[InclinedPlane]

We have come to accept a vast panoply of behaviors of sharing creative works and of allowing people to "consume" music, art, movies, etc. without directly compensating the creators. Radio, television, libraries, used books, etc. We accept such things largely because we've grown used to them. We have lived long enough in an era of libraries and radio to understand that they do not destroy the ability of artists to make a living.

Uncompensated sharing in the digital age has been unmoored from some of the traditional limits on sharing, moving it well outside the comfort zone for a lot of people and causing a lot of backlash against the phenomenon. But even though the returns on uncompensated sharing in the digital age are sometimes more diffuse and indirect than for the more traditional forms of sharing we are used to they still exist. Art will survive. Artists will not end up in the poor house. And eventually people will grow as used to what gets labelled "piracy" today as they have to libraries, museums, and radio.

[vibrunazo]

I agree, this goes in line with what Francis Ford Coppola recently said [1]. People refuse to accept it because they cannot understand how it could be different.

Hollywood's model is broken because it has been dependent on scarcity of distribution. This couldn't be sustainable forever. Internet fixed the distribution so Hollywood is bleeding. Art is getting easier to access and to create thanks to technology. (this is where we, startups, come in)

IMHO, art will become a commodity. In a few decades, you won't pay so much to watch a movie that cost a few millions to produce. You'll pay almost nothing for a movie that cost almost nothing to produce. And it will have much higher quality than today's movies. Thanks to technology. Like you said, art will survive.

[1] http://the99percent.com/articles/6973/Francis-Ford-Coppola-O...

[sausagefeet]

Weren't 2009 and 2010 Hollywood's most profitable years?

[PakG1]

Meaning that Hollywood isn't bleeding because of the Internet, the Internet has no negative impact on Hollywood, or you going further, that the Internet actually helps Hollywood information get distributed even better? I'd say the latter. It's so much easier for me to find movie trailers, reviews, and learn about movies I didn't even know existed.

[masklinn]

Just that hollywood is full of shit when they claim the internet is killing creative industries. There isn't enough hard evidence for the rest.

[nekojima]

Using GAAP or HUAP? (Hollywood's Unacceptable Accounting Practices) :-/

[Natsu]

Hollywood Accounting is used to make them look incredibly unprofitable so that they do not have to share the profits, so I don't think they'd be very profitable according to that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

[RyanMcGreal]

The thing is, all the currently acceptable ways to consume music without paying for it were also strenuously resisted by the music industry when they first appeared. The difference is that governments were less inclined in the past to believe the industry hype and roll over with draconian laws.

[ghthorVX]

Resonates like drinking water.

[mohene1]

Are authors paid for books purchased at the library? The library does not provide the public with a free personal copy of any book they want.

I do not doubt that artists may be compensated in the long run. But the compensation my come through higher ticket prices. I paid $32 to see Molotov, Eminem, The Black Eyed Peas, and Suicidal Tendencies in New York City back in 1999. Those days are long gone. To see those artists now, maybe $120.

Saying "will" seems speculative since the examples are not comparable to piracy. Museums dont give free copies and have collections which are sometimes donated. In radio there is a cooperation between radio stations and the record companies.

[minikomi]

What about something like kickstarter, for music?

The artist will only release if a certain threshold is reached.. Then the released music is completely "free" to share as people please. The artist is compensated as they see fit - they set the price in the first place, and also can use it to justify part of the price (to compensate for recording, hosting etc.).

"Piracy" then serves to generate rep to prove that they can deliver on future releases, there can still be people who make money in the middle - generating PR for the project etc.

The platform could take a small share of the cost, a slightly larger share for hosting, slightly more for promotion on the front page..

[nextparadigms]

It would probably work pretty well, if the artist can prove himself in a short video, and then ask for money so he can make a music video and do it all with more professional equipment.

[wisty]

Why would they want to do music videos? A music video is just an add, which just happens to cost more than the product to produce, and is entertaining enough that people actually watch them. People watch informercials too.

Nobody buys their favorite music video (unless it's The Wall). They buy the CD, because all they really care about is the music.

[JonnieCache]

I beg to differ.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Various-Artists-Warp-Vision-Videos/d...

[minikomi]

Because it's fun, creative, connects with fans on a different level to just music.. not to mention some acts have built careers just on self-made youtube videos.

[minikomi]

Make satellite sites for producers, video artists, stylists..

[decadentcactus]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tfk/tfkthe-end-is-where-...

Thousand Foot Krutch made this project which was easily funded it seems. Although they are an established band already, and I'm not sure if 100k is "good" for them or not. But then again, that's only really pre-orders.

[chollida1]

That might work for established artists like Pearl Jam, but consider Pearl Jam in the early 90s.

They made enough money to retire off their first album. Under the kickstarter model, they wouldn't have been able to earn anywhere near that much money as no one had heard of them outside of Seattle before their first album release.

[minikomi]

It's a lot easier to get heard now.

Was making enough to retire their goal? Making enough to keep making music as much as they can seems like enough for a lot of musicians. If it could reach that level, I think it would be a "success".

[mjwalshe]

How would you pay for the Kit and pay the artistes running a band is not cheap even for a 3/4 member band.

[InclinedPlane]

Yes, the limits are different, that's why I wrote this:

"Uncompensated sharing in the digital age has been unmoored from some of the traditional limits on sharing, moving it well outside the comfort zone for a lot of people and causing a lot of backlash against the phenomenon."

You say radio, museums, and libraries aren't comparable to file sharing. Do you have data to back that up or merely prejudice?

As for your anecdote above, it's rare for the price of a show for a given artist to remain the same over time. The Black Eyed Peas especially are very much more popular today than they were in 1999.

[mohene1]

Museums - Examples of donations: Julian and Josie Robertson donate Picasso to North Carolina Museum of Art http://www.wral.com/news/local/noteworthy/story/7107735/ http://thesouthern.com/news/breaking/new-york-collectors-don...

Radio and Record Companies work in conjunction Music-formatted radio stations both commercial and non-commercial get their music for free from record labels.

http://www.musicbizacademy.com/knab/articles/radiostations.h...

Libraries are publicly funded

Why ticket prices have shot up over the last decade

http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/why-rock-roll-slumping-u-21...

Breakdown of ticket prices, bands receive %74to90% of ticket price

http://www.wisebread.com/how-much-a-breakdown-of-concert-tic...

Music sales slump,concert ticket costs jump and rock fans pay the price.

http://www.krueger.princeton.edu/10_17_2002.htm

Ticket price, true they(BEP) were not that popular then but $28+tax in 1999 compared to $45 now is still higher than inflation. The inflation increase is 29%[3], the ticket increase is 60%[4].

[3]http://www.warpedtourtickets.musictoday.com/WarpedTour/calen...

[4]http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi

[alexqgb]

So what? The industry has changed. It's no longer possible to make outrageous profits by selling copies with tremendous markups. So people increase the price for live events. Other people pay them. The world changes. Life goes on.

I mean, what do you want? Time to stop? Progress to end? Change to be abolished? This isn't actually a joke. Lots of people with a vested interest in the current extent of intellectual property rights are going to absolutly insane lengths to ensure that a changing society isn't allowed to roll back the extent of IP rights to make them more harmonious with the needs and reality of the present day.

But those people can all go to hell. They're the same backwards looking people who said "but what about property rights" when it came to freeing slaves. "Property rights" were also applied to wives and daughters, and you can just imagine how much consternation was caused when (horrors!) wives and daughters were given the vote.

Property rights are ultimately about controlling others. They're good and necessary in limited circumstances, like keeping unwelcome individuals away from our bedrooms and out of our bank accounts. They're absolutely horrifying when extended to the theoretical maximum. Indeed, the very definition of a totalarian state is one in which all people are the property of the State. At some point, between this and anarchy, there's an optimum. As life changes, this optimum point will move. Some will fight these moves and make life miserable for others rather than suffer change themselves, but if the change is big and clear and beneficial enough, most will peacefully adapt.

I recognize that rapidly evolving ideas about what should and should not be considered property aren't easy for those whose careers are caught in the flux. Believe me, I'm one of them. At the same time, I see Change as being - on balance - a very healthy thing, even if it makes my own life harder than it might has been in a more static environment. Others aren't so sanguine. They really hate Change. But there's some good news for them too; one day, they'll die, and Change will no longer be a problem for them.

[davidw]

Comparing people scared of change in IP rights to slave owners is a bit over the top.

Can we try and keep discussions about this stuff serious and intellectually honest?

[alexqgb]

Uh, the point was that the definition of "property" not only changes over time, but that it can change quite radically.

The idea seemingly lost on you is that while property in some sense has always been fundamental to civilized orders, it has encompassed very different things in different times and places. Indeed, this remarkable flexibility may be the key to its endurance. And this vital flexibility is EXACTLY what anti-reformists try to obscure, deny, ignore, or otherwise wish away when discussing IP.

In their conception the invention of the Internet is irrelevant. They portray the current scope of property rights as rigid, fixed, ever-lasting, and absolutely supreme. And this particular stalling tactic is nothing new. In fact it's appeared time and time again - really, any time that society has evolved in a way that demands a fundamental reconsideration of what is and is not going to be viewed as private property, with its protection provided by the full force of the state.

Of course, the people who take the absolutist view don't like to discuss this history in detail. And why would they? Saying that the current configuration of rights - which evolved over time - cannot be allowed to evolve any further is a conspicuously indefensible position. So when absolutists raise the issue of "property rights" they are not trying to add anything to the conversation. To the contrary, they are attempting to shut it down. The hope is that residual deference to the once-sensible bounds will kick in reflexively, and people will suddenly stop talking about things that are certain to harm their economic interests and / or social standing if discussed openly.

And that pattern has been a consistent problem every time society has felt the need to redefine property rights. When confronted by the kinds of dishonest and self-serving assholes who would try to shut down or derail conversations of this nature, it's important for people to recognize who and what they're dealing with, and what kinds of tactics will be used against them. It's equally important for them to remember just how threatening and powerful open conversation really is, and why it's protected by the 1st Amendment.

I maintain that the conversation surrounding property rights in America circa 1850 is likely to contain an enormous number of parallels with the conversations surrounding IP today. For people looking for a roadmap on how to handle the recurrent problem of inflexible absolutists, it's a fine source. And it's not the only place where they can find echoes of the same losing arguments about maintaining outdated but profitable arrangements. Indeed, I strongly suspect that close variants of the same arguments will appear in every case where the scope of "property" has become a bone of contention.

Regardless, if you still think there is anything "unserious" or even "dishonest" about this perspective, please elaborate.