«

| So all kinds of scenarios can be envisioned and you have no idea about
| how that neighbor feels about people who enjoy his art so much that
| they take a picture of it, regardless whether or not they feel
| compelled to say thanks.. perhaps he's allergic to chocolate.


No, I don't know how the neighbor feels.
I know how you feel. The point is not whether
he gets rewarded. The point is that you're not
being respecful or appreciative of what you receive,
and that you don't feel any responsibility to carry
your own weight in life.

On Sunday, November 18, 2012 5:51:45 AM UTC+1, Mayayana wrote:
> | So all kinds of scenarios can be envisioned and you have no idea about
>
> | how that neighbor feels about people who enjoy his art so much that
>
> | they take a picture of it, regardless whether or not they feel
>
> | compelled to say thanks.. perhaps he's allergic to chocolate.
>
>
>
>
>
> No, I don't know how the neighbor feels.
>
> I know how you feel. The point is not whether
>
> he gets rewarded. The point is that you're not
>
> being respecful or appreciative of what you receive,
>
> and that you don't feel any responsibility to carry
>
> your own weight in life.

I fail to see how you can jump to that conclusion.
Besides, being respectful or appreciative is quite a subjective
notion, very much dependent on one's cultural background.
What's considered a token of respect in one culture, can be a grave
insult in another culture.
For instance, in some cultures, they used to pay respect to their
dead relatives by eating their brain, while in other cultures they
would cringe at that suggestion.

I'm very appreciative of the wealth of human knowledge and culture,
but I'm very much disgruntled about the way corporations try to
prevent information from being accessible to everybody, regardless
of their socioeconomic status, while we have the technology that
allows us to share the wealth of human culture on an unprecedented
scale.

So I'm inspired by the people who were ultimately responsible for
the invention of information technology, which were the scientists
and the way they managed to achieve scientific progress was by
sharing information on a global scale and allowing scientists to
freely build upon the results of their predecessors. I don't see
why that same philosophy shouldn't apply to human culture in
general.

Eric Stevens <> writes:

> On Sat, 17 Nov 2012 08:01:01 -0800 (PST), sobriquet
> <> wrote:
>
>>On Saturday, November 17, 2012 10:26:13 AM UTC+1, Eric Stevens wrote:
>>> On Fri, 16 Nov 2012 20:35:38 -0800 (PST), sobriquet
>>> <> wrote:
>>> >On Saturday, November 17, 2012 5:11:52 AM UTC+1, Eric Stevens wrote:
>>> >> On Fri, 16 Nov 2012 18:17:33 -0800 (PST), sobriquet
>>> >> <> wrote:
>>> >Because the whole idea of copyright only came into existence when
>>>
>>> >people started to employ certain kinds of information technology,
>>>
>>> >like the printing press.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> That's when bulk-copying first became practical. Imagine trying to do
>>>
>>> it in the days of the pen.
>>>
>>
>>So because it becomes easier to reproduce information, reproducing
>>information suddenly becomes an immoral act?
>
> Reproducing creative works (what you call 'information') has probably
> always regarded as immoral. The idea of copyright was introduced only
> when the mass copying of original works became a practical
> proposition.

Sorry, you're historically wrong. That's why monks devoted their lives
to copying manuscripts by hand -- it was almost an act of worship for
them. Certainly NOT an immoral act.
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Eric Stevens <> writes:

> On Sat, 17 Nov 2012 14:47:05 -0800 (PST), sobriquet
> <> wrote:
>
>>On Saturday, November 17, 2012 11:14:02 PM UTC+1, Eric Stevens wrote:
>>> On Sat, 17 Nov 2012 08:01:01 -0800 (PST), sobriquet
>>> <> wrote:
>>> >On Saturday, November 17, 2012 10:26:13 AM UTC+1, Eric Stevens wrote:
>>> >> On Fri, 16 Nov 2012 20:35:38 -0800 (PST), sobriquet
>>> >> <> wrote:
>>> >> >On Saturday, November 17, 2012 5:11:52 AM UTC+1, Eric Stevens wrote:
>>> >> >> On Fri, 16 Nov 2012 18:17:33 -0800 (PST), sobriquet
>>> >> >> <> wrote:
>>> >> >Because the whole idea of copyright only came into existence when
>>> >> >people started to employ certain kinds of information technology,
>>> >> >like the printing press.
>>> >>
>>> >> That's when bulk-copying first became practical. Imagine trying to do
>>> >> it in the days of the pen.
>>> >
>>> >So because it becomes easier to reproduce information, reproducing
>>> >information suddenly becomes an immoral act?
>>>
>>> Reproducing creative works (what you call 'information') has probably
>>> always regarded as immoral. The idea of copyright was introduced only
>>> when the mass copying of original works became a practical
>>> proposition.
>>
>>So those monks who were copying books by hand before the
>>printing press was invented were actually being regarded as
>>immoral parasites and thieves?
>
> That was legitimate copying oftheir own books for the sake of
> preservation. I hope you are not going to try to argue that that's
> what you do also.

Um, what do you mean "their own books"? Certainly not books that they
had written themselves. And often they made more than one copy, and
distributed them. It was publishing, just on a smaller and slower scale
than we saw later when technology improved it.
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Entertaining lecture that illustrates some of the points raised in
this discussion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9fBpOVborY

| but I'm very much disgruntled about the way corporations try to
| prevent information from being accessible to everybody,

I agree with you there, but it doesn't excuse your behavior.

| So I'm inspired by the people who were ultimately responsible for
| the invention of information technology, which were the scientists
| and the way they managed to achieve scientific progress was by
| sharing information on a global scale

That's often not true. Information is sometimes shared when
research is publicly funded. On the other hand, drug companies
often use gov't funded research to then develop drugs which
get patented, which are then marketed to doctors, who then
diagnose most of their patients with the disease du jour (currently
high cholesterol, acid reflux, or low testosterone) and then
prescribe these absurdly priced, patented drugs, the development
of which was paid for by our taxes, while the drug companies
only paid the testing expenses. Worse, when the patent runs
out the drug companies alter the molecule in some small way,
claim the new version is more effective, and then get another
patent period in which to fleece the public.

Research not publicly funded is generally not shared. One
need look no further than current patent wars over "smart
phones" to see that. And I don't think anyone would think of
words like generosity or altruism to describe "information
technology" companies like Intel, Microsoft, Adobe, etc. The
open source people donate their efforts, but even many of them
are doing it for selfish reasons and restrict use of their product
to people who are willing to actively take part in open source.

And a lot of research is never done simply because there's
no money in it. (Ex.: cures for diseases that affect few people
or that primarily affect poor countries.)

Over and over you focus on your ideal of benevolent socialism
where everyone shares and everything is free. That sounds like
a good ideal to me. But over and over you leave yourself out
of the effort, only seeing yourself as a "consumer".
Good luck. I hope you have a chance to experience having to
make your own living at some point, and maybe help others a bit.
It's very difficult to develop self respect otherwise. Maybe you
could start your own website, pay the expenses (not just using
sleazy free sites like picassa) and share your own photos without
claiming copyright on them. That would be a good start.

sobriquet <> wrote:
> On Thursday, November 15, 2012 5:56:40 PM UTC+1, Whisky-dave wrote:
>> On Thursday, November 15, 2012 3:43:02 PM UTC, sobriquet wrote:
>> > On Thursday, November 15, 2012 4:18:08 PM UTC+1, Mayayana wrote:

>> They can put whatever value on them they like doens;t bother me.
>> if I want to see what they've done then I prepared to pay to see it.

> You can put any value on any item as you see fit, but the price of
> things is not just determined by the supply side but also by the
> demand side. Why would somebody pay you for something when they can
> obtain that same thing for free from others?

- Because quite a few people think it's right if money goes towards
the creative. (Whether that's the case with e.g. CDs when
a major label is involved is a different debate.)

- Because you need to spend time and effort to get the "free"
version, which some recon is more expensive than the money
spent for the paid version. This depends on the amount of
money asked, your finances and your amount of free time
you can spend: i.e. those with paying jobs tend to have
less free time and more money.

- Because you can't get it for free in the quality you'd like to
have it. Badly scanned books as a PDF (all images, no OCR =>
bloated, not searchable; and bad image quality) are no joy.
MP3s at 128kbit/s (or less) aren't fun if you've got good ears,
good gear and are used to better quality. Bootlegged "recorded
in the audience" isn't fun.
Bootlegged "recorded in the cinema" is no joy.
It's often way less painful to buy a properly handled, properly
prepared product. (Even more so if it's reasonably priced and
not a hassle to use --- I'm looking at you, DRM!)

- Because you can't get it for free in the format you want.
Wanna hang up a van Gogh-copy? Got to have it printed,
probably on canvas (which costs! Not free!), and it still
doesn't look right. Buy a hand-painted copy (it's out of
copyright protection!), and you've got a much better product.

Most people still want a physical book. Can't get that for
free from the net. Printing one from the download is way more
expensive than buying new.

- Because there are things you can't obtain from free from
others.

> Why would anything that isn't scarce to begin with (like a bitstring)
> be associated with a monetary value (that is usually an indication for
> how scarce a particular item is)?

You're an idiot. Bitstrings that are entertaining or valuable
are exceedingly *rare*. If you don't believe me, create a few
trillion (US: quintillion) (10^21) random bit strings and then
report back how many turn out to be good books, good films,
good music or anything similar. I don't even insist on error
free and high quality recordings/spelling/...

Guess you won't find a single one that way.

Or for some math: A typical song is about 3 MB (mp3). A typical
book (compressed format) is on my average 518k, (doc: 2.8M).
A film usually is 2-8 GB as DVD, and 25-100 GB as BlueRay.

Google estimated in 2010 that there are 129,864,880 books in
the world. (most of them are crap, of course.) Lets assume there
are 10.000 times more good books possible than there are books.

Let's assume that you can produce 10 spelling errors
(simulated as random character) on every page and that there
are (overstatement) 1000 pages. That makes another 10.000
spelling errors.

Let's assume the format was not compressed (i.e. all books
were shorter by a factor 2) and tha the format was pure ASCII
(i.e. no errors due to bad characters at bad places.

518k => 530.432 characters. To produce 1 exact book by
random is 1 of 530.432^128 (ASCII, 7 bit, making it very easy
for you). To produce any of the 129,864,880 books:
129,864,880 out of 530.432^128
To produce any possible good book:
1,298,648,800,000 out of 530.432^128
To allow for a ton of spelling errors:
12,986,488,000,000,000 out of 530.432^128
or
1 out of
13811592276212828213603595311499566144386187369602 505762626178825
75128339306639249986171367798531083561787395322170 142176150547684
04781776796831755252271166426137056323234063867040 288064025047948
00039597326485042076437109994317820651302148459955 712029538311841
85447198540620183526866718135634779233218646271693 240485500371543
88939791702147400270474617325924476924909255612434 460608992203718
60197112186832919378170942318044415534512453854783 205822948805672
81118267676993125636704146313306615156323323995061 157793860085852
29633387843915425868913516749636333967070251084538 086181162112014
06735023485527016162830005551286881526855039663088 105883992779317
52173237923893782975491283389772456730472349535455 790529023124153
992275145261056

Do you really think a trillion (US: quintillion) tries makes
that better:
1 out of ~
13811592276212828213603595311499566144386187369602 505762626178825
75128339306639249986171367798531083561787395322170 142176150547684
04781776796831755252271166426137056323234063867040 288064025047948
00039597326485042076437109994317820651302148459955 712029538311841
85447198540620183526866718135634779233218646271693 240485500371543
88939791702147400270474617325924476924909255612434 460608992203718
60197112186832919378170942318044415534512453854783 205822948805672
81118267676993125636704146313306615156323323995061 157793860085852
29633387843915425868913516749636333967070251084538 086181162112014
06735023485527016162830005551286881526855039663088 105883992779317
52173237923893782975491283389772456730472349535455 790529023

(I left the ,xxx off)

That's 1 out of ~ 1.38 * 10^708.

The chance to win the MegaMillon lottery (5 out of 56 + 1
out of 46) is a mere 1:175,711,535 (1 out of 1.76 * 10^.

I understand there's a Dutch lottery 6 out of 45: the chances
are (for first price) ~1:8,145,060 or 1 out of 1.2 * 10^6.

Your computer can't create and evaluate these 1 trillion (US:
quintillion) random "books" for what a lottery ticket costs.
(even assuming it could detect 'well written'.)
So connect the dots yourself.


You'll say, "But what if I make tons of spelling errors"?
Here's a text with 50% of the characters being random (and
for better readability they do not contain any non-printable
chars):

| A Vh-Ie are bTe>gyneM~tio6s Dr=LY' #eavVAs @X( of}G?- garth
| wh9Lthey:&8Ze\)Xe>tTB`IanFtL(ida> try. |>/3wuRB@d^NaMI3EUe
| 8?rhh5zn$ txW!h=av!O2^a
| 5Kun] $very 8$znt oV tQk foeln#b@\Wrv1it was"ipUthe eauthMOajw EverykQe^b 5f(,ore itYgrrwforo\@er5dRD GoS
| had"aotw/acw,{6it +oJ(p`5yupoo !h} e^'R", "Ed|Uheqb$<vs-ncg a&,/n b] t{llUt)e gr>P@M`
| <60Bur NqRrI wmnHe8M |92ist}froc tLe 2drt4, andLGDte8ed th^
| wFop>jfave mfX]*RPH8oM_FH
| Rz-H+ tVe LORDZ,qdO6t<ucdBB\n$.f the vysb2xfLt<~ g#GqDdW acd
| br[arh'd[g#1% hi? n)strGeCpl|ef\rAa3Atm? -ifz; Vn$r3an \~cXme|ac~gv1oW soul.{C( YnN tteJP:R$:9.dy]$J}two\K g#rdx-jeYst\*rQ %noYH9nT4Hbd
| zhQre=L@2/atptW4 hTn H1o: -e ha'#ANr1ed.x#9 A4dOo!M~oc tOeR}U$ufdijazcdthe LOYxQ~AdFtUW8row e``<y=tUY_ath,tX|6 pweBsVXt io~$M_]ti>mt,l5!d GXJdAGoL fodM`@he1_7ee |f
| 53~r r{soFinNt:e7mi]}(3ofq_he gaP@eA9 KnB tkeYh&en o
| cnowledLe ow goodAgnx e?ig.jT`0#Aba u rheeruw.nt out ff|;3enPWz latereeMX<VardenF a1d ftpmWv;/KcA WGRwXs Ra@tkug 32,98(UiDep9ntGmf3u: 37yds.
|
| T1 ~Ql<nXA! lf9the ?irst>is?Li;ovXJ6EaG is it `>srl
| 6oZ/}ssEth ^ve w~ole l.Id_(fCHa(xP{h, whxrl.Yher+3iQ yoldF
|
| 3s"7n_ tux#!ol{ op oha0XHa-d-PsCgAod: t[er/(Zz dbbllEumRand
| ti5 omyx "tSgO.
|
| )% P%drtq2_CamZ 5fVhk :e{o`L9r|Pe9?*w ^\hvn: r(dRL5Up zsti{
| S-Kt$n4mpas*ew}CtPv8Vhyle=HabdnKf Ethiopi6.R
| 14 AwV |he ~amO 1Y tcT Chdr!xmBv-? !s /QKEeCelt :GatfKt q'1which goetQ-&o9aE1 tbe!Jast ofJAssM|Ea.|Sny|the mobr&5 /]veS[gh EjphrvQem.i
| 15f]ZG=thecLORD Go- :_ok |eeAean,8an< p(O9Wim 3Vtorthp&gwRdendof ES[n $\ d,QJs n* andat9Qkeep&it$5

Free bonus points for anyone who can tell which very well
known text that is.

The chance to come up with even such an unreadable text (and
restricting yourself to printable characters) for any
possible good book:
1,298,648,800,000 out of (530.432/2)^95:

1,298,648,800,000 out of
17457155020978160254708782807390941639948120425153 238197142446097
49386286853265805619033870537343365386985511685198 814963413358591
77573145660396540980053618968224656795806864146013 330666275197304
33378608637050589627672388274982091201799153488235 742387067416632
26799067324898041800524011610847580421447471484269 541275318567398
93442825428101283466833755727521332620987306581021 759034154216729
41328625378672845044905514087032114943897343517870 555635074454317
72674474784031386541212148119600001207668321852211 79219378176

or
~ 1:1.34 * 10^503


> I can sell the number 29358238385 on ebay, with a licence and a
> usermanual, but people are unlikely to spend any money on it,
> because numbers belong to the public domain and they can use
> numbers for free.

That number is way too short to be worth anything. Unless
it's your Swiss bank account number. Or the next lottery
numbers.


>> [..]
>> So post you bank details including passwords and anyb other info it's just binary digits.

>> So your not prepared to share yuor bitstrings are you.

>> well that typical isn;t it.

> Nobody is forced to share anything (as they are not forced to
> disseminate their creations).

So what stops the disgruntled bank clerk from sharing your bank
details with frauders (and getting paid for that)? After all,
it's not his creation ... and he does get money.

> My banking details are not my
> intellectual property and should other people obtain it, I simply
> have to contact my bank to obtain a new password and things like that.

Your bank details are just binary digits and therefore should
be free.


>> > These bitstrings can be anything. Movies, software, music, text, pictures,

>> > etc.. But that doesn't detract from the fact that they are bitstrings.

>> bank accounts....

> Money is scarce, by definition.

Not by definition.

> If everybody could duplicate money as
> easily as they can share information via p2p sites, money wouldn't be
> useful as a universal substitute for things that are scarce.

Information *is* scarce. It's just easily copied. So are high
value bank notes. They are made harder to successfully copy (and
to successfully use the copy) by artifical means. Just like DRM.


> Something like a unique oilpainting can be very expensive *because*
> it is a unique item.

Same thing for information. The list of spies from a foreign
country --- the recipe for Coca Cola as used today --- business
secrets etc.


> It would be very strange if a digital piece of
> art would be sold at an auction for a few million, while that same
> digital piece of art can be downloaded for free from a p2p network.

It would be very strange if a physical token would be worth lots
while it's easy enough to copy. Yet that's very common.


>> But peole won;t write those books and other bitstrings unless they getv somnething back, you don;t understand that because you're probbaly not created anythijng useful or wanted by others in your life.

> Oh, I have created things that were viewed online by more than
> 50.000 people.

> http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/6337..._politici.html

> So it seems even an idiot like me can create things that other people
> like to see.

viewed by != like to see.
Millions of people every day see speed limitations. Do they like
to see them?

-Wolfgang

Wolfgang Weisselberg <> writes:

> David Dyer-Bennet <dd-> wrote:
>> "Mayayana" <> writes:
>
>>> | > ...Do those people really deserve to
>>> | > make millions of dollars? Would society suffer without them?
>>> |
>>> | They *do* deserve to make millions of dollars, in the only way such a
>>> | question is meaningful: the path from the audience enjoying the
>>> | performance, to the money leaving the audience's pocket, is about as
>>> | short and direct as it ever gets.
>
>>> Copyright law is premised on the idea that creative
>>> output serves society, therefore people who do it need
>>> to get some compensation. Their compensation will
>>> depend on the terms and duration of copyright protection.
>
>> The duration is not at issue, really, except in a TINY minority of
>> cases. The income from a work is nearly always largely in the first
>> decade or so of life. Books remaining in print beyond the life of the
>> author are *extremely* rare.
>
> In which case a duration of a decade or so would be perfectly fine.
> Make that 1.5 or 2 decades, for the TINY minority few people
> care about.
>
> Actually, from what I hear, books sell in 3 weeks or not at all,
> at least in most common cases.

The royalties from your popular work are often an author's retirement
plan, though. If you're successful enough to have the books stay in
print that long.

>>> So the artistic value of a work *is* meaningful in deciding
>>> whether someone deserves to make millions, from society's
>>> point of view.
>
>> Artistic value? Or popularity?
>
> Copyright as it is is *pure* popularity, so what's your point?

That the OP said "artistic value"; which is MUCH harder to determine,
and is often code for "works I like".

>>> | Society would not suffer much without them, I don't think. But society
>>> | *would* suffer, terribly, if it were structured so people like us got to
>>> | make that decision *for others*.
>>> |
>
>>> Disney managed to get a big extension of copyright
>>> duration, simply because they had the money and lobbyists
>>> to buy the vote. So there are already people making these
>>> decisions for others.
>
>> Extending is far less damaging than contracting.
>
> Yep, let's extend to infinity. That's not damaging at all.

If you say so; I certainly don't agree.

"Less" is not a synomyn for "not", in case you weren't aware. And
pushing to limiting cases, well.

> But contracting it to what it was when the works were made and
> published, that's pure evil, because all the creative people back
> then banked on ever increasing extensions and would retroactively
> unmake the works if we contract anything.

Um, pure evil? Your words, again. Not mine.

> *YOU* said "The duration is not at issue, really, except in a TINY
> minority of cases. The income from a work is nearly always largely
> in the first decade or so of life." So why is contracting from
> near a century *after death* back to, say 10, 20, even 30 years
> after release of the work damaging?

Not to the authors of the old works works, but to authors working now.

The *majority* of authors actually never make a living at it.

However, those who do routinely get significant royalties twenty and
thirty years after a work was written.

> And how comes you speak for all public that being excluded from
> works (of which well over 99% have not been available for decades)
> is not as damaging as cutting a couple years of protection decades
> after the creator has died, and probably his children too?

We're all discussing our opinions on what is the best balance of rules
for creators and consumers of content. I speak for nobody but myself,
any more than you do.

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Wolfgang Weisselberg <> writes:

> David Dyer-Bennet <dd-> wrote:
>> sobriquet <> writes:
>
>>> There is no stealing involved in p2p filesharing whatsoever. You
>>> might as well call if murder or rape if you are going to call
>>> it theft.
>>> But demonize filesharing all you want, it's merely copyright
>>> infringement and it's inevitable the day will soon come when
>>> copyright infringement will not just be legal, but it will
>>> actually be encouraged and it will be called "sharing
>>> information".
>
>> So, what, you plan to completely destroy the professions "musician",
>> "songwriter", "arranger", "conductor", "novelist", "screenwriter",
>> "director", "actor", all the craft jobs associated with film and TV
>> production, and so forth?
>
> Do they really depend on all the money they're supposed to make
> through copyright many decades after they died? And does their
> profession really depend on "Steam Boat Willie" being eternally
> Disney-Only?

Copyrights are often the only assets of an author when they die (not so
much for huge successes, but mid-list authors are 1000 times as common
or so). It's not a very rewarding profession, financially.

I'm not really happy with the "life-plus" terms that Berne Convention
copyright forced on us, but I do see how it's nice for an author to NOT
have to watch other people making millions off his creative work without
paying him a cent. That didn't happen often with the 28+28 term we had
previously, but with a 15 year term I suspect it would. Also, the
author wouldn't be able to block whatever other people wanted to do to
his creations.

Basically, it's the price we paid for bringing our copyright law in line
with the rest of the world. I think that's pretty important.

>> You think people will create art that takes
>> hundreds of man-years of time, costing many millions (or hundreds of
>> millions) of dollars, without some way to get the viewers to pay for it?
>
> What's the natural law that says "No art was ever created before
> copyright and copy-restrictions and none ever will without"?

I see what you did there. You jumped from my reference to producing
high-end Hollywood features to talking about all art.

I'm absolutely sure lots and lots of people would produce art for no pay
whatsoever. They do today, after all.

However, if you make it impossible to make a living producing art, the
people who are *good* at it will, at the very least, do less of it, and
hence there will be less good art around. My favorite authors write all
too slowly as it is; if they couldn't afford to do it full time, that
would slow them down even more.

And some kinds of art, things which are very expensive to produce, will
have a very hard time getting funded.

> There are lots of ways to get the viewers to pay for the content
> without draconian copyright. So why not have a flat rate for
> every internet connection and the money gets paid by the number of
> different users that download/fileshare/... the item? So if 100
> million people download/view the newest Madonna clip that clip
> gets 100 million points (times a multiplier for it being music
> and video and it's length) and my photo, being downloaded/viewed
> by 10 people gets 10 points (times a multiplier for being a photo
> and it's displayed/downloaded size), and the film "Iron Skies",
> being still downloaded by a number of people ...

Well, for one thing, that would require an *extremely* intrusive
Ineternet surveillance regime, far worse than anything I've heard
actually proposed.

Also -- if I copy that Madonna video and pay for it once, and then
manage to serve it from my site to millions of eager viewers, I get the
royalties, right?

I think your scheme has some implementation details to worry about
before it's actually fair.

> Then there's so-and-so much money to go around for online stuff
> and it's divided by the points each work has gathered.
>
> Or have the same flat rate and have the users vote for the
> works of art they enjoy --- somewhat like Flattr.

That one would end up giving zero to anything not a best-seller, which I
believe is disastrous for real art.

> (Yes, any scheme can be bend or broken. Like substracting an
> amount for "shellac records broken in transit" from what the
> musicians are to receive --- for digital downloads. I understand
> that's an usual method in the music industry of today.)
>
> Theoretically you could also use a "per view" licence, but that
> would be too intrusive for private homes (but does work for TV
> and radio for ad selling).

I agree, the implementation details of that kiil it for me.

Project Xanadu had (almost entirely in theory) an interesting way to
handle that. Ted Nelson simply hypothesized that accessing the data
from Xanadu was cheap enough and easy enough that it made no sense for
people to keep private copies. Thus, without any kind of DRM, charging
per access got roughly the right result. And "roughly" is good enough.
All theory, though. (There was some Xanadu code running, but never in
public use so we have no idea how it would have worked out.) That
didn't address the risk of content going away (though Xanadu was
oriented towards permanent storage), though; that's my big reason for
owning music and literature.

> Then there's stuff like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo for
> crowdfunding.

For small stuff, anyway.

> Studies have shown at least for music that those who share much
> also buy much. Which may be because they care about music or
> because they want the extras like booklets. It's similar with
> books: the problem for almost everyone is not being copied,
> it's not being found. Either because someone has stolen the
> last copy of the book in a brick&motar shop ("noone buys this
> author/book! So why order more?") or because most of the people
> who would potentially be interested never heard of the author.

As I think Harlan Ellison pointed out, books stolen from retail outlets
count for full royalties .

> (Of course, a search engine for finding creative people interesting
> to 'me' (sort of what google is for finding webpages when given
> some cues) would be grand! There's so many things out there worth
> to be found ... and so little time and so little direction in
> the sea of uninteresting parts that most people stay with what
> they know. Or use filesharing to at least lower the costs of
> their initial research.)

Lots of work done on recommendation engines, no particular successes to
date. I remember Alexandira Digital Library working on theirs, back
when.

--
Googleproofaddress(account:dd-b provider:dd-b domain:net)
Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/
Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info

|>> Absent some express provision to the contrary, purchase of a book is a
|>> purchase of a limited right to the contents of that book.


| > Only with ebooks.
|
| Not so. If you look inside the cover of most books you will find a
| detailed copyright notice limiting your rights as to what you can do
| with it.

I think the problem was with the wording. PeterN
unnecessarily restated what I had already said and
said it in a potentially misleading way. With a book
there are no "limited" rights. One owns the content
and can do anything with it. You can cut it up and
give away the pieces to different people if you like.
The *only* thing you can't do is make and distribute
copies.

That's a notable distinction in comparison to ebooks.
Ebook dealers misleadingly say they're *selling* the
book, but they're actually renting it. One doesn't have
clear rights to one's own copy of the content, one
is typically limited in terms of how/where that copy
can be read, and the renting agent reserves the right
to unilaterally cancel access to the books at their
discretion. (As recently happened, apparently a a result
of a mixup, with a woman in Norway.)