and then that gets into how academic publishing can use their own reform, but i'm rly just talking about news/journalism articles for now. it's not just for the big names in the anglosphere for example, but many media outlets in the global south see a lot of exposure with no immediate rise in earnings.
posted by cendawanita at 7:09 PM on August 4, 2020 [2 favorites]
It's telling that Robinson's "solution" is "create a system where creators are funded through taxes without the government using the power of the purse to control their output", instead of "let's pay creators."
I agree, an over class of parasites controlling all human knowledge for their own benefit wouldn't be a problem if people just didn't use adblockers and subscribed to a few patreons.
posted by Reyturner at 8:27 PM on August 4, 2020 [4 favorites]
I agree, an over class of parasites controlling all human knowledge for their own benefit wouldn't be a problem if people just didn't use adblockers and subscribed to a few patreons.
posted by Reyturner at 8:27 PM on August 4, 2020 [4 favorites]
take the approach of selling their own ads in a model closer to newspaper print ads.
DaringFireball do this and it seems to be working out well.
posted by Lanark at 8:35 AM on August 5, 2020 [2 favorites]
DaringFireball do this and it seems to be working out well.
posted by Lanark at 8:35 AM on August 5, 2020 [2 favorites]
Lanark: True, but Daring Fireball is a niche site. Let's see someone more general interest try it.
posted by SansPoint at 9:45 AM on August 5, 2020
posted by SansPoint at 9:45 AM on August 5, 2020
And a good chunk of Wikipedia has been edited, adding value, by this guy's three million edits, and you know he's not seeing any real money from that.
If he was seeing real money from that, I assure you he wouldn’t have made three million edits. Someone tried to create a Wikipedia where the contributors were paid and it died because Wikipedia largely runs on people thinking they’re contributing to something they value. If you pay people, they forget about their intrinsic reasons for doing things and then realise that the economics are not in their favour.
posted by Merus at 9:17 PM on August 5, 2020 [2 favorites]
If he was seeing real money from that, I assure you he wouldn’t have made three million edits. Someone tried to create a Wikipedia where the contributors were paid and it died because Wikipedia largely runs on people thinking they’re contributing to something they value. If you pay people, they forget about their intrinsic reasons for doing things and then realise that the economics are not in their favour.
posted by Merus at 9:17 PM on August 5, 2020 [2 favorites]
I wonder if these media sites that sell subscriptions could sell a plus subscription where, not only do you get to see the articles, but also the site allows X anonymous views per month. I'd pay extra for that, back when I paid for a monthly news subscription at one of the bigger names.
posted by quillbreaker at 11:47 PM on August 5, 2020
posted by quillbreaker at 11:47 PM on August 5, 2020
The really depressing thing here is that we've known copyright has been incredibly broken since at least the 90s, and here it is 2020. It's hard getting politicians to care about this, because there's so much lobbying money going into making them not care.
posted by JHarris at 2:27 PM on August 6, 2020
posted by JHarris at 2:27 PM on August 6, 2020
The reality is that creative labor is exactly that - labor - and thus needs to be compensated for.
Sure, but most of us who aren't Ayn Rand disciples do not believe that the right to the fruit of one's labor is inviolable, either.
It's telling that Robinson's "solution" is "create a system where creators are funded through taxes without the government using the power of the purse to control their output", instead of "let's pay creators."
It's telling that he proposes a fuzzy, perhaps overly utopian approach to paying people over the even fuzzier abstract concept of paying people?
posted by atoxyl at 2:02 AM on August 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
Sure, but most of us who aren't Ayn Rand disciples do not believe that the right to the fruit of one's labor is inviolable, either.
It's telling that Robinson's "solution" is "create a system where creators are funded through taxes without the government using the power of the purse to control their output", instead of "let's pay creators."
It's telling that he proposes a fuzzy, perhaps overly utopian approach to paying people over the even fuzzier abstract concept of paying people?
posted by atoxyl at 2:02 AM on August 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
dead people cannot be incentivized to be creative, thus at least everything ever created by a person who is now dead should be made freely available to all.
Ah. So all one needs to do to get access to a creative's work for free is kill them. This does cut out all the legal wrangling.
Obviously this system also calls out for a return to legal duels and assassination.
posted by happyroach at 8:35 AM on August 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
Ah. So all one needs to do to get access to a creative's work for free is kill them. This does cut out all the legal wrangling.
Obviously this system also calls out for a return to legal duels and assassination.
posted by happyroach at 8:35 AM on August 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
for me, the argument against tying up creative work in perpetuity is less about who gets the royalties (and who gets to control the utilization/interpretation of long ago dead person's copyrighted material) than simply, We Need The Stuff Of Our Culture To Be Cut Free From The Binds Of Lawyers And Accountants And Bureaucrats And Functionaries. We need it to be open to everyone to work with, play with, extrapolate and if necessary negate (and it is often necessary to negate cultural stuff -- look no further than the Confederate flag and all the racist crap entwined with it). Because when you tie up pop-cultural creative stuff, you're tying up language.
In other words, all those Disney movies and characters and whatnot -- they go a long way to defining touch points of communication and reflection within the culture (and not just American culture, the whole world -- most of it anyway; because Disney, Hollywood etc have done such a relentlessly effective job of exporting/imposing their stuff on pretty much the whole world).
So yeah, in a world that is fast losing the ability to communicate with itself, we need this stuff free, open to utilization and interpretation and, if needs be, negation. Because it's part of the language, a big part of it.
Rant over.
As to how to suitably reward creative types for their work, that's a different rant but I suspect it's tied up with some of the same rage-frustration-insight that springs from seeing telemarketers, real estate agents and NFL tight ends valued more highly in dollar terms than teachers, nurses, social workers, stay-at-home moms and dads etc.
posted by philip-random at 9:13 AM on August 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
In other words, all those Disney movies and characters and whatnot -- they go a long way to defining touch points of communication and reflection within the culture (and not just American culture, the whole world -- most of it anyway; because Disney, Hollywood etc have done such a relentlessly effective job of exporting/imposing their stuff on pretty much the whole world).
So yeah, in a world that is fast losing the ability to communicate with itself, we need this stuff free, open to utilization and interpretation and, if needs be, negation. Because it's part of the language, a big part of it.
Rant over.
As to how to suitably reward creative types for their work, that's a different rant but I suspect it's tied up with some of the same rage-frustration-insight that springs from seeing telemarketers, real estate agents and NFL tight ends valued more highly in dollar terms than teachers, nurses, social workers, stay-at-home moms and dads etc.
posted by philip-random at 9:13 AM on August 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
Ah. So all one needs to do to get access to a creative's work for free is kill them.
Not at all. You see, the law was changed to retroactively extend copyrights to dead people after they had already died. That's some incentive there, incentivizing long dead people.
In other words, all the talk about incentives is just bullshit. It is just a mechanism for keeping rich people rich and poor people poor. Copyright and patent law is at the root of a large portion of income and wealth inequality. If you want to change inequality, you need to change the laws.
posted by JackFlash at 9:17 AM on August 7, 2020 [4 favorites]
Not at all. You see, the law was changed to retroactively extend copyrights to dead people after they had already died. That's some incentive there, incentivizing long dead people.
In other words, all the talk about incentives is just bullshit. It is just a mechanism for keeping rich people rich and poor people poor. Copyright and patent law is at the root of a large portion of income and wealth inequality. If you want to change inequality, you need to change the laws.
posted by JackFlash at 9:17 AM on August 7, 2020 [4 favorites]
You see, the law was changed to retroactively extend copyrights to dead people after they had already died.
Obviously. But the point made was salient, that if the law is changed to not extend copyrights to dead people after they have already died, that change will also apply to still-living people, meaning that they will lose those copyrights when they, themselves, become dead people.
So if you write a book that finds hundreds of millions of enthusiastic readers and I want to make a big movie based on it, I can either: 1) pay you millions (tens or hundreds of millions) of dollars to use your creation to make a movie, if I can persuade you; or 2) pay someone else thousands of dollars to kill you, and then make my movie at no charge because you're dead and now your work is public domain. Given the utter amorality of capitalism, we would see lots of option 2, I expect.
This is a legitimately complex set of important and consequential problems and needs, that is poorly served by reducing it to a simplistic 'this is the riches screwing the poors, end of story'. If there were simple solutions to this, good or evil, they would have been implemented or imposed already, but this situation is synecdoche for the whole clusterfuck that our unfettered version of capitalism has wrought: not only are the rich screwing the poors (second verse! same as the first!), but they've also pitted us against one another pretty effectively.
posted by LooseFilter at 9:49 AM on August 7, 2020
Obviously. But the point made was salient, that if the law is changed to not extend copyrights to dead people after they have already died, that change will also apply to still-living people, meaning that they will lose those copyrights when they, themselves, become dead people.
So if you write a book that finds hundreds of millions of enthusiastic readers and I want to make a big movie based on it, I can either: 1) pay you millions (tens or hundreds of millions) of dollars to use your creation to make a movie, if I can persuade you; or 2) pay someone else thousands of dollars to kill you, and then make my movie at no charge because you're dead and now your work is public domain. Given the utter amorality of capitalism, we would see lots of option 2, I expect.
This is a legitimately complex set of important and consequential problems and needs, that is poorly served by reducing it to a simplistic 'this is the riches screwing the poors, end of story'. If there were simple solutions to this, good or evil, they would have been implemented or imposed already, but this situation is synecdoche for the whole clusterfuck that our unfettered version of capitalism has wrought: not only are the rich screwing the poors (second verse! same as the first!), but they've also pitted us against one another pretty effectively.
posted by LooseFilter at 9:49 AM on August 7, 2020
Not to be ridiculously obtuse, but the solution to your hypothetical problem is simply do not extend copyrights until death. They should expire long before your death. Silly problem solved.
They say that poor people are opposed to estate taxes because they regard themselves as just temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
The same applies to struggling artists who see themselves as temporarily unpublished J.K. Rowlings, supporting a bad system of copyrights and patents.
posted by JackFlash at 10:11 AM on August 7, 2020 [7 favorites]
They say that poor people are opposed to estate taxes because they regard themselves as just temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
The same applies to struggling artists who see themselves as temporarily unpublished J.K. Rowlings, supporting a bad system of copyrights and patents.
posted by JackFlash at 10:11 AM on August 7, 2020 [7 favorites]
Given the utter amorality of capitalism, we would see lots of option 2, I expect.
I faved happyroach's comment because I found it amusing but - there are a number of problems that can be solved in theory by killing somebody yet that is not, for some reason, most people's first choice.
posted by atoxyl at 11:48 AM on August 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
I faved happyroach's comment because I found it amusing but - there are a number of problems that can be solved in theory by killing somebody yet that is not, for some reason, most people's first choice.
posted by atoxyl at 11:48 AM on August 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
But the point made was salient, that if the law is changed to not extend copyrights to dead people after they have already died, that change will also apply to still-living people, meaning that they will lose those copyrights when they, themselves, become dead people.
They lose a lot of other things when they become dead people, too!
2) pay someone else thousands of dollars to kill you, and then make my movie at no charge because you're dead and now your work is public domain. Given the utter amorality of capitalism, we would see lots of option 2, I expect.
"Utter amorality" is tricky language. Capitalism is utterly amoral; the people acting under it may well find that just killing people in order to make movies about what they wrote is distasteful, at least if there's anything of value left in our culture. A lot of these people can act capitalistically because they lie to themselves about their effects; you can't lie to yourself about murdering someone in the way of exploiting their work.
Why is it people only care about perverse incentives in thought experiments like this, and not in ending their many examples in real life? Police departments are often given a mandate to bring in money from speeding fines as they can, which brings revenue to towns, which results in terrific injustice and rarely is anything done about it, and that's not even touching the issue of civil forfeiture, but oh noes let's protect the lives of hypothetical ultra-popular authors.
In any event, you leave out that what media companies pay the creator for for is not just the right to exploit a property, but the exclusive right. Tolkien's works, for example, are still held by his family, and licensed only to the folks they deem worthy.
posted by JHarris at 9:10 PM on August 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
They lose a lot of other things when they become dead people, too!
2) pay someone else thousands of dollars to kill you, and then make my movie at no charge because you're dead and now your work is public domain. Given the utter amorality of capitalism, we would see lots of option 2, I expect.
"Utter amorality" is tricky language. Capitalism is utterly amoral; the people acting under it may well find that just killing people in order to make movies about what they wrote is distasteful, at least if there's anything of value left in our culture. A lot of these people can act capitalistically because they lie to themselves about their effects; you can't lie to yourself about murdering someone in the way of exploiting their work.
Why is it people only care about perverse incentives in thought experiments like this, and not in ending their many examples in real life? Police departments are often given a mandate to bring in money from speeding fines as they can, which brings revenue to towns, which results in terrific injustice and rarely is anything done about it, and that's not even touching the issue of civil forfeiture, but oh noes let's protect the lives of hypothetical ultra-popular authors.
In any event, you leave out that what media companies pay the creator for for is not just the right to exploit a property, but the exclusive right. Tolkien's works, for example, are still held by his family, and licensed only to the folks they deem worthy.
posted by JHarris at 9:10 PM on August 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
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I tend to agree though with "ever created", if work needs doing after the writers death, persons should be compensated for finishing the work or archival stuff, etc.
good read, thanks.
posted by clavdivs at 4:11 PM on August 4, 2020