Copyright WAR!

[andrewducker]

[Poll #1832597]

The first option, of course, makes it harder for people to earn a living from writing, music, television, etc. There's definitely a tradeoff here. If everyone torrents the next season of #Your Favourite TV Show# then there won't be a next one unless Kickstarter _really_ takes off.

Note: Voting for the third option without offering a solution which is technically feasible in the comments will merely cause giggling.

Comments

[drplokta]

I wouldn't necessarily object to a locked-down payment system that makes piracy for financial gain virtually impossible.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I could go with that. Of course, there seem to be sufficient people willing to rip TV shows and spread them around for the lulz/whuffie that payment isn't necessarily a problem.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Really, the fair way to handle this is to impose a small surcharge on monthly Internet subscriptions that is then given to the various large companies that hold 99 percent of the copyright on things that are pirated - who are then obligated to split it amongst their artists based on a rational formula.

For example you could probably find a statistical correlation between how a film does at the movie theater and how many times it is mostly likely downloaded and determine the percentage of the surcharge split based on that. Same could be done with music.

I'm willing to guess that most Internet users would be willing to pay an extra $5 a month if it meant never having to worry about getting sued/fined.

[andrewducker]

I suggested a mandatory licensing scheme like that in a previous post. I got jumped on by people saying "But my parents have the internet and they never listen to music. It's not fair that they have to subsidise other people."

I disagreed, but I can see that there would be some resistance.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

I don't know about the UK but in France if you've ever gone into a restaurant or pub you are essentially paying a similar fee because that restaurant or pub has to pay a monthly fee for the right to broadcast music in the establishment - which is passed on to you. That fee is distributed the way I described above.

If they watch BBC they are also paying similar fees, because the BBC has to pay money to license music and television shows and those fees are tacked onto their television tax - even if they don't watch the shoes that feature the licensed content.

Beyond that, under the current rules their parents could still be sued/fined if someone hacked into their WiFi signal to download stuff - they could always look at it as insurance against that happening.

Single point of failure for religious fanatics etc

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

People would be tempted to distribute money based on some ethical code or other, and to top slice in favour of quixotic cultural schemes.

Don't put a pot of money near politicians.

[laplor.livejournal.com]

In many countries, anyone who ever buys blank media is paying a private copying levy already. I see no appreciable difference in just paying the fee as part of internet service, though arguably, I already am.

If anything, old people probably now buy more of the blank media and are already subsidizing younger folks and their ipods and so on. Anyway, until the baby boomers die and transfer wealth to the next generations, let them subsidize!

The biggest problem is providing a fair distribution of payments to artists.

[drplokta]

The media companies hate this solution almost as much as they hate unrestricted piracy, since it means that they're all competing for slices of a pie of fixed size (once everyone has an Internet connection, which is not far off), and they can never expand their market. They won't see it as a viable solution.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Well, you think they'd like some money better than no money.

If they don't want that system then their only real choice is to make music, television shows and movies immediately available for download as soon as they are released and give consumers the option of downloading them for a fee or downloading them for free but having ads in them.

I'd happily download a version of Ringer or Game of Thrones with ads in it if it cost me nothing and meant I was getting it from a trusted source.

[fanf]

Yeah, because the publishers are totally not corrupt in the way they handle royalties http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111113/01050116753/umg-finds-perfect-biz-model-cheat-artists-then-if-caught-demand-insurance-company-pay-instead.shtml

The royalty collecting societies are sometimes almost as bad - they tend to suffer capture by the big music distributors and end up being unfair to independent musicians.

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

I think one problem with that is people like me. I never download illegally because it's stealing, if I want to watch something then I will download legally, or buy physical media, and if it means I have to wait then I will swear and wait.

If I were required to pay extra for my broadband on the assumption that I would be pirating, then I'd start pirating.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

But once you were paying the fee you wouldn't be stealing anymore! Because the copyright holders would be getting paid through you fee, so you wouldn't be pirating.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

I always thought that if you get the top end internet packages, that IS what they assume...

Something Else, Which I Will Explain in Comments

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I think I’d like to go for the SEWIWEIC option.

Of the two options I’d prefer this third one. That we move away from paying for content and therefore indirectly paying for the creation of content and move towards paying directly for the creation of the content.

I think the scheme works something like this.

Potential content creator makes a pitch

”Who’d like to see my movie about dinosaurs fighting giant transforming robot cars – here are the details. It’ll cost $250 million and I want to make 10% so it’s yours for $275 million.”

Or

“Who wants a new design for a sofa bed that you can make on a 3D Fabber? I’ll do it for £1,000.”

People make a binding contingent offer to financially support the project.

You could if need be divide the project up into stages. (Who is prepared to pay $10k for me to write a script for a dinosaur robot car movie? Who is prepared to pay $1m for my project team to sign up key actors, directors and other artists? Etc.)

Only they get access to the content. (Actually, you could post production access part of the deal. Some projects would have really tight DRM)

Once the project has sufficient funding the project goes ahead. (There may need to be some kind of insurance product built into this to refund money for projects that fail or go over budget.)

The content comes with no copyright beyond that which has been explicitly agreed to as part of the project bidding process.

At some point it will leak onto the internet and become public property. How quickly it leaks on to the internet I think would be a function of how many people were involved in the original bid and what DRM they signed up to. Your unique design for a new sofa bed is more likely to remain private if you have the only copy on your home server than the big budget film with millions of backers all of whom have put in a fiver.


I think the combination of getting the content you want, getting it a little bit ahead of other people and being a patron of the Arts might make this a workable model for creating content.

It’s certainly flexible.

Kickstarter to the Max.

An other alternative is that we socialise content creation as we do for the BBC. I like the BBC and I think it does great stuff. I don’t think it is as biased as other media. I’m not sure I’d like all of my content to come to me through one channel. Although I think this is inevitable.

Re: Something Else, Which I Will Explain in Comments

[andrewducker]

I'd certainly be happy with a mix of the two.

If you look at how much some games companies have recently raised on Kickstarter it can certainly do the lower level of things. I'd love to see a decent-selling author fund a book that way. Whether it can fund something the size of Mass Effect or Avatar is another question - but one that would be interesting to see the results of.

Re: Something Else, Which I Will Explain in Comments

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

On a simple level something like Kickstarter should be able to fund Avatar as the traditional method of make first and then sell manages to fund Avatar. The money exists to pay content creators for their efforts (even for Avatar) – it’s a question of how we channel it to them.

But I absolutely take your point that getting something funded through a new way of funding, especially something new or by new creators would be difficult.

There are chicken and egg issues here and issues of Type-Y individual fitness in an environment shaped by an overwhelming volume of Type-X

Thinking about my scheme much of the funding for content like Star Wars or Harry Potter comes from selling tied in merchandise. I think this is where my scheme gets tricky.

$125 million to make a Harry Potter film that takes $975 m might only seem worthwhile if the film goes on to create demand for $100’s millions of board games, character dolls, toys and so on.

Mind you, maybe the answer is that content creators have to accept that they get paid less.

[spacelem.livejournal.com]

Can I just say first that I despise piracy as despicable acts of theft, murder, and kidnapping on the seas.

Digital bootlegging, however, is something I am much more comfortable with, and have yet to have seen conclusive evidence that it is overall harmful (perhaps it is to larger, more successful content producers, however it can act as powerful advertising for smaller content producers, and it seems to even the playing field somewhat). The people who primarily complain about digital bootlegging are often the same people who are already ruining the industries (e.g. the big music labels, and film studios), and whose rhetoric is so low that it stoops to equate copying of files to theft, murder, and kidnapping.

As for the open/locked down Internet, I would prefer an open Internet that makes free sharing of files easy and convenient, but with digital tip-jars for the content makers, so we can more easily get the money to the people responsible and bypass the middlemen. While some people are inherently selfish and won't tip, I think many would be quite willing to give what they can.

Anyway, that might be naive, misinformed, non-cited, idealistic, or whatever, but it's how I feel, and hopefully it isn't too offensive to people.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I’m not convinced that people *would* be prepared to give what they can (or what was fair or what was reasonable).

I’m also not convinced that a collection of what can be given would be enough to pay for the stream of new content that we currently enjoy.

I’m not at all convinced that any market that doesn’t have a binding exchange of cash for item is going to work.

[spacelem.livejournal.com]

I will cite Radiohead's In Rainbows album for an example of where this has worked. They provided the links for free, and a tip jar (minimum of 45p, to cover credit card charge). Admittedly it's difficult to know how well they did because they wouldn't release any figures, but it's a form of payment that's growing in popularity.

I could also cite the huge numbers of street performers that also rely on this method, and charities. Some theatres and restaurants have also been known to use it too.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I think there is a difference between Radiohead and some new band you’ve never heard off. (Also, they didn’t publish how much they netted from this arrangement did they? So it could well be that they didn’t raise enough for the exercise to be worth their while. Or repeated.)

Are there any more high profile or low profile examples?

I think there is a difference between a face to face interaction and the anonymous internet which, I think explains why buskers might make a living selling theatre and recording artists might not make a difference on the internet.

Charities are more like a kickstart scheme for future work. When I give money to a charity I'm not paying them for work they have done in the past. I'm paying for them to do work in the future.

I’m not saying that you’re wrong, that it can’t work.

I think the transition would be very, very messy and patchwork.

[andrewducker]

"I think the transition would be very, very messy and patchwork."

Yes. Yes it is :->

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Yeah – please post my award for stating the bloody obvious to my home address.


I’m thinking about the model we had for paying content creators in the 17th and 18th century. I’m using Handel as my guide in this. In some ways he was using a totally different technological model. Then it was very difficult and expensive to source, copy and distribute and then perform new content and now it is not.

Handel was either on a retainer from a rich patron or being paid by physical customers for works they were physically listening to right now. Shakespeare had a similar business model. Part of the payment was for organising a life performance. You couldn’t make money selling copies of your music or plays. (Part of this is that people who might want to buy them lacked the necessary technology to reproduce them – orchestras and theatre companies being expensive kit).

What is similar is that it was difficult to make money selling reproduced content. It was difficult then because the technology made it too difficult to copy content in order to make money. It’s difficult now for the opposite reason. It’s too easy to copy and distribute content so lack of physical control makes it impossible to exclude anyone who won’t pay.

So my first guess as to how things will turn out is that content creators will go back to making money by patronage or by doing stuff live – or equivalent.

And patronage includes a whole bunch of people clubbing together to fund a position or a project including profits.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

I strongly dislike how people talking about this issue tend to immediately start talking about content creators making a living. I think it's an assumption that you should be able to make a living from creating some kind of media and some of the models discussed work well for situations where whatever they are creating is either getting them money which is a nice extra for their time spent, or if it's funding the creation of further content but not actually paying for them to live (and something else does that). You're essentially making a deliberate appeal to emotion when talking about content creators making a living, and I think it skews and distorts the argument in certain ways.

I suppose that if you only go to see decades-old big stadium rock bands or Rihanna, Lady Gaga et al, for example, it might be surprising to you to be in a situation where you go to a gig and one of the band isn't there because he couldn't get time off work, or if the band only tours during school holidays.

[andrewducker]

I think that appeals both ways are appeals to emotion. Wanting to be allowed to express yourself online is also an emotional reaction.

[tobyaw]

If paying for content online is easy and feels like good value, then piracy will be irrelevant. iTunes, Kindle, Netflix, and Spotify, show that users are willing to pay for digital content. Common factors are a focus on software with a decent user experience, good device integration, and an honest relationship with the customer. There is no doubt what one get when one buys something from iTunes or Kindle, or when one subscribes to Netflix or Spotify.

I like our current heterogeneous approach to paying for digital content. Some people may like to rent individual films or subscribe to a music service; I prefer to own music and books, but am happy to subscribe to Netflix for television and films (such good value! works so well on the Apple TV!)

The idea of mandatory licensing feels horribly illiberal — I can’t see how a one-size-fits-all solution could work for the way people consume media. What would it need? Some sort of central copyright registry? Wouldn’t that be bureaucratic and costly? I’m sure it would favour large publishers over small content creators, which seems a backward step as digital distribution makes it easier than ever to self publish. And would licensing it apply to music, television, films, books, newspapers, magazines, photography, and software?