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"[O]therwise you can kiss anything but the most trite (read: cheap to produce) pop music and plotless explosion-fest movies goodbye."

I'm not sure pop music is cheap to produce (compare the tech work and marketing and all involved in a band playing at your local venue with that at a ... um... Taylor Swift? is she still a pop star? concert), and "plotless explosion-fest movies" tend to be the most expensive movies - "2012" and "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" each cost 13 times as much as "The King's Speech".

"If people can't get paid to pursue their dreams, they have to shelve their dreams in order to get paid. Then you have one less author, one less musician, one less movie being made."

Most authors and musicians already do something else in order to get paid.

'Nuclear power plants "want" to melt down, dams "want" to break, influenza "wants" to spread, etc.'

When those things happen, hundreds or thousands or millions of people are harmed. When information spreads, hundreds or thousands or millions of people are enriched. We should find another way of rewarding artists than fighting an uphill battle to constrain value.

"We should find another way of rewarding artists than fighting an uphill battle to constrain value."

Trust me: if such a thing were found, every single artist would be all ears. Solve this problem and you're the next Zuckerberg.

Non-solutions include artists having to rely on charity, "they'll just make money touring," tip jars, DRM, and micro payments (unless they can be made incredibly seamless and low-friction).

But making an app specifically designed and targeted so as to impoverish artists is a dick move.

'I'm working on it.Trust me: if such a thing were found, every single artist would be all ears. Solve this problem and you're the next Zuckerberg.

'Non-solutions include artists having to rely on charity, "they'll just make money touring," tip jars, DRM, and micro payments (unless they can be made incredibly seamless and low-friction)."

I'm working on it.

"But making an app specifically designed and targeted so as to impoverish artists is a dick move."

We have a commons for a reason. If I read "A Tale Of Two Cities" instead of "Twilight", I'm impoverishing artists - and artists can fucking suck it up.

"We have a commons for a reason."

Changing the subject.

Not at all. The subject is trade-offs we're willing to make which sometimes mean less money goes to artists. If I read Dickens instead of something modern, I'm entertained (... maybe) and my money didn't go to any artist. Permitting something like Popcorn Time, which makes parts of the commons imminently more accessible (as well as making some things that aren't part of the commons accessible) clearly shares similarities.

well, there are ways,there even is a infrastructure already in place.

The german GEMA manages artists rights and is huge. They have the means to compensate artists whos works got fileshared. RIAA and others are already tracking the p2p-networks, companies like BigChampagne earn money with what is downloaded where exactly to optimize marketing.

If we would install a monthly culture flatrate, we have a win win.

Piracy and stealing creative work is bad. But please, the Publishing houses, Recording and Motion Picture Industries are hardly saints, and often take advantage of the authors, musicians and film makers. An author gets his book published at the convenience of the publisher to fit retail schedules (and waits for royalties on that schedule), successful books, especially technical books and how-tos are re-written by contract authors. Musicians get terrible royalties, often once they’ve paid back the Studio's loan for studio time and costs. Movie extras, writers and staff often complain about treatment, and movies are released to a schedule consumers find inconvenient to fit old models, I’m thinking of HBO, cinema release dates and the DVD region codes. Much piracy stopped when people were able to buy the music on MP3 format, after years of failed DRM. Prince, George Michael, the drummer from Culture Club, unknown members of The Smiths, and I don’t know who else, but even established international artists struggle to deal with the faults of their own Industry. Actors complain they are not receiving DVD sell-thru royalties, or on-line streaming because their contract specified something different.

The whole lot is a mess of creative work being stolen, but not only by pirates.

"But please, the Publishing houses, Recording and Motion Picture Industries are hardly saints,"

True. But recording industries and publishing houses screw over artists and pay them shite, while piracy pays them nothing at all. This is not a step in the right direction.

It's designed to make watching movies easy, as the current solutions are all subpar. But piracy isn't the goal, it's just the only existing method to make the functionality work.

You didn't really refute any point he made, though. Whether or not piracy is the goal, piracy is the outcome.

So then we should ban the torrent protocol, too?

Out of curiosity, do you support banning all guns, too? Because clearly people are dying because of them.

I just downloaded PopcornTime. Take a look at the view I get when loading for the first time:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wbp576ynkmnlnlj/Screenshot%202014-...

There is a world of difference between the torrent protocol and this.

If there were any easy way to unlock and start any car, it would sure be easier to just grab one off the lot than to go through the annoyingly slow lines at car rental agencies.

Your sarcastic reply is actually the world today, and it's terrific.

I can use my phone to unlock a large number of cars within a few blocks of me and drive wherever I want.

What you’re talking about and music distribution have in common is this: the provider gets paid. Terrific services often have costs, and/or require someone to be compensated for their efforts.

Unless, of course, Zipcar et al now have free accounts, right?

There are current solutions that are just as good at letting you "watch movies." What you actually find to be "subpar" is the timeline for current movies to become available on those other solutions. So this has little to do with a lack of good tech and mostly to do with people not wishing to be held to the content owners desired timeline.

EDIT: switched words (nothing/little and only/mostly) to avoid absolutes.

Copyright is an obsolete concept that is no longer beneficial to society, and needs to be abolished entirely.

I expect this to happen in my lifetime, and people will look back on these days as a dark-ages where information was controlled and entertainment was not on a donation-only basis.

Copyright is like debt-collectors, the system only continues to operate because people keep paying. The sooner we all stop paying for content, the quicker the system will go away.

> The sooner we all stop paying for content, the quicker the system will go away

How do you suggest content creation be funded? Or do you think content should only be created by hobbyists for fun?

"entertainment was not on a donation-only basis."

So you're willing to do your work on a donation-only basis then? Have fun paying the rent, raising kids, getting health care, and saving for retirement.

"So you're willing to do your work on a donation-only basis then?"

I don't see why anyone wouldn't be, provided the donations were sufficient. Of course, that is unfortunately unlikely to be the case with the current setup for a number of reasons.

That's what I meant. I've done open source work on a donation-only basis before. I ended up with stuff that was used by tens of thousands of people and ended up earning the cost of a pizza and a six pack. You can't make a living in sub-Saharan Africa off that kind of economics.

There have been artists that have made money off donations before -- Trent Reznor and Radiohead come to mind -- but these are huge artists. If they release something on a donation basis and 0.00001% of people donate, they do pretty well. Only a tiny fraction of the top 1% of artists can do this.

I think we're agreed on this point. Uncoordinated donations aren't a real solution at all - that top 1% doesn't really need money to keep producing anyway (not that I begrudge them it!).

Existing approaches to Coordinated donations (KickStarter/IndieGoGo) do better than uncoordinated but not better enough.

I didn't really expect you to disagree, was just trying to clarify.

I propose musicians and artists become salaried positions. They get an office, instrument, materials, and a manager, jam rooms and display rooms instead of conference rooms, etc.

i didn't understand, so you are pro or anti popcorn time?