What a wild thread this is! But it hits at a huge problem any artist or creator has to face: How do I get an appropriate reward for my creative efforts? I can't fault the Guild, or anyone else, for trying to find answers to this. We depend on the answers for some kind of livelihood for ourselves, and if we can't make our way while producing something of value, the world is the poorer too.
I don't think the answers lie deep in the plies of technology or behavior. Do we honor our creators sufficiently that they hold recognized status and compensation in our society? I don't think we do. Henry Miller wrote that America drives its artists mad, and I agree with that, because I've seen personally what artists have to do to produce their art and live by it. My sister, a producer of gorgeous prints, drawings, paintings, collages, and decorated objects, doesn't earn s**t from her work. She goes at it full-time, too, and has had to live with our mom until this past year, when Mom died. Then there's my buddy Larry Stark, who is a printmaker and digital photographer, and who has barely been able to raise a family on the prodigious efforts he's put forth all his life (he's 67 now, I think). These stories are legion: artists, writers, musicians, inventors, all suffer from the same affliction: the moment the created work issues forth, it becomes someone else's property, and then bidding wars start over the best ones, and the creator gets little or nothing. We read the headlines who make millions, but for every headliner there are a million poor, all creating what makes our world beautiful, safe, harmonious, and vital. I've believed, too, that business models have to change; but maybe it's more than that. Maybe it's our overall societal model that must change, to make business a less-dominant component of what we truly need. The opportunity presented by digital access is the direct exposure of the creator to the beneficiaries of her/his creations. That exposure can force attention where it should be, but how to get compensation to the creator is a topic too big for what I can imagine right now. Dana Jonathan Sherwood wrote: > Patents are (in theory anyway) designed to foster innovation. Who > would create something new if it would simply be stolen away the > moment it was made? Likewise, why would a publisher put the time and > effort into publishing a book if the second it was seen to be a > success, every other publisher would republish it? > > But we're entering a new era where digital goods are not adhering to > old theories. Look at the innovations coming out of open-sourced > software. No patents at all, yet the software is often better than > anything available commercially. That's not supposed to happen. Or the > author David pointed out who gave away his entire book, and then got a > book deal and landed on the NY Times list. That's not supposed to > happen either. > > I think I have to agree with Eric that whatever the principles > involved, the fight over text-to-speech rights is a losing battle. > Change is coming, and business models will have to change as well. > > -- > Jonathan Sherwood > Sr. Science & Technology Press Officer > University of Rochester > 585-273-4726 > > > On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 9:35 AM, Eric Scoles <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > > > On 2009-02-26, *delancey* <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > > OK, I wish I'd written "infuriatingly counterproductive" in > place of > each instance of "idiotic" and other such adjectives. > > > > There's also the fine distinction between "the guild are > infuriatingly counterproductive" and "the guild's *behaviors* are > infuriatingly counterproductive." > > One is, strictly speaking, an ad hominem. The other is a statement > about observed behaviors. > > Of course, sometimes we do want to say, directly, that someone > seems to be an idiot based on what they've been doing or saying. I > try to remember (don't always) to still talk about the behavior: > "The guild are behaving like idiots." > > I've become convinced it makes a difference. One way of speaking > starts from the position that the other party is an idiot (and, > maybe, that you're not), whereas the other leaves open the > possibility that you can learn something from or about them. > > SHIFTING GEARS: > > For what it's worth, I think this issue is past due for the > Guild's attention, but that they're ill-suited to address it. > > Creators of original works have come to have a very privileged > legal status in recent centuries. I don't know when the patent and > the copyright were invented, but they were invented: They're not > basic human rights. (For that matter, neither are 'basic human > rights,' but that's another story.) Before some point in the > relatively recent past -- I'm going to guess it was during the > Englightenment, sometime -- you told a story, it got re-told > wherever and whenever someone wanted to re-tell it, however they > had the means to do so. LIkely as not it got altered, somehow, in > the process. (Literary, and especially poetic, forms came to be > in large part to constrain those changes. They were the first > document standards, in that way.) > > We essentially take the basic position in the modern time that the > old times were bad old times in that way -- that people ought to > have control over what they create. FWIW, I'm with that program, > mostly -- I'm a modern guy. But it's clear to me that we have to > be willing and able to deal with change as it comes to us, and > that furthermore the fighting of losing battles (which this would > surely be) is usually a bad thing for society. Better to find a > way that the battle doesn't have to happen. Battles waste > resources that could be put to better use elsewhere. (I've long > believed that the common received wisdom, that conflict normally > leads to better 'product', is a crock. /Competition/ can lead to > better product. It does not inherently do so, and when it > escalates into certain types and scales of competition, as far as > I can see, the result is usually bad. But I digress....) > > That the fight to control text-to-speech readings is a losing > battle, I see little doubt. I don't dispute that there may well be > a legal foundation for the idea that text-to-speech is not > permissable use, or at least that Amazon is in violation for > providing a means to do that. But as Craig, I, and Jason have > pointed out, getting the text into speech borders on trivially > easy. So it becomes both an unenforceable and absurd restriction. > (I say 'absurd', because we have a pretend-difference, where we > let it happen 'for the handicapped', but not for general use: So > you could build a Kindle 2 that was sold only to the visualy > impaired [or to people who can't read, for that matter], and that > would be allowed, but you couldn't sell it to the general public. > It would be the over-zealous protection of property rights > re-inforcing the Nanny State.) > > > > > -- > eric scoles ([email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>) > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. 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