Arrrrrrrrrr! Internet Piracy and YOU

[Paul McEnery]

The artist who recognizes the marketing value of downloading is free to facilitate it, as, for example, Jonathan Coulton does on his website.

But.

Artists who aren't interested in pursuing that vein of marketing have the right to prohibit it. They have that right. If Metallica says you can't download their songs, you have no right to claim you can. It's their music, and you don't get to appropriate their rights to it just because you think it's good for them.

In other words, you don't get to rationalize your way around copying somebody else's work. It's theft. They have the right to copy it and you don't, unless they say so. It's that simple. All the intellectual posturing about property and economics and political philosophy do not at all mitigate the simple principle, which you should have learned in Kindergarten, that it's wrong to take things that don't belong to you.

When you tell me that culture is property, you take something that belongs to me.

[Paul McEnery]

How do you make a comic scan-proof? Or music unrecordable?

Why would you want to?

[Tages]

I think it's pretty well supported to anyone with (a) the ability to read and (2) a working understanding of human psychology.

Interesting, because even with both it stinks of self-righteousness and a disregard of logic.

Not everyone for the legalization of marijuana wants to smoke pot. Not everyone who defends the ethics of legal abortion wants an abortion.

I can't believe I have to explain this.

[Flâneur]

I really have no idea why this thread is still going. This was done in the previous thread, and the thread before that and the thread before that. There can be no dispute as to whether its currently legal or illegal, it's written down for crying out loud, and it'd take someone monstrously sanctimonious to try to assert a moral judgement upon almost anything, let alone this.

All that's left is to discuss what to do with internet piracy, whether we should work with or against it, and its ramifications but those kind of conversations die because too many people are busy trying to drag it back to the moral argument: "I iz DUNT/DU lyke DIS lol an neider/so shud U an HERE is a Fals analogee to show y!" with a good dose of "U iz STUPID and RUNG LOL".

Can we all just forget about this topic for a few years?

[Paul McEnery]

Yes, we've agreed to that already. And you have stated that because of that fact, doing something that makes a third party happy is appropriate response for the use of a second party's labor if the payer believes that it is.

Not what I was trying to say at all. However, it's a fairly standard circle of life idea. Joe makes me dinner, I help Maggie write a paper, Maggie babysits Fred and Eileen's kids, Fred and Eileen put Joe up while he's looking for a place. That's normal life, isn't it? And there's no need to commoditize it.

The point of my analogy is to point out that a gift economy does not rely on commoditizing the exchange. A single freeloader of American Flagg might be freak enough to fail to grasp the point of the book and then donate to the KKK -- in which case, he hasn't really received the gift of the book at all anyway, has he? -- but statistically, enough people pay enough times to enough people to make it all come out in the wash.

The big difference with online freeloaders is that there's no way for them to be individually recognized as defaulters by the community, and given grief for it. And that's a downside. The upside is that the market is expanded by so much that the numbers make up for it.


But property only = capital in a commodity world: capital is invested (real property and/or commodities bought, labor is hired) to make things, labor makes those things and capital sells them, recovering its investment plus some.

But in the new game, as you pointed out, there is no commodity, so the only transaction is between the laborer and the person buying the use of labor, i.e., with the ultimate source of valuta to be paid in exchange for work performed. In a non-commodity economy -- as you point out -- the role of the property-holder as middleman is eliminated makng the consumer (the ultimate source of payment in the commodity economy) the only source in the service economy since the initial investment in real property or commodities is eliminated. Thus, of the three classical hallmarks of capital in the commodity economy -- control of the means of production, distribution and exchange -- Labor determines production, while the consumer has sole control over distribution and the terms of exchange.


I don't think "sole control over distribution and the terms of exchange" is accurate.

I think whats really what's going on is that the artist is performing rather than labouring. Not that artistic production isn't hard work; but at the same time, if it isn't play, then it's no good. It's a special kind of labour, then, that is about the performer's pleasure and the audience's pleasure. And when the artist performs, the audience pays attention to the performance, and then decides how to reward the artist.

The first part of the payment surely is the payment of attention. The artist who gets attention but no money is still happier than the artist who gets neither -- look at all the blogs out there.

But the artist also needs to live, so the enlightened (or financially equipped) part of the audience rewards the artist with the means to do so.

Sound praxis, then, to me is to provide the audience with a convenient way to reward the artist. And that very well might mean we do return to middlemen, since the product -- the commoditized angle -- is surely that convenience, that service. Using eMusic, I'm not paying the artist, I'm subscribing to the service, and eMusic and the artist are mutually servicing each other.

Seemingly, it's the same as the commoditized model, but it isn't. I have the option of torrenting the music (or whatever else), but I want to reward the artist, and eMusic offers a service that allows me to do so (and offers extra value on top of that). I perceive their relationship to the artists as ethical, and eMusic's relationship with me as ethical, so we're all good.

So perhaps the issue isn't so much one of control here as a system with a lot of play in it.


Sole source and arbiter of what payment labor will receive for its output, sole arbiter of how and to whom labor's output will be distributed, and whose ultimate ethical goal is the accumulation of items of (use) value with the least possible outlay of (exchange OR use) value -- you may choose to call it by another name but if it isn't "Capital" in the commodity-economy sense, "Consumerism" certainly appears to function (from labor's point of view) the same way in the service-economy (although without that pesky "risk taken investing in property first" thing, I suppose).
The difference I perceive is the distinction between ownership and property.

Capital seeks to conflate the two so as to acquire both.

My sense is that property is the assertion that a something is a commodity whose ownership can be alienated.

I'd assert that my life, my assent, etc. are owned by me, and can't be alienated. Property of course disagrees.

I'd assert the same thing of an artistic performance -- it's the artist's own. But reproductions of it can be alienated. A book is not the performance. In fact, it's not even, as a commodity, the record of the performance. The record of the performance is what is leveraged in order to sell the book.

Digital reproduction, then, liberates the record of the performance from its exchange value as a commodity, but at the cost to the artist of still further alienation from the recording. The physical commodity can be controlled; the digital reproduction cannot.

Though of course the alienation has already occurred either way, the moment the performance was reified into a reproduction, whether material or digital.

[Paul McEnery]

I think it's pretty well supported to anyone with (a) the ability to read and (2) a working understanding of human psychology.

Then you need to work on your psychology.

Because I'm not interested in justifying a damn thing; nor do I feel the need to.

What I am interested in is the way that science and technology alter the material conditions of our behaviour, whether that's morality, economics, or identity.

I'm interested in the moral backlash from people unwilling to accept that there's been a radical change. Moral backlash against gays, moral backlash against minorities, moral backlash against socialists, moral backlash against atheists, moral backlash against science and technology themselves -- these are obvious things that any good liberal can spot a mile away, and rubbish like the way we rubbish Christian Scientists for refusing blood transfusions.

But when technology threatens the idea of property as the foundation of political economics, all hell breaks loose. At this point, we find that most people don't care about god or science or sex or race or any of the crap from the culture wars anywhere near as much as they do the governing ideology of property.

Three-four hundred years ago, I expect you got the same reaction if you challenged the divine right of kings.

Now me, I've got no idea how all this is going to play out. All I've got is an analysis of how things actually are, and a few tactical ideas about how to make a couple of moves while we transition to whatever it is is going to replace our current self-evidently economically, ecologically and especially ethically bankrupt society.

[Paul McEnery]

so the book magically multiplied? seems to me to still be one book....

one book remains one book.

The idea that culture should be bound (in all senses) into a book -- or any other mechanically reproduced object -- is a comparatively new one.

Time was, one person would teach another person the book, the song, whatever, and then one book becomes two.

Not that most books are one book anyway. The whole point is to reproduce the book so as to get it to as many readers as possible. A unique book is scarcely a book at all; certainly one accident away from ceasing to exist.

Digital reproduction brings us back to a place of oral transmission, but with greater fidelity of transmission. This still leaves us with the question of how we will reward the original performers of any given work -- AND I HOPE WE ALL AGREE WE WANT TO SEE ARTISTS GET PAID.

Me, I think the answers to this are relatively simple, more ethical, and more rewarding for more artists than the previous system, which was pretty rubbish for most artists, and not much better for the culture at large.

The question of the ethical standing of individuals relative to the moral shibboleths of a bygone age seems irrelevant to me. I don't care about telling those people how to live their lives, because people will lead their lives the way they choose regardless of what the moralists have to say.

What I care about is the creation of a system that no longer steals culture from the people -- from the artists, even -- in order to sell it back to them at twenty bucks a throw in an alienated form that no longer belongs to them. To us.

To me, that's just one step among a great many others to take in the creation of a more just and more free society.

[Paul McEnery]

Flogging the dead horse a little more.

Why buying a used comic or CD is not at all similar to downloading one from a torrent site....

When I create a work of art, it comes into being with a variety of rights attached, each of which may be sold, transferred, given, lent or otherwise shared with others.

* Physical right. That's the right to own the actual original work, whether that's a painting, a Photoshop file, master tape, the art boards for the comic, or whatever.

* Reproduction right. That;s the right to make and sell copies.

* Publication right. Different from reproduction right. Suppose I do a painting; I can allow a magazine to publish it as an illustration, allow somebody else to sell prints of it, allow somebody else to put it on their website, allow another person to print it on t-shirts, etc.

* Derivative works right. I could license somebody to make porcelain sculptures of my painting. Or, in the case of fiction, I allow somebody else to write their own stories using my characters and setting. Or, in the case of music, I allow somebody to use part of my composition in theirs, as, for example, Vanilla Ice's use of Queen's "Pressure."

* Exhibition right. Ownership of the work may not include the right to publicly display it, whether or not admission is charged.


All of these are no more than pretty legal fictions that describe business practices, some of them extremely recent in origin. And though there may be a legal or practical distinction between reproduction, exhibition and publication rights in the professional world, there's no distinction in principle, and none at all to the non-professional.

We all understand that a "right" that is unenforceable is no right at all. EVERYONE ganks images off the net to use as a desktop background. All these pretty fictions clearly no longer apply when you can do that.

Either that, or we are all thieves, and the term loses all meaning.

And in such a situation, the only genuine recourse an artist has is not to work at all.

[MacQuarrie]

All of these are no more than pretty legal fictions that describe business practices, some of them extremely recent in origin. And though there may be a legal or practical distinction between reproduction, exhibition and publication rights in the professional world, there's no distinction in principle, and none at all to the non-professional.

We all understand that a "right" that is unenforceable is no right at all. EVERYONE ganks images off the net to use as a desktop background. All these pretty fictions clearly no longer apply when you can do that.

Either that, or we are all thieves, and the term loses all meaning.

And in such a situation, the only genuine recourse an artist has is not to work at all.
If I as an artist choose not to put my work on the net, for just the reason cited, then you have no right to put it there. Regardless of whether it "helps" me or sells more of my legitimate product.

Bill Watterson has never authorized or permitted a single Calvin & Hobbes product other than the book collections of his strips. Yet every third car on the road has a decal in the back showing his drawing of Calvin, edited by hands unknown to make him pee on various people, places, things and logos. (The original drawing was Calvin filling a water balloon at a faucet.) Additionally, there are C&H t-shirts and neckties, fonts replicating Watterson's lettering style, etc. None of which produces a dime for the artist, much of which actively harms his reputation and that of his work.

Exactly how does this this overt theft of his work benefit him, when it's in direct defiance of his stated wishes? How is it justifiable to degrade and defame his work through deliberate editing and distribution? Doesn't he have the right to say no to this perversion of his work?

[Tages]

Depends.

Does DC have the right to make itself rich using a character that's a blatant steal from the creators of Zorro and the Scarlet Pimpernel?

(I love Calvin & Hobbes too much to own any of those stupid things, though I can say I still have a tee my dad bought for me at a gun show when I was 13 showing Barney Rubble holding the severed head of Barney the Dinosaur beneath a caption that reads "There Can Be Only One!")

[stealthwise]

How do you make a comic scan-proof? Or music unrecordable?

Not my job to figure that out, but maybe the business model for printed comics and physical copies of music (cds/dvds) is outdated.

Webcomics and itunes are both thriving, to various extents, and providing their creators with some pretty decent money. The growth for this business model isn't exponential, but there is some potential there.

[Corrina]

Webcomics are NOT thriving in the financial sense.

Being read by lots of people, yes, bringing their creators 'pretty decent money' no.

I've done a ton of research on this one, both here and elsewhere and the fact remains that right now, people are basically not getting paid.

Now, you can argue that this is okay or not (as people are doing in the thread) , but I don't think the fact that people are NOT making money as yet should be overlooked----if this is the model for the future, there's really no difference between my putting my stuff in a shoebox (aka Emily Dickinson) or putting it on the web, FINANCIALLY. In fact, it's probably less expensive to put it in the shoebox.

The only people making money right now on stuff that is web exclusive are those doing erotica and porn. People pay for those.

Now, it is true that free web stuff is being used as an advertisement for stuff that becomes physical---collections of web comics into a book that then makes money, for instance.

But if that's happening, that webcomics are being used to grab a physical book publishing comic......then that's NOT an argument that we're in a new marketplace, is it?

Digital is currently just a different gateway to the OLD marketplace which is still where the money is.

Frex, Radiohead eventually released their 'free' music in a physical CD and that's where they made money.

So, as much talk as there's been in this thread that the web and digital are the new black, right now the yellow brick road simply leads back to Kansas, not Oz.

[stealthwise]

So pvponline, shortpacked, Penny Arcade, somethingpositive.net, and overcompensating aren't making money? Of course they are, Corrina, they just make it by selling other physical objects, i.e., shirts, etc. Which is where the major corporations make real money in terms of exploiting properties like Superman, Spider-Man, and so forth.

Still, it's likely better to release your comic somewhere for free, where there's a good chance thousands of people could read it, as opposed to hundreds of copies sitting on the shelves of random comic shops, unread and unloved. Diamond is not the answer for small-time distribution.

[snarkbunny]

There are really two different conversations going on in here, isn't there?

One - whether or not free digital distribution is the business model of the future and how to obtain a living wage from artistic endeavours given a demand for "free" entertainment.
(Note: I believe that free digital distribution is a business model)

Two - the ethics of having content distributed in this business when the content creators/owners have not given permission and may be opposed to having their content distributed in this manner aka Internet piracy.

What surprise me is that I think I have more faith and belief in the free digital distribution model than some of its proponents. Paul has brought up examples of the Folgios' Girl Genius, Something Positive and open-source software, all of which were/are willing participants in the free digital distribution model.

I believe that the free digital distribution model is strong enough that it does not need to force unwilling participants into to be successful. It reminds me of a childhood incident where a friend brought out an EasyBake cake, when her younger brother refused a piece, she got enraged and started forcing it into his mouth. (Okay, her shoving cake in and him trying to spit it out was funny) However, if the cake is tasty, odds are you won't have to force people to eat it. No one forces Microsoft to deal in the open-source world, people who like that model work with and support the willing participants. In fact the open-source movement has some of the most vehement anti-piracy advocates in it. Some companies, like Sun Microsystems, choose of its own accord to deal in that world to some degree. The open-source world is secure in itself enough to not force non-participating software into its model. Their take is that they can do it better.

Tages, most of your posts have been about the economics of free digital distribution.

I believe that free digital distribution has enough legs that if you took away all the DC/Marvel comics, the RIAA controlled music, the movies and only had content that was placed there by willing content owners that it would still be a strong and functional model, the same way the open-source model is.

Furthermore, I believe that the acceptance of "pirated" content (Yes, Paul I know you disagree with the concept of ownership here) hurts the free digital distribution because it reinforces a reputation of a lack of respect for other people. I also don't believe that technology lets them do it is a valid reason to allow it. Just because something can be done, doesn't mean it should be done. (Off the top of my head, things that fall into this category - shoplifting, forcefeeding someone cake without permission, publishing PMs in a thread without permission, taking a dump on the store floor then walking away, driving through red lights, not pulling out of the way of an emergency vehicle, sticking chewed gum in your sister's hair, buying an LCD TV from the back of a van).

People have the right to decline opportunities. The cake may be tasty, but I don't have to eat it.

So why should people be allowed to put up content for/access content from free digital distribution if they have not been given that right under the current legal system?

[Corrina]

Stealth, I just asked shortpacked's creator for insight on this monetary issue. So hopefully that will shed some light on this situation.

As for Diamond, I'm certainly not defending them. And I'm not even saying a web comic would make money by building an audience and then going to Diamond with physical copies. More that they'd build and audience and get a deal from a publisher for a trade, and then make money in the bookstore market.

I can tell you among the ebooks in traditional prose publishing, making more than $200 per book, even with reputable publishers, is rare. Erotica, of course, is another matter.

[snarkbunny]

.
Still, it's likely better to release your comic somewhere for free, where there's a good chance thousands of people could read it, as opposed to hundreds of copies sitting on the shelves of random comic shops, unread and unloved. Diamond is not the answer for small-time distribution.

Of course, the Internet has the issue of too much content available.

I think there is no right answer. I have an acquaintance who makes books the old-fashioned way (hand bound, hand written illustrated manuscripts) that are typically sold via antique book fairs. I've also read of comics being sold at gunfairs, librarian conferences, art that is sold via SF conventions even small press comics doing well through Diamond :wink:

[Paul McEnery]

If I as an artist choose not to put my work on the net, for just the reason cited, then you have no right to put it there. Regardless of whether it "helps" me or sells more of my legitimate product.

Bill Watterson has never authorized or permitted a single Calvin & Hobbes product other than the book collections of his strips. Yet every third car on the road has a decal in the back showing his drawing of Calvin, edited by hands unknown to make him pee on various people, places, things and logos. (The original drawing was Calvin filling a water balloon at a faucet.) Additionally, there are C&H t-shirts and neckties, fonts replicating Watterson's lettering style, etc. None of which produces a dime for the artist, much of which actively harms his reputation and that of his work.

Exactly how does this this overt theft of his work benefit him, when it's in direct defiance of his stated wishes? How is it justifiable to degrade and defame his work through deliberate editing and distribution? Doesn't he have the right to say no to this perversion of his work?

Harms his reputation? Bollocks. All of it keeps Calvin in view for an audience that no longer has new daily material to remind them. And demonstrates that if there's a massive market niche there that you choose not to exploit, someone else will exploit it.

And sure, why on earth shouldn't people repurpose an image like that? If people are producing them for money, he should sue them for his cut, of course. But as for the cultural angle, repurposing other people's imagery is the essence of art.

And meanwhile, people will continue to buy the only official Calvin and Hobbes merch -- the books -- because they love it.

And continue to gank it in the midst of conversations like this.

http://www.mooredynasty.com/Blog/CalvinAndHobbesKickInTheButt.jpg

[Paul McEnery]

Depends.

Does DC have the right to make itself rich using a character that's a blatant steal from the creators of Zorro and the Scarlet Pimpernel?

(I love Calvin & Hobbes too much to own any of those stupid things, though I can say I still have a tee my dad bought for me at a gun show when I was 13 showing Barney Rubble holding the severed head of Barney the Dinosaur beneath a caption that reads "There Can Be Only One!")

I have a friend called Barney who has Barney Rubble tattooed on his arm.

Let the punishment fit the crime!

[Paul McEnery]

Frex, Radiohead eventually released their 'free' music in a physical CD and that's where they made money..

Not so much.

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2008/10/radiohead_in_ra.html

We might add that the "pay what you like" model certainly paid them more per capita on average than you get from a label sale.

[Paul McEnery]

Yes, Paul I know you disagree with the concept of ownership here

It's not so much that I disagree with it as find that it contains underlying assumptions that are either based in violation or are intellectually incoherent; and I think that building on a false foundation is bound to make the house fall down one day.

And that's exactly what I see in the world today: those underlying assumptions collapsing.

Of course, that's just another crap analogy. It's really more of a Darwinian thing, where the organism of property-and-commodity society has so transformed its environment that it's no longer fit to survive, and some mutant offspring will rise up in its place.

[snarkbunny]

. And demonstrates that if there's a massive market niche there that you choose not to exploit, someone else will exploit it.


It's not so much that I disagree with it as find that it contains underlying assumptions that are either based in violation or are intellectually incoherent; and I think that building on a false foundation is bound to make the house fall down one day.
.

This saddens me because while there will always be asshats who disrespect other people's decisions and exploit other people's work without permission and compensation, I want to live in a society that as much as possible respects people's decisions, not say that it's too hard to do so live with it.

I don't like your society vision, Paul. I find it is just as based in violation as you claim the current one is. I think people can be better than that and our society must strive to be better than that.

[Corrina]

Not so much.

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2008/10/radiohead_in_ra.html

We might add that the "pay what you like" model certainly paid them more per capita on average than you get from a label sale.

And would this have worked if Radiohead already hadn't had the benefit of traditional publicity and marketing from a record company?

[Paul McEnery]

And would this have worked if Radiohead already hadn't had the benefit of traditional publicity and marketing from a record company?

Worked for the Arctic Monkeys, didn't it?

I'm not saying all the pieces are in place yet, or that there will be one single model, but the logic of digital reproduction and the internet marketplace dictates finding new solutions.

What we know is this.

1) Big money won't move until it's forced to by freeloading.
2) Digital shopping (iTunes, and now Amazon) is huge.
3) What drives the marketplace is a portable device.
4) We got those now.

It's my theory that the portable reading device is the game changer. Phones can already do this for text. The new gen Kindle is designed for larger formats. There's plenty of other devices in the works. Word is that Apple has a Kindle killer in the works, too. And I expect more technology to keep popping up.

Freeloading is more of a desktop and DSL thing. That's still going to happen, of course, just as it has in the wake of iTunes. But still, the handheld device -- especially one with wireless capability (or, indeed a phone) suggests that quick simple downloadable things from a reputable source at an affordable price will work.

With the right device, comics fit the bill just fine.

And just in time, since the big two and Diamond have made such a mess of the brick-and-mortar market.

[Adam C]

And would this have worked if Radiohead already hadn't had the benefit of traditional publicity and marketing from a record company?

Referring to what? Their career prior to In Rainbows or when they announced and released the record online?

[Reverend Smooth]

FOlks keep listing the same handful of webcomics and bands. Where's the great success?

The number of webcomics out there is huge. Not, like, hundreds, but thousands, tens of thousands, undoubtedly more, and this is just off the few sites I've seen.

And yet, a handful are being touted as successes.

Not to mention some of them gained fame by using the traditional model, and then were able to use the web to sell.

Right now, it is not economically viable to pick the web instead of traditional publishers. Right NOW, you have a better chance of making it big by going to a traditional publisher. Exceptions do exist, but it's stupid to point the LEAST economically viable model as the best one.

Folks keep ignoring this in favor of their internet fantasy pull 'em up by the bootstraps ideal that they themselves, of course, don't have to rely on for their next meal.

So I don't get it. You guys want folks to choose to make no money, pick a business model that is proven to generate less money for most artists, for... what? So y'all can get more free shit off other folks' work? Because that's certainly how it's coming off to me, who's had to choose between both. Webcomics are a labor of love, not profit-- the overwhelming majority of webcomic creators will back that up. A lot of people are fine with that (though a lot of them are just resigned to never making much), probably because they do have the option of day jobs and don't have to rely on it for income.

'But Radiohead! But...'

Either they're the tiny exception or they had an audience before they went digital. There are not nearly the amount of successful and lucrative webcomic titles that there are traditionally-published comic titles. Making comics is hard wok, takes time and costs money. For most people, the only lucrative solution to this is to do it the traditional way.

'Oh, but it's the wave of the future!'

How is it? Give me a viable way to do it all-digital and feed my family. Because right now, there ain't.

'It's not my job to figure out how...'

Then kindly shut the fuck up and go back to chilling with the underpants gnomes. If you want to point fingers at traditionalists and say it can be done better, then tell me how or drop the superiority complex.

'Well, maybe artists should just...'

How?

'Well, I don't know...'

See above. Don't point a finger at artists until you can tell them how.

I think what Metallica did was wrong. But I also can see why they got ticked off. There are enough assholes out there who act like they're entitled to your work -- not appreciative of your effort, but entitled to it -- that I can see why.

[Crowforge]

Has anyone mentioned giantitp? It started on the web and now sells collections and prequels and such. I believe he was able to quit his job, I'd call that success. and all done with stick figures.

[Reverend Smooth]

Has anyone mentioned giantitp? It started on the web and now sells collections and prequels and such. I believe he was able to quit his job, I'd call that success. and all done with stick figures.
When people can bring up more than a handful of webcomics (especially in comparison to the huge amount of those who have never and will never get deals) then I'll consider it better than the traditional industry.

Right now the numbers still aren't there.

[Crowforge]

He didn't really get a deal if I understand it correctly he self published a trial run to test the market, the fans gobbled it up and he made money.

***
I don't think there's as clear a distinction between fans that download and fans that buy as is presented in this thread though I may be misreading the thread.

[Corrina]

Referring to what? Their career prior to In Rainbows or when they announced and released the record online?

Their prior career--they were already known, through the traditional market.

[Reverend Smooth]

I don't think there's as clear a distinction between fans that download and fans that buy as is presented in this thread though I may be misreading the thread.

A lot of fans do both, but a lot of fans don't, especially when it comes to comics (including webcomics). At present, it seems to work better for bands than for artists.

[stealthwise]

Of course, the Internet has the issue of too much content available.

I think there is no right answer. I have an acquaintance who makes books the old-fashioned way (hand bound, hand written illustrated manuscripts) that are typically sold via antique book fairs. I've also read of comics being sold at gunfairs, librarian conferences, art that is sold via SF conventions even small press comics doing well through Diamond :wink:

Shouldn't be "too much content available" in a free market, right?

[Crowforge]

Funny, I'm bored out of my mind, where's all this content?

[stealthwise]

When people can bring up more than a handful of webcomics (especially in comparison to the huge amount of those who have never and will never get deals) then I'll consider it better than the traditional industry.

Right now the numbers still aren't there.

How many media/industries have more than a handful of runaway successes in the first place? There are a ton of really, truly terrible webcomics out there who deserve nothing and get exactly that, and the business for them is still being figured out. It's the wild wild west in terms of marketing and reaching an audience, but I think it makes more sense for a lot of aspiring creators to take a chance in that realm than into the dead-end direct market.

[snarkbunny]

Funny, I'm bored out of my mind, where's all this content?

Really? I can always find something new and interesting on the Internet. In fact, I have the reverse problem in that I'm constantly pruning because there is too much stuff on the Internet that interests me to keep up with.

Shouldn't be "too much content available" in a free market, right?
Well, that could be good for the consumer, not necessarily good for the creator. Take webcomics, for example. The issue for the consumer is combing through the available webcomics to find something he/she finds interesting. The problem for the creator is how to connect not only to people who would be not just interested in their comic, but also interesting in actively supporting their comic. Or look at etsy - how many jewellers are on there? My book buddy does antique book fairs because that is where he's discovered his target customer base is. Antique book collectors typically have the knowledge to appreciate his craftmanship and the money to be able to afford to buy. He doesn't do the same business at say Christmas craft fairs.

Look at Crowforge's post (Thank you for being an excellent example, Crowforge) there is undoubtedly stuff on the Internet that would interest him but finding it, that can be the challenge.

If a creator was writing about a comic on hunting/fishing/camping/outdoors would it make more sense to concentrate on publishing in hunting/fishing/outdoor magazines to have a better chance to reach the audience that is most likely to be respond?

How many media/industries have more than a handful of runaway successes in the first place? There are a ton of really, truly terrible webcomics out there who deserve nothing and get exactly that, and the business for them is still being figured out. It's the wild wild west in terms of marketing and reaching an audience, but I think it makes more sense for a lot of aspiring creators to take a chance in that realm than into the dead-end direct market.

I think the best advice is the one I've read over and over and has been given to aspiring writers/artists of all sorts - figure out what audience is most likely to respond to your work and be supportive of you and go where they are. That may be your LCS, it may be the Internet it may be somewhere else completely. I do think the Internet may be a good if brutal training ground and it's a good marketing tool. But is it the end-all/be all? I think the only thing that is clear is the statement "If you build it, they will come" is unrealistic and very, very unlikely to happen.

[Reverend Smooth]

How many media/industries have more than a handful of runaway successes in the first place? There are a ton of really, truly terrible webcomics out there who deserve nothing and get exactly that, and the business for them is still being figured out. It's the wild wild west in terms of marketing and reaching an audience, but I think it makes more sense for a lot of aspiring creators to take a chance in that realm than into the dead-end direct market.There are a lot of good ones who don't manage to cut through; while that's true of any business, right now it's worse for webcomics than it is for traditional published comics.

The direct market pays better. It makes no sense for a lot of aspiring creators to get into a business model that is still a complete crapshoot when it comes to breaking through.

Note that those webcomics that do become lucrative do often try to get published in mainstream markets, and so do smaller ones, too.

People have been touting the internet as the way to set folks free for a long time. Eventually, I'm sure the landscape will be better, but you're basically expecting people to make a risky business decision instead of one that will probably pay them more.

Yes, it does work for some webcomics. But not nearly as many as it does for folks going through regular publishers. A lot of artists do it anyway because they want their work out there, and that's fair, but starting out figuring you'll make it big is stupid. It's not a land of financial opportunity for comic artists yet. That's the actual reality.

Personally, I haven't, since I don't generally work for free. I've gotten some flak from webcomic creators for that, as if I were slagging them for doing it-- it has nothing to do with that, and I do agree that it's good to have a lot of stuff out there, and the success stories sometimes do push the boundaries of comics.

But I don't agree yet that it's the best way of building a sustainable career, since, well, it isn't yet.

Anyway, if you want creators to do webcomics instead of traditional print, do it yourself instead of expecting others to do it, and let me know how paying rent goes.

[Paul McEnery]

There are a lot of good ones who don't manage to cut through; while that's true of any business, right now it's worse for webcomics than it is for traditional published comics.


Jesus fucking Christ.

They wouldn't even exist outside of the current dispensation. And indy comics wouldn't even exist outside of people making a fucking go of it.

It's tough all over, and it always was.

You want to make your own art, you're shit out of luck if you expect people to pay you money for it.

[Paul McEnery]

This saddens me because while there will always be asshats who disrespect other people's decisions and exploit other people's work without permission and compensation, I want to live in a society that as much as possible respects people's decisions, not say that it's too hard to do so live with it.

I don't like your society vision, Paul. I find it is just as based in violation as you claim the current one is. I think people can be better than that and our society must strive to be better than that.

Then you hate this:

http://boijmans.cultuurwijs.nl/onderw/thema/graphim/b95007.jpg

[Paul McEnery]

FOlks keep listing the same handful of webcomics and bands. Where's the great success?.

I tell you one thing.

Every single one of them has more pages out there for people to look at than you do.

And most of them have got more money coming in.

And none of them are whining anywhere near as much as you do.


Get the bloody work done, stick it out there, get the attention, make some money.

And quit fucking whining.

[Paul McEnery]

Their prior career--they were already known, through the traditional market.

Arctic Monkeys.

Are we done with this crap yet?

Fine.

Then:

The Clash. The Sex Pistols. The Pogues.

I can keep this up all day.

[Paul McEnery]

I think the best advice is the one I've read over and over and has been given to aspiring writers/artists of all sorts - figure out what audience is most likely to respond to your work and be supportive of you and go where they are. That may be your LCS, it may be the Internet it may be somewhere else completely. I do think the Internet may be a good if brutal training ground and it's a good marketing tool. But is it the end-all/be all? I think the only thing that is clear is the statement "If you build it, they will come" is unrealistic and very, very unlikely to happen.

What, suggesting that artists should actually pay attention to their possible markets and do some work to get their attention?

Instead of just sitting back and expecting the world to appreciate their genius?

You bastard!

[Reverend Smooth]

I tell you one thing.

Every single one of them has more pages out there for people to look at than you do.

And most of them have got more money coming in.

And none of them are whining anywhere near as much as you do.


Get the bloody work done, stick it out there, get the attention, make some money.

And quit fucking whining.
Um, dude? I have a publishing contract in the traditional publishing industry, which pays me a few grand an issue.

Why are you saying I'm whining when all I've just been stating is that the odds of getting a lucrative gig via webcomics is far less likely than getting a lucrative gig via traditional media?

If my output isn't as fast as it should be, blame it on first my publisher merging with someone else and a lengthy contract renegotiation, some computer problems, and me having complications with lupus. I don't get subsidized by the state, and I don't get regular doctor checkups, yo, and I'm an invalid. When I get sick, work stops.

I am certainly NOT blaming my financial situation on the internets or traditional media.

And who's them, first of all? I -- and Larime -- have spoken to lots of folks griping about the lack of recognition/attention/money for their comic. Just like in traditional media, even -- how many creators here have expressed frustration? Quite a few! -- but at this time, worse.

You go ahead and make shit up to go after me, though.

I made quite a bit of money off the net at one point, but NOT selling comics. And I'm NOT interested in putting up a whole colored issue online at this time. People can figure out the quality from the shit we've already posted.

I've been selling art professionally, and sometimes quite sustainably, since I was 16. Up until Hollow, the main thing holding me back was the fact that I was dying for a few years and it's still pretty dodgy right now. I have had to turn down gigs in the past because I was too sick to work. I have had, before then, to completely retrain in doing everything digitally because I became allergic to traditional media.

I didn't whine about that, and I'm not now. I got some photoshop books and retrained.

I have never blamed my financial situation on the internet. In fact, I have repeatedly said that I'm not bothering to do a webcomic because I don't work for free. IE, I HAVE a paying gig. IE, I am too ill to work for no recompense. Now, I'm quite sure that the internet will help with word of mouth, and we intend to offer a lot of material for folks to use if they like. We might even host direct downloads of each issue, but likely only after the next one is out.

But as a primary publisher? The internet? No. It doesn't work that way yet. That's not how someone can make a living as a comic creator yet.

That's not WHINING, Paul. That's just fact.

Frankly, if you doubt my reasons for Hollow's slow release, you can ask Larime himself. But I've been working all damn week on this comic whilst dealing with blinding cluster headaches that I cannot even take meds for, I can barely keep food down because everything I eat makes me sick, I have had such low blood pressure this week that I've had to spend entire days completely horizontal just so I don't faint -- or worse, considering the massive chest pain, and note that heart troubles are one of the main causes of death amongst those with Lupus -- just so we can pull ourselves out of poverty. I have worked on this comic whilst wearing a full hood with just the eyes cut out because my monitor made my face bleed. I have worked on this comic whilst pausing every hour to vomit blood. You can fuck off if you consider me a whiner.

Next time you get heart troubles and turn into a basket case like you have in the past, please let me know, so I can mock you for your lack of productivity, too. Though I suppose you'll call my answer whining too, asshole.

I suppose I should just go get that day job at McD's, huh, since I'm just whining? Because a day job is where webcomic creators generally make their money.

[Tages]

What is wrong with having a day job again?

[Reverend Smooth]

What is wrong with having a day job again?At this point, I figure folks are just trolling me. I'll follow the lead of others, and wash my hands of this bullshit. Waste of my time.

[snarkbunny]

Then you hate this:
It makes me sad actually. There is so much well-executed, entertaining parody/modified art on the 'Net and you couldn't even bother to find a funny one? **sniff** and I've been working hard at being civil and polite, too. Now I need to look at lolcatz to make me happy. KITTEHS!!!

What is wrong with having a day job again?
In general nothing, but everyone is limited to 168 hours in a week. If you believe the 10,000 hours rule (I don't follow it religiously) if you want to work at peak potential in either art, sports, jewellry making you likely need to dedicate the equivalent of a full-time job in time to do so. If you can't live off your art, then it becomes significantly harder to get the time to do your art/sports/jewellry. I would point out that Rev in particular has more limited hours she can work than someone in good health, and in her case it makes sense that she focuses her time on Hollow.


At this point, I figure folks are just trolling me. I'll follow the lead of others, and wash my hands of this bullshit. Waste of my time.
Sorry to see you go. I'm pretty sure Tages didn't mean that as a dig at you, but Internet threads are not worth getting worked up over. Keep working so I can buy Hollow.

[Corrina]

Arctic Monkeys.

Are we done with this crap yet?

Fine.

Then:

The Clash. The Sex Pistols. The Pogues.

I can keep this up all day.

Um....unless the internet was the digital marketing giant back in the day of the Sex Pistols, I fail to see how your point has any analogy. Yeah, these bands built something up through word of mouth but the technical situation is so different from today that you can't do a parallel.

Aside, as mod:
Paul, there was no need for the 'quit fucking whining' line.

Dial it back. You have valid points to make but you obfuscate them under anger and insults. Enough.

[Tages]

At this point, I figure folks are just trolling me. I'll follow the lead of others, and wash my hands of this bullshit. Waste of my time.

Sorry to see you go. I'm pretty sure Tages didn't mean that as a dig at you,

I didn't.

In general nothing, but everyone is limited to 168 hours in a week. If you believe the 10,000 hours rule (I don't follow it religiously) if you want to work at peak potential in either art, sports, jewellry making you likely need to dedicate the equivalent of a full-time job in time to do so. If you can't live off your art, then it becomes significantly harder to get the time to do your art/sports/jewellry. I would point out that Rev in particular has more limited hours she can work than someone in good health, and in her case it makes sense that she focuses her time on Hollow.

I have no idea what the hell is so offensive about the idea of having a day job to support you while you work on your art. Kafka never quit his job to focus fully on writing but there are plenty of wannabe Kafkas who did and never rose from obscurity.

Incidentally, one of my favorite American authors, Flannery O'Connor, was also afflicted with disseminated lupus, who wrote whenever in good health and spent the rest of her time raising chickens, geese and peacock.

It makes me sad actually. There is so much well-executed, entertaining parody/modified art on the 'Net and you couldn't even bother to find a funny one? **sniff** and I've been working hard at being civil and polite, too. Now I need to look at lolcatz to make me happy. KITTEHS!!!
*sigh*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.H.O.O.Q.

L.H.O.O.Q. is a work of art by Marcel Duchamp first conceived in 1919. The work is one of what Duchamp referred to as readymades, or more specifically an assisted ready-made. Pioneered by him, the readymade involves taking mundane, often utilitarian objects not generally considered to be art and transforming them, by adding to them, changing them, or (as in the case of his most famous work Fountain) simply renaming them and placing them in a gallery setting. In L.H.O.O.Q. the objet trouvé (found object) is a cheap postcard reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa onto which Duchamp drew a moustache and beard in pencil and appended the title.

The name of the piece, L.H.O.O.Q., is a pun, since the letters when pronounced in French form the sentence, Elle a chaud au cul. "Elle a chaud au cul" literally translates into "She has a hot ass".[1] In a late interview (Schwarz 203), Duchamp gave a loose translation of L.H.O.O.Q. as "there is fire down below" (in fact the term avoir chaud au cul is slang used in the sense of "to be horny").

As was the case with a number of his readymades, Duchamp made multiple versions of L.H.O.O.Q. of differing sizes and in different media throughout his career, one of which, an unmodified black and white reproduction of the Mona Lisa mounted on card, is called L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved.

Primary responses to L.H.O.O.Q. interpreted its meaning as being an attack on the iconic Mona Lisa and traditional art, thus promoting the Dadaist ideals. Perhaps Duchamp decided to use his ready-mades to not only critique established art conventions, but to also force the audience to put aside what they had thought before and look at something with a completely different perspective. By making the gender of the Mona Lisa ambiguous, Duchamp presented his audience with a new perspective at a classic work of art.
You just compared a classic piece of early 20th Century art to lolcatz. Congratulations.

[snarkbunny]

\
I have no idea what the hell is so offensive about the idea of having a day job to support you while you work on your art. Kafka never quit his job to focus fully on writing but there are plenty of wannabe Kafkas who did and never rose from obscurity.

It's not offensive in and of itself. I think what is offensive that some of the statements could also be interpreted as "having a day job and making art in spare time should just as desirable as making a living at doing art full time, what's your problem?" I'm pretty sure that is not what was intended, but I certainly could see how could be read that way. That dismisses hopes and aspirations as not important as a real job, or as real art. From that longstanding stupid dispute in some art circles that doing saleable "art" is "selling out" and that art for the sake of art is more pure that making a living doing art.

Me, I have a job that challenges me,that I enjoy, and that pays me well and art is a hobby. I have complete sympathy for people who want the same thing that I have, the chance to make a living doing something that excites them and makes them happy to go to work.

\
You just compared a classic piece of early 20th Century art to lolcatz. Congratulations.
You're right - it was an unintentional insult to Lolcatz, for which I am sorry. Although to be honest, if Marcel Duchamp had the same intentions as lolcatz to merely provide a laugh and a smile, I would respect his work more. By the way, one time when I was touring the Canadian national art gallery in the modern section, there was a moldy old duffel bag on exhibit, I detested it too.

[Reverend Smooth]

SInce you didn't seem to mean it maliciously, I'll answer your question this once.

I have no idea what the hell is so offensive about the idea of having a day job to support you Art IS a day job. What's so offensive about wanting art to be one's day job?

I can't have another day job. My version of lupus is not only the kind that attacks all my organs, it makes me so allergic to light and chemicals (because my skin is so broken down and my are kidneys so useless) that I'm homebound. If I were American, my option would be to be on disability -- maybe, I can't get to a hospital to jump through the government's hoops -- while I work on art. Since I'm not, my option is to work on art. Or do neither and die from being exposed to light while homeless.

So why do folks have a problem with that? You think making art isn't real work? You'd rather I live off others' tax dollars than work for a living?

Incidentally, one of my favorite American authors, Flannery O'Connor, was also afflicted with disseminated lupus, who wrote whenever in good health and spent the rest of her time raising chickens, geese and peacock.Seems like the kind she had might've been bad, but not the kind where she was completely confined to her home and/or near-total darkness. I used to be able to grow my own food, but when I had to drop immune suppressing meds because I developed diabetes and was starting to lose vision, I developed extreme photosensitivity, for which there is usually no cure; UV light destroys my cells very quickly and this triggers an allergic reaction. My present light sources are a UV-shielded laptop and two flashlights (which is an improvement, I can now be around them without a mask and hood). There are expensive lights for folks with this condition which may or may not work, but I'm deferring trying these until after a few more checks.

[Crowforge]

I don't have lupus or nothin' but I really can't do both well even with a part time job(of course some might argue I don't do art well in the first place). Even drawing on the way to and from work I get at most three pages a week done, usually only one. Apart from some amazing people out there, all of whom I think are on something, most of the people I know that went somewhere with their art made it their job.

[TROUBLEZ]

I stopped reading this around page 3 so I'm missing alot but...

Isn't art a day job? To be good at it, you need to study exstensively, and if you want to do quality work you need to do it full time.

About piracy, downloading other peoples hard work for free sounds wrong to me. If I like it enough, I'll just buy it. If I can't afford it, I guess I'll just have to make do.

Yea the issue gets fuzzy when mentioning used products and such, but you know your hurting an all the people involved with a project when you download it for free. And if you don't plan on buying it, why download it and keep the songs?

[Crowforge]

I would recommend you never buy used books if only for the ick factor. Very good is apparently up for interpretation.

[Rev. Calibos]

You are deliberately muddying the issue and your argument is nonsense.

The issue is downloading. Buying a used CD is a whole different issue that has ZERO to do with it.


Not so.

It has a lot to do with the issue of compensating the artist fairly for his output which of course ties in neatly to what was being discussed earlier.


If you buy a used CD, you're buying something the artist and label have already paid for. If the original owner flung it off a cliff or busted it up to make guitar picks or gave it away or kept it forever, the artist and label would not expect to make another nickel off the sale of that particular disc, nor should they.

If that CD enters the resale market, it's a moot point. It's a physical object that can only be in one place at a time, and only possessed by one person at a time, and it's subject to age and damage. Under the best of circumstances, that CD is most likely never going to be owned by more than three or four people before it becomes unusable. Any secondary sales are so trivial as to not matter to anyone.

You're missing the point.

If MacQuarrie puts out a CD and has two folks who are REALLY interested in getting it, what is the ideal outcome for him?

1) Both buy his CD new
2) One buys new, sells it to the used place where the second snags it.

In the big scheme of things this is a trivial thing that probably doesn't affect your bottom line when we consider hundreds of thousands of sales, but if you look back you'll see that that wasn't at all what we were considering.

If I enjoy your work am I, personally, ripping you off by buying used?

Again, the fact that the used item was purchased once has absolutely nothing to do with anything.

I'm the new guy, the guy who hasn't bought anything yet, the guy who is debating between buying used and buying new.



On the other hand, a digital download can be replicated and distributed endlessly, and can be passed on virtually forever. A single file can be reproduced and distributed to hundreds of thousands of people and can be passed along for decades, it represents a serious impact on an artist's royalties

If you think it's important to make sure that the artist gets paid his full revenue, always buy new. If you don't think so, don't use this piss-poor analogy as an excuse to justify illegal downloading, because it's bullshit.

Not really. The key thing here is how much am I willing to spend on Macquarrie's album?

If you really did drop that CD which avenue would you prefer that I get my copy?

1) Buy it new
2) Buy it used
3) Download it

Again, you're considering the nuts and bolts of Used, thinking about the wear and tear of a CD, how well it can play after passing through 3 or 4 sets of hands,etc.


What we're actually considering here is the principle of it and the similarities between downloading and buying used. Again, big scheme of things used isn't going to hurt you that much but we're not worried about that.

What we're worried about is the kid who has money in hand and wants to buy your CD. He can buy it brand new for the price you and your label came up with or he can pay a fraction of that for a copy that you've already sold.

[MacQuarrie]

Worked for the Arctic Monkeys, didn't it?

I'm not saying all the pieces are in place yet, or that there will be one single model, but the logic of digital reproduction and the internet marketplace dictates finding new solutions.

What we know is this.

1) Big money won't move until it's forced to by freeloading.
2) Digital shopping (iTunes, and now Amazon) is huge.
3) What drives the marketplace is a portable device.
4) We got those now.

It's my theory that the portable reading device is the game changer. Phones can already do this for text. The new gen Kindle is designed for larger formats. There's plenty of other devices in the works. Word is that Apple has a Kindle killer in the works, too. And I expect more technology to keep popping up.

Freeloading is more of a desktop and DSL thing. That's still going to happen, of course, just as it has in the wake of iTunes. But still, the handheld device -- especially one with wireless capability (or, indeed a phone) suggests that quick simple downloadable things from a reputable source at an affordable price will work.

With the right device, comics fit the bill just fine.

And just in time, since the big two and Diamond have made such a mess of the brick-and-mortar market.
All of which misses the point.

Arctic Monkeys and Radiohead chose to distribute in this way. If Metallica doesn't want to use the free distribution model, nobody has the right to do it with their music against their will. That's the point.

If artists or publishers don't want their content to be freely distributed, you don't get to decide that it will be anyway.

[Typo Lad]

Yeah, I came back.

If artists or publishers don't want their content to be freely distributed, you don't get to decide that it will be anyway.

That's the rub. it's not that digital distribution is evil, or free is bad... it's that doing it without the creator's consent is wrong. Ethically, legally, and personally.

[Aspield]

Um, dude? I have a publishing contract in the traditional publishing industry, which pays me a few grand an issue.

Why are you saying I'm whining when all I've just been stating is that the odds of getting a lucrative gig via webcomics is far less likely than getting a lucrative gig via traditional media?

If my output isn't as fast as it should be, blame it on first my publisher merging with someone else and a lengthy contract renegotiation, some computer problems, and me having complications with lupus. I don't get subsidized by the state, and I don't get regular doctor checkups, yo, and I'm an invalid. When I get sick, work stops.

I am certainly NOT blaming my financial situation on the internets or traditional media.

And who's them, first of all? I -- and Larime -- have spoken to lots of folks griping about the lack of recognition/attention/money for their comic. Just like in traditional media, even -- how many creators here have expressed frustration? Quite a few! -- but at this time, worse.


I do think you bring up some good points. The basic argument about digital downloads or copying does call question the relationship of the "middle man" (whether it's a comic company or a record label or the shops), the artistic producer, and the consumer. I do think a basic question that comic companies are having is how much should digital downloads be to make a profit? And profitable to whom?

Carla Speed McNeil took her wondrous Finder series to the internet (with collected trades still available as print) and it seems to be alright with her.

I can't wait for some of the companies more focused on the artist profit to take the lead in internet available material. Artists need to eat, and an advance for making the work is necessary to do that. I don't take consulting jobs until they pay at least 1/3 upfront, and I don't see why anyone else would either.

The digital copying has definitely messed with traditional business infrastructures, and I am not particularly interested in supporting dinosaurs. I am concerned with supporting artists who make things I love (or even find entertaining) in a format that is easy for me (the consumer).

Yes, I'm getting rid of my floppy issues because they cost too much to store nowadays.

Yes, I love Kindle.

Yes, I will still pick up trades because they are pretty and I can afford a couple bookshelves of them in my space.

How do comics get from the institutionalized infrastructure to the next one in a way that keeps the artist alive and vibrant?

[Typo Lad]

How do comics get from the institutionalized infrastructure to the next one in a way that keeps the artist alive and vibrant?

Now see, that's the rub right there.

[Reverend Smooth]

The larger kindle'd be good for reading comics (if it handles complex color well, anyway), but the price, omg.

Digital distro of comics is a good idea, imo, but that's just a small part of getting your work noticed. Sure, you have a digital copy of it, and sure, you'll sell it for however much, but how do you get a potential reader to pick up the book, or to know it exists?

I'm sure something'll come along to combine a book reader + comics in the next few years. That's awfully pricey right now, though.

I have no idea how comics will make the transition. Maybe build a base traditionally, use the internet to connect with and provide content for fans, and if we're still around when things change, jump on viable technologies and methods as they come up. It's not a big dramatic move, but these things rarely are.

That's just how it is for me, though. If someone wants to do it some other way, more power to them, and I hope they succeed.

I have to lie down, my face is starting to fry. x.x

[Corrina]

Now see, that's the rub right there.

Yeah.

The current publishing model, in books and comics, started because they provided both marketing and distribution for product. In exchange, they provided cash up front to creators and sometimes contracted them for the long-term.

In comics, it was as permanent employees. Sometimes. In books, there were always contract, either for one or multiple books.

The idea was that the publishers would take care of the selling once they recognized a produce they could sell, and the creator would then be free to spend the time creating.

That model is creaky. For one, it gets hidebound into 'well, this sold, so something different won't sell.' For prose books, that means if Bridget Jones is a great seller, you get fifty more more books like Bridget Jones. Of course, what they forget is only true game changers sell like crazy--and Bridget Jones was a satire but also hit a chord that pulled more people into the market. Ditto Harry Potter. But instead of the next big thing, they look for more HPs.

But anyway, marketing mistakes aside, the idea was to get cash up front and someone else would do the marketing and distribution.

Now, the internet can provide immediate distribution once a website is up. No shipping, etc., eliminate the physical product and put it in bytes.

The problem is, of course, if getting people's attention to the bytes you have available. It can be awfully lonely yelling into the cacophony that is the internet. It is quite difficult to catch people's attention.

Some small presses are providing this marketing. The publisher I signed with provides covers, professional editing, typesetting, and marketing at many well-known sites where romance readers converge. I could do this myself but it would cost me a lot of cash up front, not to mention time. This way, I have a partner to handle stuff I don't like to do--some of it anyway.

Artists who want to do it on their own on the 'net have to learn a new set of skills to get their work out there, skills that are not necessarily going to coincide with being a great creator. Van Gogh no doubt would have been lousy at marketing his work, frex.

This is why name creators, like Radiohead, will have an advantage on the web right now. Or why American Idol songs have a huge advantage over someone putting up their own music on YouTube or another site--even though the lone singer may have a great voice and song. Susan Boyle didn't just happen to get noticed on YouTube, she was on a big TV show in the UK.

So, to me, the tricky part is not getting content UP on the web. It's getting people to look at the content. I'm not totally convinced the middleman who does the marketing is ever going to be completely gone--though that's certainly possible.

[Aspield]

The problem is, of course, if getting people's attention to the bytes you have available. It can be awfully lonely yelling into the cacophony that is the internet. It is quite difficult to catch people's attention.



Don't some comics news sites -- like CBR or Newsarama -- have the reach to get product out?

I know that would change the business model of the sites, but people interested in comics already go there.

[Crowforge]

Don't some comics news sites -- like CBR or Newsarama -- have the reach to get product out?

I know that would change the business model of the sites, but people interested in comics already go there.
What, you mean if they had a webcomic attached?

[Aspield]

What, you mean if they had a webcomic attached?

I just mean being part of the distribution. Websites like CBR, Newsarama, even Salon, have a reach of potential audience. This is all hypothetical -- for the rapidly incoming future.

[Corrina]

Don't some comics news sites -- like CBR or Newsarama -- have the reach to get product out?

I know that would change the business model of the sites, but people interested in comics already go there.

Look what comics the CBR covers--how many of them are independent or web comics and how many of the articles are about comics with traditional publishers.

I'm not saying it CAN'T be done. But there are difficulties.

[doom saber]

In my honest opinion, l am not too keen with digital comicbooks since I tend to miss something that I would normally see in a paperback comic. Furthermore, I like to stare at the entire page rather than scrollin all about to get a sense of what is going on in each panel. Because of those reasons, I do not download comics.

[Paul McEnery]

Yeah.

The current publishing model, in books and comics, started because they provided both marketing and distribution for product. In exchange, they provided cash up front to creators and sometimes contracted them for the long-term.

In comics, it was as permanent employees. Sometimes. In books, there were always contract, either for one or multiple books.

The idea was that the publishers would take care of the selling once they recognized a produce they could sell, and the creator would then be free to spend the time creating.

That model is creaky. For one, it gets hidebound into 'well, this sold, so something different won't sell.' For prose books, that means if Bridget Jones is a great seller, you get fifty more more books like Bridget Jones. Of course, what they forget is only true game changers sell like crazy--and Bridget Jones was a satire but also hit a chord that pulled more people into the market. Ditto Harry Potter. But instead of the next big thing, they look for more HPs.

But anyway, marketing mistakes aside, the idea was to get cash up front and someone else would do the marketing and distribution.

Now, the internet can provide immediate distribution once a website is up. No shipping, etc., eliminate the physical product and put it in bytes.

The problem is, of course, if getting people's attention to the bytes you have available. It can be awfully lonely yelling into the cacophony that is the internet. It is quite difficult to catch people's attention.

Some small presses are providing this marketing. The publisher I signed with provides covers, professional editing, typesetting, and marketing at many well-known sites where romance readers converge. I could do this myself but it would cost me a lot of cash up front, not to mention time. This way, I have a partner to handle stuff I don't like to do--some of it anyway.

Artists who want to do it on their own on the 'net have to learn a new set of skills to get their work out there, skills that are not necessarily going to coincide with being a great creator. Van Gogh no doubt would have been lousy at marketing his work, frex.

This is why name creators, like Radiohead, will have an advantage on the web right now. Or why American Idol songs have a huge advantage over someone putting up their own music on YouTube or another site--even though the lone singer may have a great voice and song. Susan Boyle didn't just happen to get noticed on YouTube, she was on a big TV show in the UK.

So, to me, the tricky part is not getting content UP on the web. It's getting people to look at the content. I'm not totally convinced the middleman who does the marketing is ever going to be completely gone--though that's certainly possible.

The significant difference I see is that music is inherently social, and comics essentially individual. The two subcultures definitely crossover -- the Seattle scene, for instance, around Fantagraphics; and the SF scene around Last Gasp -- but you can't really do live performances of a comic to build an audience.

Back in 93/94, when I was wearing my Nostradamus cap and talking to everyone in the world who was trying digital content and distribution (whee! far fewer people to talk about then!), what seemed to me the obvious model was a switch from publishing imprints to digital curation.

What provides the incentive for commerce is productizing the interface. If you gather a number of like-minded individuals under the same banner, then it creates community, offers "if you liked that, you'll like this", and presents the opportunity for a pay-gate.

Sweetly, the current micropayment model is called tipjar. Probably with capital letters where you don't expect them.

Back in the day, we thought micropayments would pan out, though, and that didn't work, and even Scott McCloud -- who was on board if not ahead of me from the gitgo, not just about the commercial and artistic possibilities, but also about creators' rights -- had to give up on them.

I think we were just ten years early. The thing that made the pay-gate fly for music was the iPod. Why it wasn't the Diamond Rio five years earlier, or whatever better mp3 player coming out of Korea (and we knew about those back in 97!), beats hell out of me.

It seems to me that the time is ripe for reading matter now in the same way. The crunch is going to slow adoption down for handhelds while people wait for something that looks like the killer device to arrive -- was that why we waited for the iPod? -- and any digital publisher is looking at mad tech expense in keeping up with non-standardized platforms (which is what ruined gaming culture in the 21st Century for quite a while).

But all the pieces are in place. At least, I hope so.

[Paul McEnery]

Yeah, I came back.



That's the rub. it's not that digital distribution is evil, or free is bad... it's that doing it without the creator's consent is wrong. Ethically, legally, and personally.

And that's where I take issue.

Of course if you want to do right by artists, you put money in the hat when it comes round; you pay them direct if you can; but you put money in the pockets of people whose work you enjoy. And if you have limited resources, you put money in the pockets of people who also have limited resources. I would hope that's a given.

But I don't think doing it without the creators' consent is either good or bad. I think it's neutral, and simply a feature of the way things are now, an inevitable consequence of switching media.

Nobody every thought making mixtapes for your friends was unethical (except a few corporate heads), or using a public library. But for sure, digital distribution massively changes the scale of that, and the ratio of eyes and ears to original purchase.

For getting content to people in isolated areas, for broadening the range of culture in the public eye, or for getting OP content out there -- would anyone really feel wrong about downloading MiracleMan to find out what the fuss is all about? -- that's terrific.

But yes, for working artists trying to make a living, it's a problem. I'm currently working on providing a solution; but if it isn't me that makes the breakthrough, it'll be somebody else. Breakthroughs are happening all over.

In the meantime, it's foolish (in my view) to keep acting as if the ethics that apply to a scarcity economy work in an infinitely affluent economy. That's how you alienate people from paying up.

As is demonstrated by Metallica. They started out handing their stuff out for free, and that made them rich. Instead of paying it forward and respecting that system, and recognizing that the new marketplace allowed many people to reach a larger audience that way, they pulled the ladder back up after them.

To near-universal scorn within the community of their audience.

Which audience therefore regards Metallica as unethical, because Metallica has betrayed the value system of that community.

So the situation isn't as simple as saying "this ethics is the only ethics"; there are as many ethical systems in play as there are communities-of-interest in play.

An ethics that derives from property is not the only ethics.

[Beacon]

I’m not sure if anyone else has pointed this out yet but Marvel did actually allow Gitcorp* to do officially licensed DVD-ROMs of decades worth of comics**. There’s a very good chance that the gift was legit.

*Who have similar deals with MAD and Archie.

**Though Marvel’s recent half-assed attempt at an online comics subscription service caused them to cancel the license before they could do all the DVD-ROMs that were planned (like the Daredevil and Thor collections that never saw the light of day). Because the company that made these no longer has the rights to make more some of the DVD-ROMs (especially the Captain America one) sell for a fortune on eBay.

[Typo Lad]

Your ethics are not mine, clearly. Or some of the other people in this thread it seems. Ethics are, after all, subjective. Additionally, the law for now disagrees with you. Further, the artists for the most part personally disagree with you.

No-one is saying "this ethics are the only ethics", but it's the height of intellectual imperialism for one to take one's own ethics system and place it on another, without their consent. Cognitive colonialism, if you will. Just like you do not want someone here deciding what is or is not ethical to you, you should not have the right to decide what to do with someone else's thoughts. Your "ethics" are as much "property" as anyone's "concepts".

The point is to find a new solution, not make an end run about people's rights.

[Typo Lad]

And here's and example of someone doing something (http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=21347).

Star Trek comics on one of the most popular smartphone platforms out there, while the movie is on the height of popularity?

Smart.

[doom saber]

imo, I think laws should be altered regarding to music and comicbooks. l understand that some ppl have to make a profit, yet to do so, it is better to let the ppl know what they are purchasing. I think fansubs, which are now being considered as illegal through some companies, is a great way to get ppl into buyin theofficial subs/dubbed animes.

However, if things are done like there are currently, people would not give a rat's ass if they pirate somethin until it dies via piracy.

A good example is the Dreamcast; the system died within two years because one of the main issues that Sega had were ppl burning bootlegs of DC games. Then again, Microsoft would never develop the Xbox if Sega didn't stop makin game systems.

[Corrina]

I think, as I read you, Paul, is that those enjoying the product not only effectively have more rights in this digital age because of ease of access----but that's the the person whose rights we should consider more in any case, rather than those who created the music/tv/prose/comic.

Is that correct?

What I worry, because I am an incredible cynic, is that simply relying on the goodwill of people who have enjoyed a work is, well, going to not only be less effective than our current system, it's going to be much worse.

In other words, I don't trust the internet to have an honor system. :)

[Paul McEnery]

Your ethics are not mine, clearly. Or some of the other people in this thread it seems. Ethics are, after all, subjective. Additionally, the law for now disagrees with you. Further, the artists for the most part personally disagree with you.

No-one is saying "this ethics are the only ethics", but it's the height of intellectual imperialism for one to take one's own ethics system and place it on another, without their consent. Cognitive colonialism, if you will. Just like you do not want someone here deciding what is or is not ethical to you, you should not have the right to decide what to do with someone else's thoughts. Your "ethics" are as much "property" as anyone's "concepts".

The point is to find a new solution, not make an end run about people's rights.

I think, as I read you, Paul, is that those enjoying the product not only effectively have more rights in this digital age because of ease of access----but that's the the person whose rights we should consider more in any case, rather than those who created the music/tv/prose/comic.

Is that correct?

What I worry, because I am an incredible cynic, is that simply relying on the goodwill of people who have enjoyed a work is, well, going to not only be less effective than our current system, it's going to be much worse.

In other words, I don't trust the internet to have an honor system. :)

I honestly think that looking at it from the rights perspective gets in the way.

That's because the rights perspective is almost entirely rooted in a 17th/18th century, artificial scarcity economy of land.

I think that digital reproduction shreds that metaphor. To be sure, there is real estate on the net, and that offers opportunities for monetization (i.e. MySpace, eMusic); but where scarcity is replaced by infinite affluence, you can't put fences round things anymore, and we a fortiori return to the commons.

The ethics of the commons, and the tragedy of the commons. Now, Matt Ridley addresses the tragedy of the commons in The Origins of Virtue, and comes up with a property-based solution for the real world. When fishermen feel they have a direct stake in their water and their fish stock, then they're more responsible, and there are repercussions for defaulting.

Certainly a creator has inalienable ownership of their work -- one of my beefs with the property-and-commodity model of copyright is that it alienates this ownership, and not in the creators' interest, as in work for hire, and Siegel and Shuster.

But what IS ethically unclear is what kind of control they may extend over the dissemination of their work.

A comedian writes a joke and performs it. Tomorrow, the audience tries to tell their workmates the joke. That's just natural. Equally, a writer does a good analysis of something political for a newspaper. Today, I gank it and quote it here. That too is just natural. And I see it as exactly the same cultural impulse. And we see the same cultural impulse in lending people a book you liked, and yes, filesharing too.

I'm trying not to be snippy here, but it seems to me a uniquely American trait to find sharing things like that to be unethical. You can't do that! That's socialism! Well, and so it is, and culture is social.

I mean, I don't think Metallica paid DC or Neil Gaiman any money for singing about the book they publish. And I don't see any reason why they should. It's just culture transmitting itself from one medium to another. Why would property rights even enter into it?

So I guess what I'm saying is that "rights" are always at odds, and that there's nothing inherently natural about viewing issues through the lens of property rights, and that property rights only exist anyway through the violation of other people's land use rights. Rather than being a violation, the freedom of digital distribution seems to me to be a reclamation of a prior right.

[Paul McEnery]

imo, I think laws should be altered regarding to music and comicbooks. l understand that some ppl have to make a profit, yet to do so, it is better to let the ppl know what they are purchasing. I think fansubs, which are now being considered as illegal through some companies, is a great way to get ppl into buyin theofficial subs/dubbed animes..

It's a double-edged sword, isn't it.

Certainly fansubbing popularized the medium, and for a lot of titles, the only way you can watch it is over the net, and this has actually built a paying audience for shows like Lain, for instance.

OTOH, a number of anime companies (and manga companies) are struggling right now. Partly because everyone's flat broke, but also because people's consumption models are changing. Do we want the commodity-object any more? Probably not. (Though I'll keep my Thunderbirds box, because it came with fridge magnets.)

I think most people understand that work like that costs money to produce. I also think most people think "if I don't pay for it, someone else will", and that that road leads to disaster. But worse, for the business, most everyone thinks (and rightly so): "the damn corporations won't make this available to me at all; and if they do, not in a timely manner and in the format I want, so to hell with them".

For that to turn around, content producers need to put creators' interests and the fan communities' interests ahead of the grasping profit model.

[Corrina]

I honestly think that looking at it from the rights perspective gets in the way.


How about from the self-serving 'what's in it for me?' perspective.

*I'm only half-joking. What's in your new system for me, eh? Or for artists other than people saying 'love your work, dude?'

[Paul McEnery]

How about from the self-serving 'what's in it for me?' perspective.

*I'm only half-joking. What's in your new system for me, eh? Or for artists other than people saying 'love your work, dude?'

Am I right that your work's for sale because of digital distribution?

So, that for a start.

The brick-and-mortar market has already closed down opportunities even for saleable mid-list, let alone for second novels; and has been becoming more and more narrow, with centralized buying that's unresponsive to local markets.

Simply on that basis, the digital market is the only one other than Amazon that makes sense. Now all we need is an mp3-style standard so that, heh, we're all on the same page. And hopefully something open source that reads on all devices.

And since we know that the iTunes model works for music, something similar for reading matter should be achievable. I just don't think it was a viable model before until the Kindle provided proof of concept. But now it is.

Rupert Murdoch thinks it is, and he's not a man I'd bet against, on the whole.

[Corrina]

Point, Paul, but, first, I CHOOSE to make my work available that way.

No one hacked it from my computer. :)

If they had, I'd be a bit peeved, eh?

I understand what you're saying but it seems overly optimistic about human nature, I think. Democracies with a mix of socialistic/capitalistic economic systems have huge flaws. But, overall, they fail better than the other systems.

I have a friend with ten print books out through HQ/Silhouette. Each book has multiple editions in multiple languages around the world. Right now, she's the sole wage earner and she's able to be one for her family because HQ/Sil pays her on delivery of the book, then royalties for the rest of the book's life. (Which can be years as it rotates through multiple countries.) HQ/SIL provides the marketing and distribution.

If I had ten books out through my publisher, I maybe could buy a really good MacBook Pro. :)

My method fails worse than the traditional method at the moment.

Am I betting this will get better? Yes. But I'm quite cynical about it because it seems to me that human nature is to want to get something for nothing and they'll keep on doing that, even if the tip jar is out there.

[Paul McEnery]

Point, Paul, but, first, I CHOOSE to make my work available that way.

No one hacked it from my computer. :)

If they had, I'd be a bit peeved, eh?

I understand what you're saying but it seems overly optimistic about human nature, I think. Democracies with a mix of socialistic/capitalistic economic systems have huge flaws. But, overall, they fail better than the other systems.

I have a friend with ten print books out through HQ/Silhouette. Each book has multiple editions in multiple languages around the world. Right now, she's the sole wage earner and she's able to be one for her family because HQ/Sil pays her on delivery of the book, then royalties for the rest of the book's life. (Which can be years as it rotates through multiple countries.) HQ/SIL provides the marketing and distribution.

If I had ten books out through my publisher, I maybe could buy a really good MacBook Pro. :)

My method fails worse than the traditional method at the moment.

Am I betting this will get better? Yes. But I'm quite cynical about it because it seems to me that human nature is to want to get something for nothing and they'll keep on doing that, even if the tip jar is out there.

There's certainly truth to that.

But as I see it, we don't have any option but to dive off the stage and hope the audience holds us up.

From what I'm looking at, it's going to take a mixture of social marketing and effective digital packaging to make the model work, but it seems to me that the economies of scale outweigh the risk of freeloading; that satisfied freeloaders can be converted into payloaders; and for a great many people, it's better than the alternative, which is no publishing at all.

Watch this space.

[Corrina]

Paul, question, just a hypothetical.

What's the difference, to your mind, between hacking my computer to get at my manuscript and getting rid of whatever prevents a download of it if it's in ebook form?

Just idle wondering.

I think the field is perhaps rosier for music creators because they have an alternate source of income: live performance.

With the written word, that's pretty much the only way to generate income. True, Dickens went around doing performances but I don't think that's how Stephen King makes his money today.

And if the written word is completely free and common use and yet it works like you hope, well, it'll be one of the few times that humanity has done the right thing.

[Rev. Calibos]

I’m not sure if anyone else has pointed this out yet but Marvel did actually allow Gitcorp* to do officially licensed DVD-ROMs of decades worth of comics**. There’s a very good chance that the gift was legit.

*Who have similar deals with MAD and Archie.

**Though Marvel’s recent half-assed attempt at an online comics subscription service caused them to cancel the license before they could do all the DVD-ROMs that were planned (like the Daredevil and Thor collections that never saw the light of day). Because the company that made these no longer has the rights to make more some of the DVD-ROMs (especially the Captain America one) sell for a fortune on eBay.

And, strangely enough, that's one of the collections my friend offered to me.

So it boiled down to Amazing Spider-Man, X-Men, Avengers, Cap and a few others (FF I think).

Which is more than enough and a fine gift......it's just that if I DID accept them I'd never get anything accomplished. lol.

Unfortunately, the gift offered to me was completely, utterly burned. My lil' circle of friends download and burn for each other eagerly and often.

Me? I'm offered free copies of new CD's, movies, etc. but I've yet to accept for this reason or that.

For instance, Prince's new album is a Target exclusive for $12 but I could have just as easily had my friend burn me a copy from his computer and be done with it.

They still purchase CD's and movies but they pool resources to provide each other copies of items that have already been bought.

The offer of the comics collectioin was the first time that I was seriously tempted to 'illegally' gain something like that and it was the catalyst for this thread.

[bfrank]

For instance, Prince's new album is a Target exclusive for $12 but I could have just as easily had my friend burn me a copy from his computer and be done with it.



That just reminded me of something.... A few folks update their ipods/iphones via my computer......Are they "cheating" too? I mean my best friend hasn't had to think about buying new music for at least the last 5 years......

[Corrina]

I still want to know what's the difference between hacking into my computer documents and taking my stories and getting it from someone who's hacked it from a legal copy and is making it available to millions of people.

[Paul McEnery]

I still want to know what's the difference between hacking into my computer documents and taking my stories and getting it from someone who's hacked it from a legal copy and is making it available to millions of people.

Invasion of privacy!

[Paul McEnery]

That just reminded me of something.... A few folks update their ipods/iphones via my computer......Are they "cheating" too? I mean my best friend hasn't had to think about buying new music for at least the last 5 years......

Bad form if they've got the cash and they're not paying entertainers somewhere along the line.

[Rev. Calibos]

That just reminded me of something.... A few folks update their ipods/iphones via my computer......Are they "cheating" too? I mean my best friend hasn't had to think about buying new music for at least the last 5 years......



I would say 'no' but I'm sure that others would say 'yes' so it seems nothing has been determined, lol.

Looking back over the thread what I've gotten from it is that if you do NOT go the standard route to get the 'product', namely by downloading or buying used, you are, in essence, 'ripping off' the artist and are engaged in piracy most foul.

Arrr.

[Crowforge]

I still want to know what's the difference between hacking into my computer documents and taking my stories and getting it from someone who's hacked it from a legal copy and is making it available to millions of people.
the thrill

[snarkbunny]

That just reminded me of something.... A few folks update their ipods/iphones via my computer......Are they "cheating" too? I mean my best friend hasn't had to think about buying new music for at least the last 5 years......

Yes, they are "cheating". That is not fair use.



Looking back over the thread what I've gotten from it is that if you do NOT go the standard route to get the 'product', namely by downloading or buying used, you are, in essence, 'ripping off' the artist and are engaged in piracy most foul.

The only person who is equating unauthorized downloading to buying used is you. The lengths you have gone to equate the two despite everyone else telling you they are not is quite fascinating, though.

[Stressfactor]

Invasion of privacy!Actually, yes, but not as simply as you put it.

I did my Master's Thesis partially on how (because American Privacy Laws suck) people often use Copyright in order to protect their privacy -- particularly when it comes to Archival documents.

But anyway, in a straight answer to your question Corrina -- You published your work.

As long as your work was on YOUR computer and under YOUR control anyone hacking your computer was violating your privacy and that's what you could have sued them for.

As soon as you published the manuscript, though, and put it where it was accessible to the public -- even if the public is supposed to pay to read it in some way shape or form -- you gave up your right to privacy. It is at this point, though, that illegal downloading becomes seen as "theft".

[snarkbunny]

Interesting to know, thanks Stressfactor.

[Rev. Calibos]

The only person who is equating unauthorized downloading to buying used is you. The lengths you have gone to equate the two despite everyone else telling you they are not is quite fascinating, though.


What's fascinating is the hoops everyone is willing to jump through to ignore the fact that I'm NOT equating the two.

At all.

I can list a number of posts I've made where I have, in fact, said that there NOT the same at all.

There are similarities between downloading and buying used though.

If you're too stubborn to admit that what is plainly obvious to all (that there are similarities) I don't know what to tell you.

Maybe there's something on tv you could watch?

That new 'Get Me Out Of Here I'm A Celebrity' is on, maybe you would find that enjoyable.

[Corrina]

Actually, yes, but not as simply as you put it.

I did my Master's Thesis partially on how (because American Privacy Laws suck) people often use Copyright in order to protect their privacy -- particularly when it comes to Archival documents.

But anyway, in a straight answer to your question Corrina -- You published your work.

As long as your work was on YOUR computer and under YOUR control anyone hacking your computer was violating your privacy and that's what you could have sued them for.

As soon as you published the manuscript, though, and put it where it was accessible to the public -- even if the public is supposed to pay to read it in some way shape or form -- you gave up your right to privacy. It is at this point, though, that illegal downloading becomes seen as "theft".

Thank you, Stressfactor, that's very informative. I had not thought of it in those terms.

[Stressfactor]

Privacy laws are wacky, though, and vary from state to state and Copyright laws are stronger and federal.

Back in the mid-1990's there was the famous (at least famous to archivists) Salinger case.

An author wrote an unauthorized biography of reclusive writer J.D. Salinger. At the core of the case were a series of letters Salinger had written to a friend. When the friend passed away his family had placed the letters in a New York archive.

The biographer wished to reprint in part or in whole several of the letters. Salinger, knowing that privacy laws were poor and that his case was weakened by the fact that the letters were not PHYSICALLY in his posession, instead tried to block publication of the letters based on copyright. Technically, Salinger was correct in this. He had written the letters, making him the author and as such he maintained the right of first publication. So, even though the letters had been sent to someone else they had never been PUBLISHED before so Salinger retained his right of first publication.

He won the case and the book eventually DID get published but the biographer had to go back and yank out all of the passeges from the letters.

This is another example of how someone taking it off Corrina's computer would be violating the law. Whether someone OFFICIALLY registers copyright or not, as soon as you set the words down you own them. As you own them you retain the right of first publication. Anyone stealing a manuscript off of someone's computer BEFORE publication violates their copyright right to first publication.

Once the item is PUBLISHED however, yes, it's still a copyright violation but often by that point you have publishing houses involved and they muddle the copyright waters a bit.

The Salinger case made a BIG headache for archives as well. We strive to make as much information availible as possible but often we are NOT the copyright holders to documents. If the person who created the document is still living then they hold copyright or their first generation decendents do. If a researcher wants to use something beyond fair use they have to contact the copyright holder. This can also be a pain in the butt with things like letters.

For example: Let's say Corrina and I corresponded for years and she eventually became a New York Times bestselling author -- beloved by millions of readers, favorite of Oprah's book club, etc. In cleaning out her stuff Corrina decides to donate her personal papers and original manuscripts to an archive. In her generous nature she also sign over copyright to the archives as well to all of her stuff. This means that the archive can tell any researcher they can use the stuff with impunity -- no restrictions. Trouble is, there are MY letters in the collection. I wrote them ergo the copyright is MINE not Corrina's. If a researcher wants to reprint one of my letters from the collection they have to contact me to get my approval.

And believe it or not... all of this is part of why I LOVE my job!

[Paul McEnery]

Yes, they are "cheating". That is not fair use.



The only person who is equating unauthorized downloading to buying used is you. The lengths you have gone to equate the two despite everyone else telling you they are not is quite fascinating, though.

No, I am, too.

Because they are, in fact, identical situations.

One person pays for an original copy; everyone else amortizes their costs through rebuying that copy.

The only difference here is that the freeloaded copies give no money back to the original purchaser, and the copies proliferate more freely.

In principle, though, they're exactly the same.

[Paul McEnery]

Thank you, Stressfactor, that's very informative. I had not thought of it in those terms.

We'd say the same about gated content, I suppose.

Though obviously so few people were willing to subscribe to the NYT just to get at the whole of the one article they wanted to see that bugmenot destroyed their online gate.

The Guardian, though, does have the option of paying to get a laid-out digital version. How many people have paid up for it, I don't know.

[kingdom2000]

I see where Corrina's argument and others come from...but the current solution of just throwing your hands up, calling everyone pirates and demanding they stop pretty please or I will sue simply doesn't work. You can make all the analogies to stealing it from my computer until the sun burns out and it will not change that some people are going to take the free alternative.

However, it has been proven with iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, movie downloads via XBox, PSN, and more that if you provide people with an easy to use competivitily priced alternative with simple rules - most will take it. Not all, but most. And most is all you need to have a successful business. If the pirating crap killing everything was true...netflix would fail, iTunes wouldn't be selling millions of songs, and theatres wouldn't be bringing in record business for the year. Noticed their rules are simple too - you bought it you own it. You don't return it, we don't send another and so forth. There isn't a "only from this period to period, only for this, not for that, sign away your first born and blah blah blah" in relation to it. (See Marvel and its list of limitations to their digital "distribution" model).

Really the only people hurting right now is the music industry and that is because their bottom line depended on the huge margins that overpriced CDs brought them. For the first time they are being forced to compete and they are not liking the taste and want the old ways. They are the cautionary tale for those that don't adapt, not the example of why "piracy sucks and destroys everything!". Throwing lawyers at the problem and calling people pirates isn't going to change that.

So is piracy wrong? Sure. Can anything meaninful be done to stop it? No not really. Can it be curtailed by businesses themselves making changes to how they price and compete? Sure. The internet, at the end of the day, is the ultimate example of capitalism at work were for the first time in history, literally anyone can start a "mom and pop" shop with little investment of money, just time. The result of that is plenty of opportunity, plenty of abuse, and a ton of true competition. Something that MPAA and RIAA hate with absolute passion. But someone like comic artist/writer for PvP loves (as an example) of a success based on nothing but hard determined work that is digially distributed and free.

[Corrina]

I see where Corrina's argument and others come from...but the current solution of just throwing your hands up, calling everyone pirates and demanding they stop pretty please or I will sue simply doesn't work. You can make all the analogies to stealing it from my computer until the sun burns out and it will not change that some people are going to take the free alternative.

I don't think I've done that.

I have pointed out that piracy is currently hurting artists.

OTOH, I'm also trying to get this new system to work, too. I think most of the people opposed to illegal downloading on this thread don't believe it can be stamped out. Most of us just want a system in place where some compensation can be obtained in this new marketplace.

iTunes arose after Napster, for instance. With iTunes, there's compensation for the creators. Napster didn't have any. Right now, with a lot of creative work, we're in the Napster stage.

And authors are hurting from piracy, btw.

[Stressfactor]

Did no one bother to read the John Rogers blog I linked to a while back?

As Rogers pointed out, the online platforms which are currently most successful do so by squeezing out the competition.

iTunes is great!.... but they make damn sure they don't have any REAL competitors.

Hello, does the model of Microsoft ring any bells?! Look at what they've done! And digital media shows EVERY intention of going the same way.

Everyone says "Kindle" and what happens when Kindle is the biggest ape on the block, hmmm?

[snarkbunny]

kingdom2000, you are right there will always be people who will do whatever in order to get something for "free" or "cheaper", where it is stealing cable, downloading comics, or buying stolen goods.

You are also right that a new business model needs to be developed and a goodly portion of this thread has been about how to create that model.

However, I believe that any new model should allow creators to not participate in that model, and anyone who redistributes into that model without authorization should be held legally accountable and punished. I have supported Scott Kurtz with my money in the past, I support multiple webcomics in that model with money and I would happily support fines, community service, and a criminal record for every person who illegally uploads movies, comics, books, music.

Paul, my apologies. I hadn't got that interpretation from postings although it is in line with your philosophy and and I should have realized it.

Rev. Calibos Where has anyone but you said...
buying used, you are, in essence, 'ripping off' the artist and are engaged in piracy most foul.

[Rev. Calibos]

Rev. Calibos Where has anyone but you said...


If we consider 'ripping off the artist' as piracy then if buying used is 'ripping off the artist' then buying used is piracy.

Again, they're not the same thing which is why I said 'in essence'.


If I thought that it WAS the same thing I would have said 'they're the same thing.'

But I don't. I was exploring the similarities between the two which is why I said 'in essence'.

It was an example.

[bfrank]

Yes, they are "cheating". That is not fair use.

Then why does itunes allow you to have 5 ipods per computer......


and paul, as I said earlier, I'm sure Robin Thicke would prefer the $90.00 he's getting in concerts tickets vs the dollar he didn't get from a CD sale.....

[Typo Lad]

iTunes does indeed have compitition. Many recent moves by Apple (various pricing models, lack of DRM) were in direct response to Amazon's music store. With Amazon basically the official music store of the Palm WebOS devices coming out and Google's Android, expect to see them eat up serious market share in the years to come.

There's also Real Rhapsody, but that's lame.