I hope every project you work on has it's source code stolen resulting in failure. And this is coming from a pretty crappy person, but this website sure does love stealing from authors (so that it can enjoy the fruits of their labor).
The publishing industry prefers, however, to hoard its Smaug-gold, make criminals of the curious, deny access both to the vast majority of the population and to the vast majority of works, all to line its own pockets at an immense cost to the rest of us, authors, artists, musicians, and other creators included.
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33698018>
Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz: "Knowledge is a public good"
<https://archive.org/details/globalpublicgood0000unse/page/30...>
Copyright is brain damage:
Let's say I just published one hundred books of semi-AI generated bad fiction. When can I expect my cheques?
The model of mechanical royalties already exists in the music industry. That provides a useful model for other copyrighted works. Effectively this creates a regulated, universal, legally-defined market. I can see some variations in rates based on content types, discussed in previous HN discussions.
See:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royalty_payment#Mechanical_roy...>
<https://www.royaltyexchange.com/blog/mechanical-royalties>
<https://www.bmi.com/news/entry/Understanding_Mechanical_Roya...>
Please note that this is discussed at length in the previously-linked thread here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33698018>
Q: Who collects [payments]?
A "~$5/mo per household in the US and collected through broadband providers", as stated in my parent comment.
Q: How does dispute resolution work?
Ownership disputes are adjudicated as they are today.
Auditing disputes are adjudicated as they are today, modulo restrictions against binding arbitration and other conditions as discussed by Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin in Chokepoint Capitalism: <https://bookshop.org/p/books/chokepoint-capitalism-how-big-t...>
Payment rate disputes are addressed through a regulator, genre / content-tier basis, and the legislative / political process reflecting interests of the public, creators, publishers, and other stakeholders.
Q: Can I opt out if I don't read books?
No.
On the basis that the common wealth created by others having access to information is a public good and benefit, much as police, fire, health, sewerage, and defence services are. Note that the cost is indexed to wealth/income, such that those of limited means pay little or nothing. Keep in mind that you are already paying roughly $800/year per head for content access through advertising. This isn't an additional fee, it's a restructuring of an existing financing model with many perverse outcomes in terms of manipulation, the type(s) of content incentivised, a pervasive surveillance model, and frauds against both advertising targets and advertisers.
Q: What if everyone opts out?
See above.
Q: What about AI-generated crud?
This is where I see a graduated compensation model with a number of tiers. AI-based glurge would see rates based on the costs of production, as would investigative journalism. The former would result in very low compensation rates, the latter should see higher. Quality-determination by various means might well be an element. Whilst individual negotiation by bidders isn't something I see as part of the model, a collective bidding based on sectors, guilds, and/or major aggregated publishers could be.
Discussed earlier: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26893033> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10077674> <https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1uotb3/a_modes...>
This HN comment search on "content syndication by:dredmorbius" should address numerous other concerns: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>
I refer to your earlier post, though:
> …could provide access to every work ever published, pay authors, and eliminate both the need and practice of piracy.
I don’t think the model of music royalties, as it exists, could or does any of those things, nor do I think the model could ever be adapted to achieve those ends.
Moreover, I don’t think in a free society there can possibly be a place for a governmental or quasi-governmental body that would somehow assess the objective quality of all art, and decide on the compensation of artists accordingly. It would mark the death of all avant-garde art, and the rise of a massive rent-seeking class of mediocre and unchallenging artists. Not to even mention the implications for speech: there’d be no more artists holding up the mirror to the face of power, no more social criticism through art.
I don’t often say this, but that is a truly chilling vision of the future. Thank God it will never happen.
Q: I don’t think the model of music royalties ... could do any of these things ...
My larger point is that the money is already in the system, and is being paid by households. Only that it's via advertising with multiple perverse effects on the media ecosystem itself.
Some examples I've addressed in earlier posts:
<https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/23twec/weaponi...>
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11592888>
You're being vague as to what the failings of a royalty-based system are, and whilst I could presume some of those problems and/or possible solutions (<coff> UBI <coff>). Much of what I'd suggest revolves around a number of concepts:
1. That content-creation as it exists is a high-stakes, infrequent-reward, winner-take-most sweepstakes. Much of existing publishing and distribution actually mitigates for this, as with "tentpost" cinema, music, and publishing titles and/or talents.
2. That in-depth detailed work in journalism, education, science, and technology especially relies strongly on durable institutions with a reliable income as well as defence mechanisms against the various forms of attacks and corruption these draw, e.g., libel, co-option. Large publishers often have strong legal defence teams, as well as contracts. Educational institutions, NGOs, publishing groups, news organisations, and creators' guilds might be possible such durable organisations. Groups need not be large. I'm reminded of visiting a local library to inquire about free room reservations: these were available to any citizen group requesting one, where a group was three or more people. There's power in numbers, especially when given an organisational banner.
3. That "reward for audience" is itself a fairly poor compensation metric. Yes, there are justifiable winners, but there are far too many unjustified losers, or works recongised only at much remove for their quality. Some way of balancing this out might be useful, and I'm open for ideas and criticisms.
4. That remunerative reward is a rather poor inducement for quality authorship. I discovered my spirit animal in Schopenhauer's "On Authorship": <https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Literature/On_Auth...>
Q: It would mark the death...
To which I respond:
- The system I propose would not be the only compensation mechanism, but it would be a guaranteed one (perhaps again with other mechanisms such as UBI and group/guild organisations).
- I'm honestly baffled as to why you think that dissenting voices would not have access to such a system. It is universal to both audience and creators.
- The extant system has marked the death of numerous forms of desirable and even essential authorship, most notably quality, incisive, independent local journalism, but extending to artistic works in text, audio, and film.
- What conditions would promote the types of works you describe? How well, exactly, does the present model work for those?
- Complaints about the rise of a massive rent-seeking class of mediocre and unchallenging artists in light of the present state of publishing seem ... archly ironic.
Again, if you care to follow up by email, invitation's open. I'm also @dredmorbius@toot.cat on the Fediverse.
I use OverDrive/LibGen etc because it's generally more convenient than the public library. If I like a book enough to actually finish it, I buy a paper copy because ebooks are inherently inferior and probably always will be. If I was still a student I would use OverDrive/LibGen etc specifically to steal from textbook publishers who charge $100 for an 18th edition riddled with factual and grammatical errors in hope that they would go bankrupt, but it wouldn't work. We have a long way yet to go.
But I will say that I have bought both ebooks and physical books from authors that I like and appreciate the work and effort they have put into their craft. I've spent rather a lot on it, actually.
If not, they can always get a job where they have no ownership stake in the fruits of their labor, like almost every other job and 99.9% of people writing code for money.
No one is entitled to have any particular piece of media available to them for free, either?
Talented and savvy consumers can find any number of ways to make money to pay for media, like 99.9% of other consumers.
It’s also not really a matter of entitlement. It’s just an objective fact that trying to gatekeep knowledge behind IP toll bridges is a losing battle which only serves to hinder the development of many realms of human endeavor.
IP laws don’t protect small creators anyway, most of whom will fail regardless. They protect the big conglomerates from multitudes of potential creators who might otherwise find education and success outside of the established institutions.
It's quite possible that the size of such sectors today is excessive, though there's a strong argument that information is under-incentivised whilst entertainment is excessively incentivised, to say nothing of various forms of manipulation and propaganda, or the negative impacts of surveillance and fraud that are intrinsic to the adtech field.
So the question of incentives, compensation, financing, and revenue collection do deserve addressing.
I do agree that the present model is addressing those specific elements quite poorly.