Kottke interview of Cory Doctorow

My favorite point that Cory’s made elsewhere is that the current economics of publishing only return 10
cents on the dollar to the creator. It’s hard to imagine how any alternative scheme could be worse.
Let’s see, cut the revenues 70%, net half, and … increase your take 50% with 5x the marginal return
on each additional dollar of revenue.

I’m concerned about the ethics here. The quoted passage seems to imply that if everybody does something, or at least great numbers of people, then it’s somehow wrong to prohibit or penalize or even stigmatize this conduct. But there have been times and places when it was widely acceptable to hold blacks in slavery, or later to deprive them of many fundamental rights accorded to white people. In other times and places it was widely accepted to slaughter Jews, discriminate against gays, lord it over Third World peoples and so forth. Is it unethical to chastise or prohibit this behavior? The implication is that If “everyone” covets my car or my computer or my living room sofa and has the means to seize these items, they are not only entitled, but laws (or individuals) standing in their way are immoral. I’m no philosopher but this doesn’t seem a coherent ethical scheme to me. As to the question at hand, i have no problem with authors giving away their books. I’m just doubtful it should be mandatory.

In the past most of the content was physical goods (e.g., books). If I buy a book and then sell it to another (possibly for nothing) then I no longer have ready access to that book. The author/publisher still only has one copy in circulation that can be readily accessed. The good that is being taken away by copying is the ability of the “publisher” to add another simultaneously active copy of the product into the population.

I’ll skip the detail free-market description but following the (required/expected) free-art position to completion one question that needs to be asked is whether art or art’s sake is really desired (regardless of quality). Proponents of free (speech and beer) art apparently feel this way and thus should support a portion of their (increased) taxes (since we are funding NEW endeavors) being taken and paid out to artists for ALL works produced.

Ultimately any product takes capital (labor, land, inputs) to create and without some means to pay for that capital production cannot continue. Who better than the capitalist who fronts the capital and takes the risk to decide the conditions that are placed upon their product?

Ultimately the concept of “property rights” should be defined by the producer exclusively; with the limited “fair-use” and similar exceptions/clarifications that effectively serve to distinguish the created property from allowed and disallowed derivative works. Beyond that the only other facility that the government should provide is an impartial forum (i.e., civil court) for two parties to resolve their disputes.

Is the current business model of the RIAA smart? Who cares! One thing it is not is immoral. Morality is often just a defense when no other rational defense is available and people (or animals) are involved.

Aesthetically: this is where a market solutions fails because the goal is maximum distribution (i.e. a desire to capture those whose marginal value of the product is equals to their acquisition cost). The question here is whether limited price discrimination is fair and effective (otherwise art becomes either charity – including pay what you want – or state-funded work). I do not discount this (and the implication that producing art creates value for the state) but to fault and call individuals and companies amoral (especially in the US) for opting to discard (or at least ignore) the aesthetic implications is judgmental.

There are many different kinds of artists (early labor, late art; all art all the time; one and done artist). Our society has the capability (through capitalism, charity and education) to support these various kinds of artists; a noble and moral situation.

Cyrus: I thought that the parties that availed themselves of the courts (or arbitration) paid for those venues (i.e., court costs and legal fees being covered by the losing party in a lawsuit). Assuming that (or making it so) then the real question is whether the producer wishes to spend the money to enforce the rights they have established for themselves (and risk being guilty of overstepping the bounds that society has placed on the derivative works mentioned).

The big reason why the situation is so messy is that the violators are numerous and small-pocketed and the possibility of the producer to actual recover damages is limited. The enablers thus are becoming the targets and it is definitely a gray area whether a medium should be responsible for the content it carries. This too is being played out in civil courts as well as by innovative producers and channels working to do a four-party barter where “sharers” provide their eyeballs to advertisers via the channels who then distribute part of their advertisement revenue to the producers whose products are appearing on the channel’s sites.

This outcome and the underlying ability of our courts and markets to come to this outcome without government mandate is the strength of America. It may take time and may not be painless but it doesn’t take extraordinary time or money from the government.

billb: The only way for “disproportionate statutory damages” to become such is A) the duly elected legislature passes laws to that effect and B) the jury (or courts) find that indeed those damages are warranted as a deterrent toward further unlawful conduct. Additionally, those damages are effectively an alternative to criminal charges and are often avoid by all but a minority of offenders via settlements.

David,

Allowing arbitrary intellectual property rights on the basis of freedom of contract, as you seem to be arguing, for most types of media provides insufficient protection to cultural producers: contract only applies between those one establishes a contractual relationship with, while to be effective, IP law needs to bind everyone. Sooner or later, a party not bound by contract will access the intellectual property. One needs law, as opposed to contract, to forbid this party from reproducing and distributing the intellectual property.

But if, in order to function, restrictions on the use of IP must apply to the public, and not just those members of it that the producer has contracted with, then if, in submitting themselves to law, the public also defines limits to the IP rights they recognize, there is no ethical violation.

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