Marcel Popescu[SMTP:mdpopescu@subdimension.com]
Regarding our recent thread on copyrights and artists who won't create anymore if they're not getting paid, has anyone ever played with the WinAmp plug-ins? Some of them are amazingly beautiful.
Now, are they upset that people copy them? On the contrary - some of them are accused of creating bogus accounts to boost the reputation of their plug-ins, or lower that of their best competitors. So much for "we won't create if we aren't paid" - and, again, I'm not talking Britney Spears or Picasso here, I'm talking beauty.
Mark
True, but I'll bet almost anything that none of the plugins were written by corporations expecting to get a return on their investment. Some forms of creation require little in the way of up-front investment. Others do. Consider movies. While some of the people involved get to do creative work that they love, many don't, and they all have to make a living somehow. Would the Key Grip, the Focus Puller, or the Greensmen be willing to do their work for the sheer creativity of it all? I don't think so. The principle shooting for the LOTR trilogy took over 18 months, in New Zealand. Do you think they did it (just) for love? Art forms which require large prior investments need some form of remuneration beyond egoboo. Otherwise, they just won't happen. Peter Trei
-- On 8 Jul 2002 at 11:25, Trei, Peter wrote:
Some forms of creation require little in the way of up-front investment. Others do. Consider movies. While some of the people involved get to do creative work that they love, many don't, and they all have to make a living somehow. Would the Key Grip, the Focus Puller, or the Greensmen be willing to do their work for the sheer creativity of it all? I don't think so. The principle shooting for the LOTR trilogy took over 18 months, in New Zealand. Do you think they did it (just) for love?
Art forms which require large prior investments need some form of remuneration beyond egoboo. Otherwise, they just won't happen.
Let us imagine that all efforts to enforce copyright on the internet were abandoned, and that everyone in the world has a fat pipe capable of downloading movies. First, most people who want to see lord of the rings want to see it a theatre. The scene in the mines of Moria, the backgrounder on the origin of the ring, the dark riders crossing the river, are all written for the big screen, and are worthless on a small screen. Secondly, most people who want to see lord of the rings do it as a pilgrimage, so they do it when it first comes out, and they take a date, or go with a bunch of friends. It is positively sacriligious to see it on a small screen, or to see it without making a special occasion of it. After all this is not just another Buffy episode. Thus fat pipes and an end to internet copyright would have had no significant effect on the profits from the Lord of the Rings. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG yChuaeD+SEzCvlFD0mqB+hzz5FRvjXKoB2jlE3YR 2zwEhi3Z8qxfMmJZNZxpa/U8dYGHfoDQgo1ChqYRO D
There's a flaw in this argument: On Monday, July 8, 2002, at 11:10 AM, jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
Let us imagine that all efforts to enforce copyright on the internet were abandoned, and that everyone in the world has a fat pipe capable of downloading movies.
First, most people who want to see lord of the rings want to see it a theatre. The scene in the mines of Moria, the backgrounder on the origin of the ring, the dark riders crossing the river, are all written for the big screen, and are worthless on a small screen.
Secondly, most people who want to see lord of the rings do it as a pilgrimage, so they do it when it first comes out, and they take a date, or go with a bunch of friends. It is positively sacriligious to see it on a small screen, or to see it without making a special occasion of it. After all this is not just another Buffy episode.
Thus fat pipes and an end to internet copyright would have had no significant effect on the profits from the Lord of the Rings.
People would go to theaters to see the film in all of its glory, true. But the theaters would no longer, in your scenario, have to fork over money to the studios. (Unless you are positing some situation where anybody may download any film, but then not display it to others. Or that theaters would face special regulation by government, etc.) In any case, I know a _lot_ of people who watch most of their films on cable or satellite or DVD. And cable/DVD sell through is an important part of studio revenues. An end to copyright would have a _significant_ effect on revenue. Note that I'm not endorsing copyright as it now stands, just disputing your point that ending download restrictions would have no effect on studio profits. --Tim May "Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound"
Tim May:
People would go to theaters to see the film in all of its glory, true.
But the theaters would no longer, in your scenario, have to fork over money to the studios.
(Or that theaters would face special regulation by government, etc.)
Hopefully this 'what-if' world has anti-trust deregulation going hand in hand with the removal of copyright protection. At one time, many theatres were owned by the studios and showed the movies that studio published.
At 4:49 PM -0400 on 7/8/02, Mark Burns wrote:
Hopefully this 'what-if' world has anti-trust deregulation going hand in hand with the removal of copyright protection.
Nah. All we need is encryption and a cash-settled digital market. Studios would do just fine, maybe better. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
But right now copies of recent release movies (post screen release, but pre DVD/VHS relase) are not generally available in high quality format, suitable for projecting. So one way that the movie distribution industry could plausibly continue to make money would be rather than the movie theatre being subject to copyright laws forbidding them from copying and further distributing, they would be under a private contract not to do that. Actually I'm not sure what they're doing now -- it would seem likely that both private contract and copyright are used -- the movie distributors may easily want to impose more restrictions than those directly imposed by default copyright. Post copyright, with private contract only, the movie theatre would have an interest to comply with the contract due to the penalties agreed to in the contract, which might include fines, escrowed monies, or no access to further releases. The movie industry has so far been succesful from what I've seen in preventing DVD quality copies being distributed prior to DVD release. Publicly distributed copies of pre-DVD release movies are "Screeners" obtained with a CAM corder in the theatre. Early releases (unauthorised distribution shortly before general public release) come from journalists or their guests making screeners from the pre-release screenings offered to journalists. The advent of digital projection which doesn't have much deployment at theatres yet may alter this equation as perhaps it would then become easier for an insider (a theatre projectionist for example) to convert the content into MPEG4/DIVX format and retain good quality. Adam On Mon, Jul 08, 2002 at 12:45:31PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
There's a flaw in this argument:
[...]
People would go to theaters to see the film in all of its glory, true.
But the theaters would no longer, in your scenario, have to fork over money to the studios.
(Unless you are positing some situation where anybody may download any film, but then not display it to others. Or that theaters would face special regulation by government, etc.)
In any case, I know a _lot_ of people who watch most of their films on cable or satellite or DVD. And cable/DVD sell through is an important part of studio revenues. An end to copyright would have a _significant_ effect on revenue.
Note that I'm not endorsing copyright as it now stands, just disputing your point that ending download restrictions would have no effect on studio profits.
-- Obviously, the end of copyright may well mean a substantial reduction in the proceeds from big movies, but it will hardly mean a total end to those proceeds (the powerpuff girl movie is one big toy advertisment) How big an effect will a reduction in money mean? If you go back thirty years, you will notice that lots of movies were produced on a budget vastly smaller than todays movies. For example I noticed a Hitchcock movie where a car and a car wreck was central to the plot, and most of the story line took place inside a wrecked car.. However, Hitchcock by use of cheesy camera angles, avoided any need for the car to suffer any actual damage, or even the need to go out and buy a wreck. Go back even further, and people do not bother with production values at all. Thus Macbeth says "why upon this blasted heath you stop our way with such prophetic greeting?", presumably because Shakespeare was too cheap to have a backdrop painted depicting a blasted heath. So the end of copyright will not mean the end of movies, but merely cheaper effects, and since computers are making effects cheaper daily, with imaginary landscapes made inside a computer, and real landscapes massively altered, we probably will not notice any effect at all. The landscapes of Lord of the Rings, though based on real landscapes, were modified beyond recognition in the computer. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 6hvbNtYka8u1qIMniMnCaWBDwMDIldO12gOEblNx 2Olw67ehBaVGbRFS34c7PmLktRCUKrLNbZub4oTFg
participants (6)
-
Adam Back -
jamesd＠echeque.com -
Mark Burns -
R. A. Hettinga -
Tim May -
Trei, Peter