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Wandering I would like to give that post an awesome but the woman said 74 years young which is a phrase that I hate and therefore I am unable to award that post its dues.
Neco on
+2
ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered User, Moderatormod
really i guess the issue is for books, music, maybe some forms of physical art... the cat is out of the bag
they are too easy to pirate and trying to prevent that is pointless
artists/authors may need to look to merchandising, publishers may just not be able to expect to make money off media sales like they used to
it's sad but how is it not, just, true?
i dunno. more public arts endowment is needed anyway
basic income, healthcare, guaranteed food and shelter, i think it's all tied in if we want to still have art be a thing people can afford to do as an occupation
Total open information only makes sense in an already utopian society
Without that, there still needs to be material motivation to engage in knowledge or creative production
This is nonsense, though. People don't go into these fields because they want to get rich, and if they do they don't produce good work, they mostly produce lackluster drivel because they don't care about producing in the first place. We don't need to threaten an artist with starvation to get them to work.
We do, though, and the idea that artists will and should work for the sheer joy of it is part of why artists are underpaid and exploited.
Artificial scarcity in library ebooks is a polite fiction, but so are lots of things we rely on for a relatively civilised society. Polite fictions aren’t worthless or deserving of destruction just because it’s easy now.
I think we ought to be looking at who the polite fictions are actually materially benefitting and why.
This particular one is benefitting writers, who get angry when people decide their work should be free and thus make them destitute.
It is not overall benefitting writers more than it is benefitting publishers, who would not be paying the writers unless their calculations came out in their favor.
The only way it could be thought to be benefitting writers is if you believed the alternative is that we put the writers out on the streets and give them nothing.
Artificial scarcity in library ebooks is a polite fiction, but so are lots of things we rely on for a relatively civilised society. Polite fictions aren’t worthless or deserving of destruction just because it’s easy now.
I think we ought to be looking at who the polite fictions are actually materially benefitting and why.
This particular one is benefitting writers, who get angry when people decide their work should be free and thus make them destitute.
I think it's really important to draw a distinction between the idea that people should be able to create and be compensated for that creation, and the problem a post-info-scarcity society like the one we're living in now poses for those creators. The ramifications are going to play hell with a lot of professions where revenue is based on the duality of information scarcity and wide market penetration. Models like a physical book where you want to sell a million of them but also only let people see the info inside if they bought it... are just not tenable anymore.
Total open information only makes sense in an already utopian society
Without that, there still needs to be material motivation to engage in knowledge or creative production
This is nonsense, though. People don't go into these fields because they want to get rich, and if they do they don't produce good work, they mostly produce lackluster drivel because they don't care about producing in the first place. We don't need to threaten an artist with starvation to get them to work.
We do, though, and the idea that artists will and should work for the sheer joy of it is part of why artists are underpaid and exploited.
This is backwards, it's because writers do this that they are exploited, and they do it because they are willing to. If they didn't like it they'd have done something else.
If I gave you an UBI what would you do with your time?
I want to check out an ebook from my local library but I don't have a card here yet hrumph
This has got to be the most nonsense concept in history.
You want to
check out an e-book
which is not a physical thing
and of which there are infinite copies
but you don't have permission from a specific physical location
that is in fact a collective permission from any one of dozens of locations plus all infinitely available content
so you can't have the thing
even though they can't get the thing back and don't lose anything when they give it to you.
it's almost like the people who published the book want money for it or something
The library doesn't pay them money for each time a physical book is checked out. It's a library.
They pay for each "license" that can be checked out at any one time.
A functionally nonsense idea that is basically playing pretend with data in order to keep operating.
Yes, because libraries and copyright can only coexist with this restriction. Otherwise the value of copyright is so diluted as to be virtually worthless. I am really liberal on IP issues and think copyright needs an overhaul badly, but unlimited electronic lending goes beyond what I would consider a reasonable position.
I think that there could be flex licensing deals where the library pays a small spillover temporary license fee for # of excess copies checked out times days checked out. And I think that copyright should expire in 20 years or so, just like patents, at which point e-books may be lent out unrestricted. But you can't just have authors selling unlimited licenses to libraries, because either municipalities couldn't afford what such a license is really worth or authors would get so screwed out of money it would no longer be lucrative to write and publish books.
They should have unlimited lending permission and pay per license, twice per year like Microsoft does to people. At their true-up all the ones that haven't been checked back in are considered sold
but seriously, yeah the idea of libraries and copyright cannot coexist in the digital age except under the shroud of this polite fiction. And I know I'm on the extreme fringe of this, but I don't think we'll ever be able to put the djinn back in the bottle with this one. Copyright as an idea is incompatible with the digital age.
How do you think authors should be compensated then?
I wish I knew!
Subscription to book "seasons"? Oldschool patronage? Physical sales? Books become shockingly cheap like songs did to drop below the convenience threshold so people just say fuck it and buy?
I don't know how to solve it but we're here now. Asking that is like asking how you're going to get to work after you crash your car. Man i don't know but the car is fucked.
Feels like you are about to seize the means of production.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Artificial scarcity in library ebooks is a polite fiction, but so are lots of things we rely on for a relatively civilised society. Polite fictions aren’t worthless or deserving of destruction just because it’s easy now.
I think we ought to be looking at who the polite fictions are actually materially benefitting and why.
This particular one is benefitting writers, who get angry when people decide their work should be free and thus make them destitute.
I think it's really important to draw a distinction between the idea that people should be able to create and be compensated for that creation, and the problem a post-info-scarcity society like the one we're living in now poses for those creators. The ramifications are going to play hell with a lot of professions where revenue is based on the duality of information scarcity and wide market penetration. Models like a physical book where you want to sell a million of them but also only let people see the info inside if they bought it... are just not tenable anymore.
I could see it going to a "pay what you want" humble bundle/freeware begging model, but that would take a fairly large culture shift in the Western world, although stuff like Patreon already exists for content creators. People seem to be willing to pay for content that they like... but is that enough to make a living?
Total open information only makes sense in an already utopian society
Without that, there still needs to be material motivation to engage in knowledge or creative production
This is nonsense, though. People don't go into these fields because they want to get rich, and if they do they don't produce good work, they mostly produce lackluster drivel because they don't care about producing in the first place. We don't need to threaten an artist with starvation to get them to work.
We do, though, and the idea that artists will and should work for the sheer joy of it is part of why artists are underpaid and exploited.
This is backwards, it's because writers do this that they are exploited, and they do it because they are willing to. If they didn't like it they'd have done something else.
If I gave you an UBI what would you do with your time?
I support a UBI but that's not within the scope of this discussion.
People will do more work and better work if they are well-compensated. Relying on passion to motivate them is bad and exploitative. Even relying on UBI to float authors and making all books free would lead to fewer, worse authors over time
Artificial scarcity in library ebooks is a polite fiction, but so are lots of things we rely on for a relatively civilised society. Polite fictions aren’t worthless or deserving of destruction just because it’s easy now.
I think we ought to be looking at who the polite fictions are actually materially benefitting and why.
This particular one is benefitting writers, who get angry when people decide their work should be free and thus make them destitute.
It is not overall benefitting writers more than it is benefitting publishers, who would not be paying the writers unless their calculations came out in their favor.
The only way it could be thought to be benefitting writers is if you believed the alternative is that we put the writers out on the streets and give them nothing.
Did I say it was solely benefitting writers and not publishers (and editors and everyone else employed in the industry to some extent)?
If you don’t think it’s benefitting writers or that the benefit isn’t worth keeping tell some of them their work should be given away free in perpetuity and then duck because something heavy is coming your way.
We are, at the moment, “giving” writers very little in the way of money outside of what they make from libraries and actual sales. An occasional grant, if they’re lucky.
We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make a statement. But to make money, it is often important to make history, to make art, or to make some significant statement … In order to make money, we must always make entertaining movies, and if we make entertaining movies, at times we will reliably make history, art, a statement, or all three.
A good solution to the ebook thing is maybe you add an ebook subscription fee to the library, so for an extra $5-10 a month you get unlimited access to any of the books they have on file, and that $10 a month gets divided up per author/publisher at the end of the month after the library's costs are accounted for.
It's not a perfect solution, but it can probably be tweaked eh?
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
+2
SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
I mean, this is the entire publisher relationship, isn't it? "We'll support your lifestyle for a portion of time on the notion that you will produce good work. Then we will turn around and make money off of your good work."
There's then some notion that if the art is massively popular then the author (and publisher) deserve to get very rich, but that's based on the notion that anyone deserves to get very rich, which I don't honestly agree with.
0
Donkey KongPutting Nintendo out of business with AI nipsRegistered Userregular
We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make a statement. But to make money, it is often important to make history, to make art, or to make some significant statement … In order to make money, we must always make entertaining movies, and if we make entertaining movies, at times we will reliably make history, art, a statement, or all three.
It's like staring into a pus-oozing wound.
Thousands of hot, local singles are waiting to play at bubbulon.com.
0
ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered User, Moderatormod
Total open information only makes sense in an already utopian society
Without that, there still needs to be material motivation to engage in knowledge or creative production
This is nonsense, though. People don't go into these fields because they want to get rich, and if they do they don't produce good work, they mostly produce lackluster drivel because they don't care about producing in the first place. We don't need to threaten an artist with starvation to get them to work.
We do, though, and the idea that artists will and should work for the sheer joy of it is part of why artists are underpaid and exploited.
This is backwards, it's because writers do this that they are exploited, and they do it because they are willing to. If they didn't like it they'd have done something else.
If I gave you an UBI what would you do with your time?
i think it's an issue on both sides
people who can afford to do art for funsies can at times crowd put people who would want to do art but can't afford to
some people will and do make art simply because they love making art and they don't care if they make it rich or even if they're just compensated like it's a full-time career
if no one had to worry about making ends meet because of social safety nets/basic income/etc in order to do art i am certain there would be more artists and fewer people making a career wage or more simply by doing art
Total open information only makes sense in an already utopian society
Without that, there still needs to be material motivation to engage in knowledge or creative production
This is nonsense, though. People don't go into these fields because they want to get rich, and if they do they don't produce good work, they mostly produce lackluster drivel because they don't care about producing in the first place. We don't need to threaten an artist with starvation to get them to work.
We do, though, and the idea that artists will and should work for the sheer joy of it is part of why artists are underpaid and exploited.
This is backwards, it's because writers do this that they are exploited, and they do it because they are willing to. If they didn't like it they'd have done something else.
If I gave you an UBI what would you do with your time?
I support a UBI but that's not within the scope of this discussion.
People will do more work and better work if they are well-compensated. Relying on passion to motivate them is bad and exploitative. Even relying on UBI to float authors and making all books free would lead to fewer, worse authors over time
I simply completely disagree with this. If this were true then the best artists would be the richest artists. This is not even close to true by almost anyone's approximation.
My position is tentatively "destroy all publishers"
Either rely on robust, superior self-publishing or hybrid publishing, or have writers organize for collective bargaining to sell their books rather than have them beholden to massive corporate entities who have a chokehold on all books
+1
SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
The mouse. The mouse! Its teeth are bright, its bite is sharp, and the blood from the wound is red, so red.
The funny thing is that this argument may be immaterial
The vast majority of people don't use the library, and maybe wouldn't even if books were all free and easily accessible. People who can buy books tend to do so.
If you gave libraries unlimited lending licenses, it's possible that it would not affect publisher or author income significantly at all
I guess the question there is hard numbers: how many sales are gained by someone going "shit, a two month wait? I guess I'll just buy it"
my local library missed ordering a copy of Tyrant Baru Cormorant in spite of having the first two books, and interlibrary lending is COVID kaput
Werner Herzog only took a Star Wars role because he is so heavily in debt due to his various addictions. He certainly was in it for the money.
I may have made this up, but wasn’t it creative? Wouldn’t you like more from my head?
Publish me
+1
ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered User, Moderatormod
i think attacking publishing companies is a less useful idea than instituting a maximum income
become as large a publisher as you like, you just can only earn a certain amount as a personal salary before the rest gets taxed at 100%
so if you make a billion dollars a year you need to reinvest $995 million of that into your company and the authors you are publishing or it goes to the tax coffers
Total open information only makes sense in an already utopian society
Without that, there still needs to be material motivation to engage in knowledge or creative production
This is nonsense, though. People don't go into these fields because they want to get rich, and if they do they don't produce good work, they mostly produce lackluster drivel because they don't care about producing in the first place. We don't need to threaten an artist with starvation to get them to work.
We do, though, and the idea that artists will and should work for the sheer joy of it is part of why artists are underpaid and exploited.
This is backwards, it's because writers do this that they are exploited, and they do it because they are willing to. If they didn't like it they'd have done something else.
If I gave you an UBI what would you do with your time?
I support a UBI but that's not within the scope of this discussion.
People will do more work and better work if they are well-compensated. Relying on passion to motivate them is bad and exploitative. Even relying on UBI to float authors and making all books free would lead to fewer, worse authors over time
I simply completely disagree with this. If this were true then the best artists would be the richest artists. This is not even close to true by almost anyone's approximation.
This does not follow whatsoever from what I'm saying. My argument is not that money leads directly to quality, or that quality leads to money, nor that they should.
If you do not provide reasonable, desirable compensation for art, then you will get fewer artists. People who want to be artists will look at a life of poverty or near-poverty and reject it. It doesn't matter if poverty means late capitalist nightmare or just post-UBI reduced access to luxuries and status; it will discourage artists. UBI would mitigate that, certainly! It would motivate some people because they would know they won't starve. But you're still motivating fewer people than you would if compensation were at a desirable, competitive level.
More artists is good. It means, proportionally, more good artists, more socially important artists, more diverse artists, etc.
0
ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered User, Moderatormod
pretty soon everyone makes $5m a year and then money becomes pointless and we abolish it
Gene Hackman telling Ben Stiller he did Poseidon as a “money job” and still turned in a superb performance should be evidence that greatness can sometimes be motivated primarily by money.
There is nothing exploitative happening to an author who is not compensated with more money for producing art that has more widespread appeal, given that every artist is compensated for their work equally (as in, literally compensated for their labor). That's only true if someone else is making money off of it that the artist would otherwise be.
And an artist in this situation still has the greater part of the reward for producing great art; which is fame and renown for their work. The only reason these things seem hollow in comparison to money is because we live in a society with such inequalities of money.
0
Donkey KongPutting Nintendo out of business with AI nipsRegistered Userregular
edited August 2020
There is a lot of work I have done professionally only because I was being paid, but is still of the highest quality I can manage, because generally it's more enjoyable and satisfying to do something well, even if you wouldn't care to do that thing at all absent external motivation.
Didn't get any fame or renown for the clean garbage collection behavior of the events system I put into some industrial software that looked for glass chips in vials.
Donkey Kong on
Thousands of hot, local singles are waiting to play at bubbulon.com.
Gene Hackman telling Ben Stiller he did Poseidon as a “money job” and still turned in a superb performance should be evidence that greatness can sometimes be motivated primarily by money.
I mean, at some level, actors know that they are the product, and that future "sales" and thus future jobs depend on the quality of their product, regardless of the motivation. Even while they are phoning it in, as it were, I think they know that their artistic persona is what is being purchased here.
+1
AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Posts
they are too easy to pirate and trying to prevent that is pointless
artists/authors may need to look to merchandising, publishers may just not be able to expect to make money off media sales like they used to
it's sad but how is it not, just, true?
i dunno. more public arts endowment is needed anyway
basic income, healthcare, guaranteed food and shelter, i think it's all tied in if we want to still have art be a thing people can afford to do as an occupation
We do, though, and the idea that artists will and should work for the sheer joy of it is part of why artists are underpaid and exploited.
It is not overall benefitting writers more than it is benefitting publishers, who would not be paying the writers unless their calculations came out in their favor.
The only way it could be thought to be benefitting writers is if you believed the alternative is that we put the writers out on the streets and give them nothing.
I think this is a common, untrue belief
I thought it was a pew thingie, but there was a poll recently that said people go to the library more often than the movies!
https://news.gallup.com/poll/284009/library-visits-outpaced-trips-movies-2019.aspx
e: here's a different source that says
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2016/09/09/library-usage-and-engagement/
so I guess you are right that the majority of people don't use the library, but almost!
yeah but who goes to the movies
I think it's really important to draw a distinction between the idea that people should be able to create and be compensated for that creation, and the problem a post-info-scarcity society like the one we're living in now poses for those creators. The ramifications are going to play hell with a lot of professions where revenue is based on the duality of information scarcity and wide market penetration. Models like a physical book where you want to sell a million of them but also only let people see the info inside if they bought it... are just not tenable anymore.
This is backwards, it's because writers do this that they are exploited, and they do it because they are willing to. If they didn't like it they'd have done something else.
If I gave you an UBI what would you do with your time?
Feels like you are about to seize the means of production.
I support a UBI but that's not within the scope of this discussion.
People will do more work and better work if they are well-compensated. Relying on passion to motivate them is bad and exploitative. Even relying on UBI to float authors and making all books free would lead to fewer, worse authors over time
Did I say it was solely benefitting writers and not publishers (and editors and everyone else employed in the industry to some extent)?
If you don’t think it’s benefitting writers or that the benefit isn’t worth keeping tell some of them their work should be given away free in perpetuity and then duck because something heavy is coming your way.
We are, at the moment, “giving” writers very little in the way of money outside of what they make from libraries and actual sales. An occasional grant, if they’re lucky.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
It's not a perfect solution, but it can probably be tweaked eh?
How do you square this with libraries ordering more than one physical copy of popular books?
There's then some notion that if the art is massively popular then the author (and publisher) deserve to get very rich, but that's based on the notion that anyone deserves to get very rich, which I don't honestly agree with.
It's like staring into a pus-oozing wound.
i think it's an issue on both sides
people who can afford to do art for funsies can at times crowd put people who would want to do art but can't afford to
some people will and do make art simply because they love making art and they don't care if they make it rich or even if they're just compensated like it's a full-time career
if no one had to worry about making ends meet because of social safety nets/basic income/etc in order to do art i am certain there would be more artists and fewer people making a career wage or more simply by doing art
Yes I know Michael Eisner is not a Disney anymore after he was written out of the will
I simply completely disagree with this. If this were true then the best artists would be the richest artists. This is not even close to true by almost anyone's approximation.
Either rely on robust, superior self-publishing or hybrid publishing, or have writers organize for collective bargaining to sell their books rather than have them beholden to massive corporate entities who have a chokehold on all books
my local library missed ordering a copy of Tyrant Baru Cormorant in spite of having the first two books, and interlibrary lending is COVID kaput
Werner Herzog only took a Star Wars role because he is so heavily in debt due to his various addictions. He certainly was in it for the money.
I may have made this up, but wasn’t it creative? Wouldn’t you like more from my head?
Publish me
become as large a publisher as you like, you just can only earn a certain amount as a personal salary before the rest gets taxed at 100%
so if you make a billion dollars a year you need to reinvest $995 million of that into your company and the authors you are publishing or it goes to the tax coffers
This does not follow whatsoever from what I'm saying. My argument is not that money leads directly to quality, or that quality leads to money, nor that they should.
If you do not provide reasonable, desirable compensation for art, then you will get fewer artists. People who want to be artists will look at a life of poverty or near-poverty and reject it. It doesn't matter if poverty means late capitalist nightmare or just post-UBI reduced access to luxuries and status; it will discourage artists. UBI would mitigate that, certainly! It would motivate some people because they would know they won't starve. But you're still motivating fewer people than you would if compensation were at a desirable, competitive level.
More artists is good. It means, proportionally, more good artists, more socially important artists, more diverse artists, etc.
I love this cover.
Both the title and art feels like it should be the cover for some weird music.
But Neco if we publish you you'll buy a PS5 and stop doing art
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
And an artist in this situation still has the greater part of the reward for producing great art; which is fame and renown for their work. The only reason these things seem hollow in comparison to money is because we live in a society with such inequalities of money.
Didn't get any fame or renown for the clean garbage collection behavior of the events system I put into some industrial software that looked for glass chips in vials.
That’s not remotely true! It’ll probably be at least a year before the ps5 has any good games!
I am pretty sure if you reposted that in the Hesher thread with the title in one of those cool Black Metal fonts nobody would bat an eyelash.
I'd probably give it a listen, even.