If I produce something and you want to consume it, and I ask for money, then I deserve to get paid. Just because someone produces something doesn't mean you deserve to consume it.
Why is it so unreasonable for an artist to ask for money in exchange for his work? Are you saying that because it's digital, it not longer has any value? If I make music or a game, I wouldn't stop someone from listening to my music or playing the game (I would encourage it), but if they want to own a copy of it, it seems reasonable for me to ask for a payment. That social contract has been around for thousands of years. Now that there happens to be technology that makes it easy not to pay for it, it's suddenly ethically okay?
You can consume as much media as you want for free: you can rent music, books, movies, and games at the library. But if you love it so much that want your own copy of it, shouldn't you show your appreciation to the artist by just buying it?
Well if they want to get it from you then certainly they must pay, but the question is basically whether your property rights extend to someone other than you.
> Are you saying that because it's digital, it not longer has any value?
Well one might not go that far, but the marginal cost is zero.
digital copying is a perfectly competitive zero marginal cost game.
only immoral thieves IMHO are the monopolists who want to make society worse off by trying to enforce artificial and pointless barriers to that market.
"If I produce something and you want to consume it, and I ask for money, then I deserve to get paid."
This is a common misunderstanding of the payment dynamic. The reality is it is actually a power dynamic. I make something that you want and I can keep it from you until you pay me.. is more approximate to the truth.
there is no inherent value in work, but only in supply and demand. Digital goods have demand, but no natural limitations in supply. Un-natural limitations (social acceptability, guilt, lawsuits, criminalising, etc) are being attempted but it seems likely they will all fail eventually.
"You can consume as much media as you want for free"
The corollary to this of course is, artists can make as make media as they like, but to make a decent living from it they need to show appreciation and respect to their patrons. If, on the other hand, they want to be stinking rich, or they want to bet big and spend hundreds of millions of hollywood dollars on expectation of a payout, they have to understand and manipulate that power dynamic. Just don't try and make out there is any kind of moral right to get paid.
The reality is it is actually a power dynamic. I make something that you want and I can keep it from you until you pay me.
That sort of presupposes that your wants should be satisfied as a matter of course, no? I have to agree with some of the posters above about the immaturity of this attitude. In the natural world, you get some things for free and you have to work for other things; eg you might find a coconut on the ground, but that's not guaranteed - chances are that you'll need to forage or hunt for your food most of the time. You can want the coconuts at the top of the tree to any degree imaginable, but your basic choices are to stay hungry or climb the tree. Is the tree exercising power over you by withholding the coconuts? Of course not. In the natural world, when you want something you frequently have to put your money where your mouth is - that is, expend some effort to get hold of it.
The actual power dynamic in the case of piracy is that any attempt at establishing a contractual relationship between producer and consumer can be easily undermined by a small number of people who are willing to break that contract by giving away copies for nothing while painting producers as morally deficient and undeserving of compensation.
Digital goods have demand, but no natural limitations in supply.
This is simply not true - there is a fixed cost of supply. Just because the marginal cost of supply is zero does not mean there are no constraints on supply. You're equating non-substitutable creative goods with quite high costs of supply from the producer standpoint with fungible commodities in a marketplace of perfect competition.
The corollary to this of course is, artists can make as make media as they like, but to make a decent living from it they need to show appreciation and respect to their patrons.
So what you're saying is that you want to be entertained and have your ego stroked - you wish your consumption to be reflected back to you in heroic terms, because you place such a currency value upon your attention. Put another way, you consider the time invested in consumption of entertainment as a form of economic labor which is traded for the aesthetic pleasure (qua economic utility( that you hope to extract from the art work.
"That sort of presupposes that your wants should be satisfied as a matter of course, no?"
no.. 'should' is such a misleading term. like i said, this is not a moral issue. 'wants' as a matter of definition 'want' to be satisfied. and from experience, once you remove impediments from peoples 'wants' (en masse) they have no natural inclination to limit themselves. the power dynamic exists purely because 'want' is your weak point in a trading situation, and my ability to keep that from you is my strong point (my weak point is my need to eat).
your example of the coconut is perfect in fact, it dehumanises or de-moralises the idea. the coconut evolved with its fruit/seed high up, hard to crack, heavy and slow germinating. however it came to be, it is resistant to birds eating it and germinates near the shoreline dispersed by the tides. other fruit evolved to be eaten and dispersed by birds. no morals, just different distribution methods. different power differential.
"This is simply not true - there is a fixed cost of supply."
no, there is a fixed cost of creation. supply is unlimited (virtually). the media industry got rich precisely due to the fact that a fixed cost of creation could scale up to massive increase in distribution virtually for free (at scale). and here we are only talking about that small percentage of artists who seek to leverage their fix cost of creation to make the same money time and time over. it is arbitrage on an artificially limited supply. now the industry is feeling the flipside of this 'free' distribution.
"So what you're saying is that you want to be entertained and have your ego stroked"
no. but reading back, i see how you thought that. what i mean is that artists have to respect what consumers pressure points, and their understanding of value is and respond to that rather than to keep pushing shit uphill, so to speak. understand that perhaps the time is gone when an artist can receive 10x value from 1x work. because now to put that 1x work out to a market where the market decides whether it will pay or not completely changes the power dynamic. it forces the artist to foster a relationship with their patrons.
also, as an aside, i put forward a point of view about power dynamics in trade and about the non-existence of morality in this issue. i get the feeling that you are trying to moralise not only about the existence of piracy (which imho is in itself a profound misreading of reality) but about me, about which you know nothing. i find this vaguely offensive.
if you care to know, the existence of piracy, abundance of content, and the leverage of being one of thousands of eyeballs has allowed me to shift from being a powerless consumer to being a producer, and a patron, as i please. which is awesome.
* no.. 'should' is such a misleading term. like i said, this is not a moral issue.*
This is a bit rich coming from someone dictating what artists need to do to please you as a consumer.
the power dynamic exists purely because 'want' is your weak point in a trading situation, and my ability to keep that from you is my strong point (my weak point is my need to eat).
The need to and the costs of production still exist even when the ability to recoup investment by controlling distribution does not.
"This is simply not true - there is a fixed cost of supply." no, there is a fixed cost of creation. supply is unlimited (virtually).
In economics there is supply and demand, and fixed costs and marginal costs (ie the cost to produce one more unit of a given product). Creation is not treated as a separate thing from supply, since it is a necessary precursor. Some goods are supplied in single quantities. Please don't lecture me about economics if you are not familiar with the basic terminology of the field.
i get the feeling that you are trying to moralise not only about the existence of piracy (which imho is in itself a profound misreading of reality) but about me, about which you know nothing. i find this vaguely offensive.
Well, now you know how I feel about being told that because artists and publishers of the past have made lots of money from industrialized distribution, artists of today should not expect to get paid for supplying a product the market wants, which is a rather annoying fallacy of composition. Just because the industry has done well overall does not mean that everyone has been receiving '10x value from 1x work,' as you put it. The majority of people in the film industry work on fixed pay scales and see little or no residual income.
if you care to know, the existence of piracy, abundance of content, and the leverage of being one of thousands of eyeballs has allowed me to shift from being a powerless consumer to being a producer, and a patron, as i please. which is awesome.
In what sense do you consider yourself a producer?
fuck.. you have an agenda, i get it. i am not attacking you. i pay for films and art and music and other real stuff. i made a simple observation about the power dynamics of media sales. the fact that content producers are not noticing they are being fucked sideways by the distribution companies, killing their art to maintain their profits, while the ground is being pulled out from under them by the public. the market is collapsing and they are attacking their customers.
"This is a bit rich"
but it is still not what i am saying. its amoral, not moral/immoral!
"The need to and the costs of production.."
but that is the thing, if there is no market for it then you can't do shit. if the market is not willing to pay for the costs of production, you push the cost of production down, find another way to push costs up, or you just starve. this is not me telling you this. this is just how it is for everyone.
"In economics there is supply and demand.."
fair enough, i see we are saying the same thing here. tbh i just read your sentence as gibberish to impress how much you knew about economics. i understand the meaning if not the terminology, no need to be an arse.
"Well, now you know how I feel.."
to be fair, i knew how you felt. i was just trying to disabuse you of the notion that there is anything fair about work and pay. it is power pure and simple. that is, in fact, why some people get the 10x income, and some do the 1x work.
"In what sense do you consider yourself a producer?"
i am sorry, but i cannot help but read that as being a bit fucking condescending. so finding it difficult, but giving you the benefit of doubt, perhaps you are asking if i am a big p Producer? no. i am a designer. 1 x work for slightly less than 1x pay.. as it happens.
the fact that content producers are not noticing they are being fucked sideways by the distribution companies, killing their art to maintain their profits
But the thing is, they're not. Distributors provide a lot of liquidity and a lot of their bets don't pay off. Even the big studios only make profit margins on the order of 5-7%. Besides liquidity, the distribution process itself involves significant logistical complexity; it essentially involves doing multiple product launches on different scales almost every week of the year.
"In what sense do you consider yourself a producer?" i am sorry, but i cannot help but read that as being a bit fucking condescending.
It's just a straight question, because I don't understand what your relationship to the industry is, if any. I do work in film productionand post-production, usually recording sound on sets or editing and supervising other editors in post production.
You can consume as much media as you want for free: you can rent music, books, movies, and games at the library. But if you love it so much that want your own copy of it, shouldn't you show your appreciation to the artist by just buying it?