Comment by foobar_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by foobar_ | Hacker News Reader

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The number of CEOs who think printing money is a good idea might make you wonder if they even know anything about money. Polluting air costs less money why not do it ?

80% movies don't need the 100 million dollar budget and I'm pretty sure Johnny Deepp would be happy to release Edward Scissorhands to the public domain.

Most big movies make their money by single day screenings and releasing movies at different dates in different regions with market buzz.

> If we take away the option of artificial scarcity then an entire highly trained professional class will be out of work.

Interestingly your argument fails for porn. Its about 1/4th the size of hollywood.

How about publishers own the copyright and creators own the copyright instead of commoditising a copyright artefact ?

I assure you musicians can survive and Depp can do some theatre. Most EDM is essentially copyright free, especially techno. 1 year of exclusivity is fine. Fuck NDAs.

These days the cost of production has gone down so I think you will see more indie media taking advantage of that. The average budget for a reasonable movie is less than 5 million, heck even 500k dollars going by kickstarter funded movies.

I don’t really know what you’re arguing, you seem to be making a few assumptions about my position, which are probably wrong.

In terms of $100M movies, I think they almost all suck, but that was the value you suggested. I’d say that no movie needs to cost $100M!

But plenty of movies cost $10M. If it takes 100 people a year to make a movie then you can easily spend $10M on salaries and overheads alone.

> Interestingly your argument fails for porn

Does it? I’d guess that the average porno costs a few hundred bucks to shoot, and takes a couple of hours. There is easily 100x more hours of porn produced per day than narrative fiction, and yet it only makes 25% of Hollywood, and notoriously, the actors are frequently exploited. I’d say that porn is a warning of danger rather than a proof of success!

> Depp can do some theatre

When was the last time you paid to go to the theatre?

> Most EDM is essentially copyright free, especially techno. 1 year of exclusivity is fine. Fuck NDAs.

My raver days are (sadly) behind me, but sure, OK, like porn, EDM can be produced with little investment. So what? No everything that is good is also cheap or easy to build.

> These days the cost of production has gone down so I think you will see more indie media taking advantage of that.

I’m a huge fan of indy media but, because of that, I pay for it, and I don’t like it when people freeload.

> The average budget for a reasonable movie is less than 5 million

I think you’re just making things up now, but even so, 5 million is a buttload of money that you need to get back. Few people are gonna spend that sort of money with no expectation of recouping it.

> So what ?

I too can ignore every big budget predictable cliche and say so what. Lets ignore the successes of alternatives.

Is Kanye West and Britney Spears the best you can do with millions of dollars ? I'll stick to punk and EDM ... no thanks.

> I’m a huge fan of indy media but, because of that, I pay for it, and I don’t like it when people freeload.

Is copyright / patents the only way to finance and get money back ?

Absolutely not. Thats the argument I am making.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy

There are a lot of undeserving idiots with money out there, no doubt. And they have certainly taken advantage of copyright to get wealthy. But it seems to me that you just want to solve this by making everything “indy”, on the cheap, and as much as I love independent music and film (I saw 40 movies over a two week period at a film festival last year, it was awesome) I think the world is far more complex and interesting than can be expressed by a couple of dudes with a camera.

The problem is that some productions are simply expensive. Think about sending an imax camera to the space station. There is literally no way to make that cheap. And why concentrate only on music and movies, what about games? What about journalism? There are a huge number of industries that depend on at least some form of copyright, even if not specifically the bastard form that exists at this moment.

> Is copyright / patents the only way to finance and get money back ? Absolutely not. Thats the argument I am making.

But as far as I can tell, you’re only arguing against copyright, you’re not actually making an argument for a viable alternative, and that is my problem.

Just because you dig EDM and punk, and these specific types of music can be made on the cheap, doesn’t mean all good media can be made cheaply. Just because most $100M movies suck doesn’t mean that $10 million movies shouldn’t be made.

Accept that, and then explain to me how to repeatedly raise the $10 million investment needed to create high quality, high cost products that will be given away for free, no strings attached. I think you’ll find that the problem is that doing so is incredibly hard and extremely risky, which is why nobody is doing it.

I believe in reform. 1 year exclusive copyright / patent at most and author always holds the copyright. Its ironic that the movie with the biggest budget is a pirate movie ;)

https://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/the-pirate-party-on-...

So we agree :) except that like the pirate party, I’d make copyright 5 years since some works take much longer than one year to create, and it can often take more than a year to distribute certain works or plan and go on tour.

Also, I believe nobody should go to jail or be bankrupted for copying digital works.

And what do you know? Two randos came to an amicable position on an Internet forum :) next stop, world peace!!

Cheers

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