This was meant to be a comment for Robin Smail's post, but then it grew larger and became a unity that's worth its own discussion. (However, I have to admit that this is still a comment that doesn't have the organization that a post should have.)
Robin's post:It pretty much speaks for itself, making points Lessig has made before. But every time I see something like this, it begs the greater question: Why do we create, why do we share, if we don't really want anyone to see it, think about it, be moved by it? Like social media, it becomes a matter of letting go of our supposed need to control and, instead embracing the engagement. You cannot have the good without the bad, the conversation without a voice.It always makes me think.
I think the copyright holders have the fantasy of: I want everyone to appreciate my creation, and pay for it.
The creators are also thinking: I spent so much time making it, and I don't want to give it out for free. When the time needed to make it becomes a significant investment, movie making being an obvious example, the creators are having a hard time justifying "I do it just for fun, and I feel OK to eat instant noodles all my life because the art making satisfies me enough." When people don't want to pay my musician friend, because "you play music because you love to play, not for money", she responds: "This is my job. I'm sorry that you don't love what you do, but I do."
On the other hand, the consumers are very detached from the art making process. They only see the final, easily duplicable "product", so they also have a hard time really understanding why copying the final product, with their own equipments and materials, is affecting the artist's income.
The artists then created this whole copyright legal system to enforce paying. And a war starts here.
Less popular-oriented artists always lose in this war from many aspects. Their works don't take a powerful marketing ride to sell million copies, so if they want to sell, the price has to be higher, but then that gives consumers more motivation to get it for free. And the artists don't have the resources to enforce payments. Then they can't quit their day job to spend more time on art making. And so their art suffers. And eventually it dies.
This then makes more artists want/need to join bigger cooperations that have a mechanism to ensure their income.
It certain is a bad cycle. And it certainly does the human society as a whole more harm than good. However, I don't know what to do either. We are all trying to survive in the system. It's not like that the human society can one day decide to ask everybody to pay artistic tax for artists to do art full-time. (Even if it did, who decides what artists get paid this way, and what art they can make?)
Most open source software developers have a day job doing close-sourced software development. That probably implies the time they spend on the open source projects cannot compete with what they spend on entreprise level products. (An ironic example: in open-source conferences, most developers are using the close-sourced Mac Book Pro.) However, another factor is changing the game -- global collaboration enables collective efforts from their free time, at least in theory.
And most artists have a day job doing something unrelated to their art making.
One of my friends think that art making should be everybody's business -- art making should be spontaneous and should not be anything more than that. Professional artists by definition violate this principle because it introduces the capitalist model into this very personal activity. However, I think it's very hard for the human society to go back to that -- we have enjoyed all these very sophisticated art products (architecture, symphonies, movies, cuisine, fashion, etc.) that are beyond personal free-time efforts, or even collective free-time efforts. We want them and it's hard for us not to have those wonderful artists.
We as human are no longer innocent enough to do our duties as best as we can and be compensated the same as everyone else in the world. If we do better, we want to be compensated better. And If we can do better and get paid better, we will. We cannot expect a person to give the best efforts with the least compensation, just because the person enjoys the tasks.
Artists are no different -- if they can make better art (both the form and the content) and make higher profit (with whatever means), they will. Of course they want their art to be known, quoted, appreciated, and thought about. But when their income source and this goal conflict, they, sadly but understandably, usually go with the income. So far, for them to make high profit, is to be part of an established industry (movie studios, major orchestras, architecture firms, recording labels, etc.) and this is where we are today.
I am very interested in how open-source movement may provide some hope to change the system, in regard of art making. I think open-source art (Creative Commons is very close to this idea) can provide free alternatives but it hasn't been able to address the question of how professional artists can survive on that, unlike the software industry that sells the service behind the open source product.
The other unique characteristic of art that's different from a software product is its personality. Collective art is just one form of art, and is unlikely to replace other forms. For example, do we really want a movie voice-over to be done by 100 different voice actors and digitally pasted together, even with voice morphing technology to make them sound similar? Or do we prefer one person does it with cohesive personality? If we want only one person to do it, then we are asking this person to invest a lot, and we are back to the fundamental problem -- is it fair?
Smart post, TK. The idea that open source programmers are actually financed by working at closed source corporations is clear, and I don't think it will change. Possibly it should be embraced? IBM includes development of the free "Wordle" software when they figure their costs. Maybe there could be corporate tax breaks for supporting open source development? I could do pedagogically sound illustrations on Penn State's dime and give them freely to Teachers without Borders or Wikipedia. Penn State could support the pro bono work, and include it when they figure tuition costs.
When it comes to art, I wouldn't mind doing it for free as long as I could live a reasonable lifestyle and devote enough time to painting to gain the satisfaction that drives the work. I don't do it to share, nor to find out what others think of it. An old friend once posed the classic "last man" philosophical question to art creation. He was a classical guitarist, I made pictures. He asked, "Would you still make pictures if you were the last man on Earth?" A thought experiment, certainly; as a guitarist, he said he would continue to write and play. As a painter, I know I'd continue to make pictures without an audience. I don't need much if allowed to make pictures. What I do need is reflected in your last question of fairness- I need fairness. The sense that my work and my efforts are not being exploited. Copyright law often gets it wrong, but so, I think, do the alternatives. Holland pays salaries to artists, and a percentage of their work goes to the government. Maybe an expansion of the NEA grant program would have the same affect?
Very inspiring points. There's also this factor of whether or not the works should fit public tastes in order for the artists to survive, i.e. to sell.
http://www.palestrant.com/babbitt.html is a famous controversial article talking about composers should isolate themselves from the society. :) You may find it interesting, too.