[cc-community] No creativity without copyright (was: Benjamin Mako Hill on Creative Commons)

Rob Myers robmyers at mac.com
Tue Aug 2 12:17:25 EDT 2005


On 2 Aug 2005, at 15:23, Stian Rødven Eide wrote:
>
> We (as in the public) don't need the same kinds of works at the  
> same rate they are being created today. One of the errors in  
> copyright policy is the maximization of output it generates.  
> (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html)  
> Also, most mass culture is designed to work within a marketing  
> scheme, which tends to make them very alike and predictable. A  
> system that gave less money to the "creators" would be a major  
> benefit for the actual creators, as they'd be less preyed upon by  
> industry, and they'd have greater degree of freedom over their own  
> work.

This is a very interesting analysis. In the hostage scenario, it's  
like the bank keeps less cash in its tills. :-)

> I know a lot of musicians, but only very few who think they'll ever  
> make a living from music alone. They still play concerts and make  
> albums, which they release themselves. In Norway, with little more  
> than five million inhabitants, even the most famous authors have to  
> have other jobs. This doesn't prevent them from writing.

Only a tiny percentage (<5%) of musicians with recording contracts in  
the US make a living off of them. If you know contemporary art, you  
know which art school your favorite painter teaches at.

Yes, Steven King and Britney Speares are millionaires. They are the  
economic exception. Let's not consider them artistically or it will  
get depressing.

> If a band releases an album themselves as a copyleft, and (thanks  
> to filesharing, as they don't have the money for marketing) they  
> manage to get a lot of fans, don't you think the fans would be  
> willing to donate enough for them to record a second album? That  
> way, the fans wouldn't have to pay for the efforts already invested  
> by the band, but rather for them to invest more.

This has almost happened a couple of times: Marillion had several  
albums paid for by their fans, Wilco rebuilt their career on a  
fileshared album.

> That's not nececcarily altruism. As long as the money from the CD's  
> is used to create more music, collecting them would not be a  
> strictly selfish act. But in current copyright situation, most  
> money from CD-sales are used to pay off economics, investors and PR- 
> agencies. When buying self-published works you can to a certain  
> degree expect your money to be well spent.

There's a lot of confusion between "gift economy", "random acts of  
kindness" and the kind of "cultural security" (Mackenzie Wark's term)  
that copyleft actually represents.

>> > Fine. Well and good. Agreed. But what part predicts the  
>> exceptions people > know about? It is not complete. We can run  
>> with it. But let's not assert > hat it is complete. I think it is  
>> accurate enough to use for redesigning copyright bounties. I also  
>> think it is accurate enough to show that doing away with copyright  
>> would be a severe blow to the progress of art and science. i.e.  
>> making a living indirectly and altruistic donations would not be  
>> enough to maintain the current level of progress.

It shows that because that is what it has been chosen to show. This  
is one of the many problems with Game Theory, it's the theorist's  
board and pieces.

Economic Game Theory does not capture cultural creativity any more  
than military Game Theory captured the situation in Vietnam in the  
1970s:

"For example, U.S. government strategists applied game theory to  
decide policies concerning the Vietnam War, instead of basing  
decisions on firsthand knowledge of the people of Vietnam and their  
history, which would have shown clearly that the policies were futile  
and self-defeating."
- answers.com on von Neumann.

> Actually a lot of mass culture is regressing, as a result of  
> corporate policies. Hollywood cinema today is becoming more and  
> more a cinema of attractions, which originally was a term for  
> describing the very first films by Lumiere (Oh, look at that! A  
> moving picture!)...

Even economically, I think Hollywood is realising that it's  
imploding. Discussing copyright on the basis of ensuring the economic  
viability of blockbusters seems strange given this.

- Rob.


More information about the cc-community mailing list