Discussion: On Copyright
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my novel works best in your mind.
couple of questions for you islander.
how do you feel about your right to control your work?
I take it some time in the future when copyright lapses someones going to have a crack at your novel an stamp their own vision on it.
how do you feel about that?people have said up thread that copyright hinders cultural progress, which I think is complete bollocks cos culture isn't a thing you need to rush toward, it is what is and has happened, there's no schedule to it.
do you think you have an obligation to others in society to donate your work so that they might play with it? -
robbery - under current copyright law - for writers- I do control my work. How do I feel about this? Good. Do i want to sell this right/these rights? Not often. Do I want to give that right/these rights away? Extremely occaisionally! BUT- these things pertain to the body of my work which is- actually- quite large.
The only (so far) novel is ring-fenced. I own - totally- all the subsidary rights. I have made a will which ensures NONE of my trustees can alienate the dramatisation rights for that paticular novel. As I said upthread, "rancidity" is a ludicrous concept. I know of at least 2 exhibitions (both in Europe) of people making artworks from my characters (as in paintings.) I know of (illicit - but student) sound dramatisations - I put these into the same place wherein I drew Tolkien characters as a fan.I truly deeply believe that our Aotearoa-NZ culture progresses by weirdos like me creating new work, and I have absolutely NO obligation to anyone (except my family, tipuna ma, all the books I've ever read, scents I've smelled, sights I've seen et al ) + 8>)
and I am resolute that I have no obligation to anyone except - well, me, my mother, Spiral Collective - to donate any damn thing about my works to anybody else whomsoever... play with? They pay!@And they cant. They dont have anything me or mine - want-
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I have made a will which ensures NONE of my trustees can alienate the dramatisation rights for that paticular novel.
The divine Mr. Giesel didn't and look what happened.
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And they cant. They dont have anything me or mine - want-
Oh, and that's just beautiful, by the way.
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O wow Giovanni, that was such a Giesel-switcheroo!
You fellas ever go south? You'd like my Mother-
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Quoting the Onion? It's a satire site, Giovanni...
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You fellas ever go south? You'd like my Mother-
Can't hear you over the sound of these bags that I'm packing. I'll see you Thursday.
Quoting the Onion? It's a satire site, Giovanni...
I'm new to this thread, so perhaps I'm missing an in-reference here? Because otherwise my straight answer would be yes, I had sort of figured out that it wasn't actually Dr Seuss speaking from beyond the grave. My mind is like a steel trap, see. But I must be missing your point.
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Giovanni - great! Just dont come later than the 14th.We relish kids (ur, you know what we mean) but 'Baiting ends then, and Mary (Mama/Whaea/or as my dialect has it Hakui) is going bluecod fishing at Kaikoura after the hui-a-tau so I will be awa then- mind you, be happy to meet/greet/feed you all any time (the butcher fell ill with a lung disorder so your Nonna's ANZ incarnation of her recipe - hasnt nappened yet-) but do we make cook up good stuff anytime?
YES! -
(the butcher fell ill with a lung disorder so your Nonna's ANZ incarnation of her recipe - hasnt nappened yet-)
That's no good... maybe I'll have to make it then!
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. I'm imagining it bypasses the ISP usage detectors cos it comes from a registered 'media' site which they'd know cos they know where you're visiting etc.
maybe there's a $1 episode which is riddled with mind numbing ads and a $2 episode which is pristine ad free.I get that Rob is postively contributing to this thread and suspect that his statements above are an attempt to describe a brave new world/model, as an incremental improvement on the current situation. I likes incremental change (starts rocking back & forward in a gimp-like manner) and will try to explain a little of the way that I see things.
This process change scenario is getting into the realm of things that I've worked in & around for now more than a decade being organisational change, typically org change driven using technology as the lever of change. Prior that it's what I studied under the guise of Operations Management....which is all really regarding optimisation of systems, typically manufacturing, but as most industry in first world economies is service based, so that's the angle that I've followed and been employed in. Prior to getting into the Operations Management domain, I have been looking to major in Economics, but found it a bit (cough) dry & abstract, whereas Operations Research was a whole lot closer to the real world, but is why I try to consider the big picture in terms of systemwide utility and occassionally flashback into economics babble.
I've got to put my hand up and say that (probably like most people...OK, perhaps not like most people but like Germans & Swedish people) I'm an advocate for simple, elegant solutions, ones that more often than not, borrow from nature (I guess this fairly strongly indicates that Darwin, De-Bono, Fayol & Taylor are guys that I have a big, but not godlike respect for...thse guys were human beings and like all of us had their flaws...some more than others). I tend to view a marketplace as a competitive environment, a type of ecosystem and personally favour evolutionary small incremental steps of change as most of the time, this is the best way to improve & finetune the state of a system. There are however occassions where incremental changes are simply not able to efficently or effectively get the job done, though I believe this leap-type scenario to be much less suitable generally than the small incremental improvement scenario (& saw a lot of problems & failures where giant-leaps were attempted and only rare successes).
So to use a (sigh) golf analogy, for this copyright stuff and to attempt to explain my preference for small incremental change, it's like pitching on the lake Taupo hole-in-one platform at night under spotlights. If we pitch too short, we can see the problem & subsequently adjust, though if we drive it too long, we pass not only the little island with hole we were aiming for, but the ball may go beyond the range of illumination from the spotlights. (and for some reason when I think about the giant-leap type approach I (more often than not) recall that bit from Macbeth regarding vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,and falls on the other.). With the giant leap approach, we don't really have suitable visibility until we get there and there may be further away than from where we started. Accordingly I've been an advocate for a series of incremental improvement rather than the giant leap in the organisations in which I've worked.
Some of the questions we don't have answers to in this case, are how many golfballs have we got, what is the cost of those golfballs and those costs (as represented by the golfballs) acceptable to the parties concerned?
However in the copyright discussion case, as Rob correctly points out, it's been 10 years or more and though occassionally we glimpse a bit of hope (such as Radiohead's In Rainbows album experiment), or flurry of activity that otherwise indicates progress (such as occurred under the the Web2.0 banner), there has been little in the way of a model emerging to bring a bit of balance back into this ecosystem since the pendulum of benefit swung away from artists/content providers (...etc) to society through the mechanism of the internet and the filesharing algal bloom took effect soon thereafter. (insert comments regarding a lack of oxygen/nutrients/respect for the artistic communities and ponder the idea that the old Music industry might have been the Dinsosaurs that were preventing this ecosystem from functioning in a healthy manner previously...as evident in the breakdown of the CD sale figures where the artist is lucky to $2 out of a full price CD sale...ponder the effect of internet filesharing as a form of "Minsky Moment" for the music world rather than the credit cycle).
Rob seems to me to be suggesting that the ISP responsibility provisions, requiring "ISP usage detectors" are the type of change required, tacked on the sort of current model Apple's iTunes is using. (This is why I see it as incremental). Perhaps the ISP usage detectors will add so much cost/bloat that the artists will only recieve a small fraction of the revenue. (...yeah just like they do in the current model, but with an additional layer of cost that also spills over elsewhere...) And is there an assumption that the artist actually wants to share, or profit. How is the model funded the artist doesn't want their work to be "for profit", who pays for the infrastructure required to allow the freely supplied work to opt out?
I think it likely that someone (or group or people, or even an organisation) who are thinking way outside the box, will come up with a model that is much more efficent, (maybe there are a bunch of ideas that are more efficent) and it may generate them wealth almost beyond belief (or maybe it will require vast wealth to get sufficent momentum to gain widespread acceptance), or perhaps they'll have just have recognition like Tim Berners-Lee has. There is a chance that we currently can't see the woods for the trees, but there is also a chance that the change is so radical we just can't perceive it, but when we do, we will wonder why the hell it took us so long to find it. This is the lesson that history tells me is likely.
To borrow from nature, the process of incremental improvement (regarding suitability to the ecosystem niche/void filling...rather than necessarily what we humans might consider "improvement") is important. The right incentives will induce a bit of balance and avoid the escalation in the use of increasingly desperate, complicated and expensive measures to build artificial structural features that may further encourage or otherwise lock us into proceeding down that path further. (brings back memories of "There was an old woman who swallowed a fly, I don't know why...")
Fundamentally what I am saying is that I don't see the signs that say the burden shifting leigislation is the smart approach despite it adhering to the incremental change philosophy I generally hold as a fundamental and I'd really appreciate seeing a few other ideas being discussed.
Rob may be right, but I there should be a lot of vigorous discussion before we head down that path, rather than grumbling afterwards.
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Jon, okay, the incremental steps versus Big Leap solution (and all possible permutations inbetween) is a typical creative process, so if we're keeping to the music model, i think first there needs to be a lot more trawling for information. I can't help much with specifics there as music/marketing is not my field.
That said, i wonder if there's any research on changes/development in how people (probably under 30 and weren't previously buyers of cd/vinyl) download/share music? is it just a phase? Do they buy cds as well? When they sort out their favourites, do they go on and purchase that music? This might seem simplistic and obvious. But to me, the quality of the music listening experience is the crux of it - the big differences between pre-internet purchase and experience of listening and now. There was no separation between creator and their musical work before - when you bought an album, you bought the (illusion?) of a deeper experience, a "piece" of Led Zeppelin or whomever. Like a book, everything about it is a physical repository of meaning - it's been (ideally) crafted as a complete work and everything (lyric sheet, photos, artwork0 contributes. i still want all that stuff, just like I want a real book, not an e-book.
The point is - do people who've never known that experience eventually hanker for something more substantial than downloading bits and pieces - is that even measurable? If they've never known a more substantial experience, will they never miss it?
I did a little experiment the other day - downloaded some old music I loved as a teenager, bought the albums, had the posters etc. but I've never had it on cd. I quite got into arranging favourite songs, and they're ok to listen to in the studio, but not a patch on the originals, whatever their faults/excesses.
It's a truism that not everything an artist, in whatever genre, creates is great - Picasso made some utter crud amongst the thousands of works in his lifetime - it's an integral part of the process. if you want the best, you have to accept the worst in amongst it. It's my gut feeling that the spiral will return to artistic integrity. And the best way forward will have that at its centre. Start with that first - the solid core - and the rest will follow.
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as evident in the breakdown of the CD sale figures where the artist is lucky to $2 out of a full price CD sale
was that from my figures? I don't think I broke down the last stage properly.
so label gets $13 of which they have to take out production costs, admin costs and probably investment costs (recording studio, artwork manufacturing etc), which leaves them with ??? from there they can split with the artist the remaining money.there are other models here in that the artist could be the label in which case they can take the full $13 pay their own production and admin costs.
or the artists might have fronted for recording and presented the label with a finished product, possibly even pressed cds there by entitling them to a larger cut of the $13. They might even distribute themselves meaning they get $17.
its not the industry's fault that it costs so much to take an idea from conception to bought product, and its probably not much different from manufacturing any object. I think shop mark ups on most products are pretty consistent with what is added to music etc.
cutting the middle men out of the process makes it all a bit more efficient but having been a middle man cutter outer most of my career I wonder if a better result might have been achieved by getting a few more people on board, paying people for what they do well.
We're seeing it already with self distributed material from bands, yes they make more of the total cut, but the total cut is way less so in a way they end up in the same place they would have been, only with less exposure, ie without a label and distribution network behind them they reach only the people that come to their gigs or are in their direct field of contact.
Perhaps the ISP usage detectors will add so much cost/bloat that the artists will only recieve a small fraction of the revenue.
they already measure how much data you download. its how they pump up what they charge you.
1 gig, 2 gig, 5 gig, 10.
you pay for the more stuff you download, and then, (damn it, just read that dr suess thing and am thinking in rhymes).
all broadband isp's let you know how much you have used so you can budget your remaining allotment to that important last episode of private practice.
I don't endorse or not endorse the control of piracy through isp monitoring, I just note it as inevitable.There was a better route they were trying before this, the honesty system when media makers looked to the public to respect copyright law, but it seems that's not doable, to the point of taking the piss, and that piss being endorsed by people you wouldn't expect to jump on board the piss train.
I liked more the concept of ISP's sharing some of their quite reasonable income with content providers seeing as how the more you pirate the more ISP's charge you. without working out how everyone gets paid it would be a way of keeping media a free for all but you pay for it at isp level.
I'm wondering if ISP's were approached with this concept. I'd like to imagine it was discussed and rejected in favour of the policing option cos they didn't want to share. that would make it easier to see them as no cooperative demons, which they may well be.
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they already measure how much data you download. its how they pump up what they charge you.
1 gig, 2 gig, 5 gig, 10.Overseas the datacaps are gone...Well certainly in the UK it seems to be all you can eat for about 10 quid a month. When I was working in the Telco sector 2 years ago, this guy seemed to be particularly good at describing what was occuring in a forward looking way and it was getting a lot more attention he is since he disappeared off the radar for a while. He's recommending the following video. (probably should have just been an audio podcast than video) Actually some of this is pretty stimulating, though likely a bit dry and network, rather than copyright centric, but it does raise the prospect of new models as considered by industry insiders. You're hopefully all big enough to make your own decisions regarding the merit of that discussion. For me it revealed the flipside of ISP responsibilities, rather than as a cost, being seen as an opportuntiy for network providers to further get their hands onto still more revenue.
I do agree with Rob that to consider the honesty system is naive.
Some means of funding of creative industries via usage (data) volumes is perhaps more suitable (sorry about the fence sitting), but seems to create more than a small industry regarding the lolly scramble that would ensure regarding your slice of revenue if you are creating content. Representation via a large organisation, such as a distributor could hold significant advantage for content creators.Again I'll raise the prospect of Apple's flat rate, all you can eat music subscription rumour and wonder how this would work, particularly with regards to the revenue share looly scramble. Guess being highly focussed around Apple will probably help to consider this, rather than focussing on the independent creators out there in the wop-wops.
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under current copyright law - for writers- I do control my work
I was more asking about your feelings on your work after your copyright has lapsed, when you'll be dead and gone of course but your trustees will have to deal with under current laws although simon points out these are changing slowly.
I guess this relates to how artists feel about there wor as property, ownable etc. I've already said I feel my work is mine to do with as I feel like, be that sell it to others, asign rights to my frug dealing cousin, store in locked cupboard etc, but as sasha pointed out my opinion isn't valid (just teasing) so I was wondering specifically how you view your work in its future tense.
its also interesting what you've said about your book being adapted by anyone to a visual medium. Under marks rule you don't get this choice but as you've outlined it and with the help of that dr suess piece it really illuminates how important it is to the intergrity of the art we create that we do have control over what is done with it. some people like suess's wife pimp their stuff off for cash and I guess we can't blame her for that, we all need to eat, but if society vaules our work then surely they should value our choice of vision regarding that work. If you feel no one can yet translate your vision to the big screen and that any present attempts to do so will degrade the original work surely that's a valid and defendable point.
The Suess poem had that key section about how decades of fond enjoyment getting trashed by a multimillion dollar poo, that he spent his life time rejecting. I'm sure we'll see the old "artists think they're so above everyone" angle but that's not really the point,
If creatives didn't have a vision that makes them different then we'd all be happily writing our own stories, recording our own music and making our own films for our own enjoyment. Copyright is about acknowledging that specialist skill and giving the key creatives the benefit of the doubt on the right thing to do with what they've created.
and while I've got your attention I was thinking of making your book into a movie with sock puppets, what do you think? no, ok, just asking. :)
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Let's pretend copyright ends tomorrow. What do you think will happen? What will creators do? i think it's worth visualising that scenario and analysing the possibilities.
it really illuminates how important it is to the integrity of the art we create that we do have control over what is done with it.
Integrity's a dirty word now, isn't it? Capitalist modus operandi is to split up groups, fragment and individualise - fragmenting the individual is the next step.
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Integrity's a dirty word now, isn't it?
it definitely used to be but the whole be seen to be green thing may be changing that.
I was meaning more in a business sense respecting the integrity cos that intergrity keeps value in the work. if you take away the integrity then you get jim carey playing the grinch and the original work loses ts importance and value to society and the owner of the work.
The whole integrity angle makes good business sense and its why there shouldn't be techno remixes of elvis without permission, or sockpuppet bone people with sampled soundtracks from shitty indie bands via mark.individuals may want to fuck with the works but that doesn't mean they're actually talented enough to do it. as upsetting as that may be to some would be artists the right to mess with someone elses work should be by approval only. otherwise keep it in your bedroom and to yourself or develop your own ideas that don't contravene copyright laws. its actually not that hard.
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Let's pretend copyright ends tomorrow.
reaches for sockpuppets......
well one answer to that would be to enforce your own copyright.
'live' only performances of works, strictly enforced conditions of entry (no recoding devices, cameras inc phones left outside etc)another answer to that would be to produce something around the work that added value to it, like expensive packaging etc, but without copyright there's nothing stopping a thai company just duplicating the work and selling it in competition with yours, and of course they don't have the work creation costs to cover, just the manufacturing done with cheap labour.
we'd see a quickly devalued and watered down media pool. look what free access to music production did. flooded the channels with incredibly variable content
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yes, i think there would be a general blanding. Creatives would hold onto their best work unless they already had a high profile - a brand - and they had sufficient monetary resources to exploit their own work themselves. Maybe the dearth of truly great work would be a good thing - eventually the tide would turn. As far as online presence goes - how then would you distinguish yourself from all the others? Seems to me people would have to spend alot of their free time checking out music when there's not an abundance of free time to be had. And how to have any kind of sustainability from it? More important, what could keep you inspired & fired up to keep producing work? And would that be something different from what keeps you sparking now?
Pardon me if this repeats anything further upthread - just kicking it over to see if anything hybridises or -even sparks a new train of thought:-)
in a way, visual artists are less affected - painting already has to deal with cheap reproductions/prints or outright theft peddled under a new signature. It's already a catch 22 where you have to distinguish yourself so your name is associated with your 'style', get established and do it before the imitators latch on. My "solution" is not to attempt to make a living out of it, keep it on the back burner until i can acquire some real time to put into it - rather have the freedom to make what i want than get all head-fucked with branding, businessy stuff.
One other scenario with no copyright - creatives will get owned, heart & soul, by media companies. That might work well for some.
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Overseas the datacaps are gone
Au contraire, the US telcos are just discovering the concept (although their standard cap seems to be 150GB, and people are complaining about that)
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Let's pretend copyright ends tomorrow. What do you think will happen?.....yes, i think there would be a general blanding. Creatives would hold onto their best work...
I wonder does the lack of lack of teeth in enforcment of copyright regarding music file "sharing" not already sort of mean that at least from a consumer sales perspective, that copyright is effectively over?
I get that where there is commercial use of music, that chances are there is more opportunity to seek a remedy (eg compensation).
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Kerry wrote:
do people who've never known that experience eventually hanker for something more substantial than downloading bits and pieces - is that even measurable? If they've never known a more substantial experience, will they never miss it?
I meant to respond to this yesterday, but Dexter got in the way...I'll blame Rob.
I think that probably some people would miss it, but others (probably most) won't. I for example really don't care about the collateral associated with an album/EP/single, I'm much more concerned about the act of listening to good music. If I want some papery stuff to run my fingers through, I'll head to a bookshop and all too frequently do, though not really regarding music. It would be a bit like heading to the record shop (remember those) to buy a muscial CD about Van Gogh....(I hope you get what I'm so clumsily trying to point out here).
Attempting to read between the lines in Kerry's comment on this stuff, I get a sense that there's a desire to utlilise more tangible types of hook to get people to overcome filesharing behaviours.
I do miss b-sides a bit. I liked that tracks got put out as a b-side that otherwise would not get released/let loose, but that's again listening related, but I do think that musical artists could be pumping out a bit more of the unpolished stuff, to feed people's addiction for fresh stuff and continue people's interest. In the case of a band that is out there doing it for themselves, hopefully if they've got an interest in live performance, the release of unpolished, live or demo type stuff is a great opportunity to build a fan base for that gig...though I could see that pushing out stuff that is just a bit too unpolished may put people off a bit. It may add some motivation for people to find their "A games" and be practiced at being able to turn it on, that otherwise may not be there. Certainly this is what I found in when sailing (ie the difference between going for an afternoon cruise vs an afternoon racing...even it was just racing one of your mates) , that having a some pressure, albeit entirely in our own minds, meant that we were well practiced and knew what we had to do and made it a lot easier & enjoyable....anwyay I'm heading a bit of tangent.
It's about finding a positive way that overcomes the ease of filesharing and that postive way supports and shows respect for an artist and on principle I like it. However in the case of music, so much is about the listening, so maybe it's placing an incentive to tour and attempt to get a return via that mechanism.
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Au contraire....their standard cap seems to be 150GB
At average current broadband download speeds in NZ, how long would it take to get through that?
A couple of years ago, it seemed that free muinicipal wireless networks were going to be all the rage. Sydney joined the growing list of large cities that was about to implement this a key peice of infrastructure. A quick look around in the last few days, seems to indicate that these projects have encountered problems.
I'm not sure that I agree with all-you-can-eat type deals. It tends to encourage people to become bloated & lazy, consume any old shit, rather than putting an emphasis on good quality, lean behaviours....In effect it makes it difficult for market forces to operate in a healthy manner.
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do people who've never known that experience eventually hanker for something more substantial than downloading bits and pieces - is that even measurable? If they've never known a more substantial experience, will they never miss it?
from what I've been seeing I think that people will not miss what they don't know, although there seem to be exceptions to that rule. I've met a few late teens early 20's rock enthusiasts who really get into the whole packaging quality aspect.
As a sound engineer I'd have to say although mp3 is a worse version of a product, its not that bad to listen to in most situations. it would really show up in a sit down and listen to your expensive stereo in a controlled room environment but who has the time for that these days.
much music is listened to in the car or on head phones while walking somewhere and with the background noise of road and world noises the exceptional sound stage a recordist has captured for you doesn't really make that much difference.
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although mp3 is a worse version of a product, its not that bad to listen to in most situations. it would really show up in a sit down and listen to your expensive stereo in a controlled room environment but who has the time for that these days.
That seems to me one of the key changes. In my household it is exemplified by teenage sons listening exclusively on mp3 with very average speakers plugged into the computer and me with my rather nice stereo in the studio listening to better quality sound.
The whole packaging quality - I meant that it "contains" a deeper experience. Like, i still listen to Joni Mitchell and part of my pleasure is in the fact she's a painter whose paintings are often on the packaging. It's a bonus to go online and see more on her site.The old way meant that the buyer got more of an insight into the musician and what went into the music.Part of figuring out why it's meaningful, but maybe folks don't give a shit anymore about that! I notice that my sons don't bother looking up band bios or extra information. So there is more of a separation between artist and their product.
For branding, the producer is inextricably linked with the product - unless of course, you musos start hiring household names to endorse your work. i suppose Neil Finn could start a Kiwi Music You Must Hear site that distributed stuff and buyers would be attracted to that.
i used to be a librarian in another life and it never ceased to amaze me how you could have truckloads of information that so many people hadn't the first clue how to find what they want in it.
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i used to be a librarian in another life and it never ceased to amaze me how you could have truckloads of information that so many people hadn't the first clue how to find what they want in it.
Yeah I'm kinda struck by the need to have decent processes to wade our way through the vast volumes of information that is out there.
Taxonomy and systematising as disciplines are vastly underrated. Mendeleev's great contribution to Science was underpinned by his revolutionary idea to step back and consider the big picture to determine if there are few gaps to fill. His contribution is massive and despite sort of not being a genuine trailblazer, he was in a quietly intelligent way. Truth be known, I was sort of trying to employ that sort of approach when I started reading this thread...not so much trying to be smart, just trying to understand the thread (...the idea of a synopisis thus far) and then determine if there were a few gaps that perhaps we should stagger towards and shine a bit of light around....I still haven't given up on the synopsis idea entirely.
John Tropea is a librarian, who is blogging about new ways of knowledge management and doing some of the classification stuff...well he's doing something. Worth a bit of a look if that is your thing....stick with watching paint drying if it's not.
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