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Author: I spent six months writing this story, I hope I can make some money selling it, it would be my dream to be able to keep doing this full time. You: I wi

• armchairhacker 15d ago
  What % of new authors today make full-time salary on writing? And what % of those do by selling, vs giving away their work for free (to get non-negligible attention) then getting their real money through donations, merch, etc.?
  • dageshi 15d ago
    What does it matter? I don't think anyone has the right to take work I create, for free. In the same way I have no right to walk into your house and use it for free. In the same way you cannot expect me to turn up and work at your business for free. I don't care what half delusional rubbish you come up with to justify your theft. It's theft, you want to steal something you put zero effort into creating and use it as you see fit. No fuck you. If I want to give it away for free, that's my prerogative not your expectation, if I can monetise via merch or other means, that's my prerogative not your right.
    • armchairhacker 15d ago
      It matters because copyright is widely abused and hurts neutral sites which must constantly check for copyrighted content, and it would’ve hampered AI if it was enforced. Your analogy doesn’t fit because a house is physical, but “intellectual property” is digital. If we lived in the metaverse and I could just copy your house and live in it without affecting you, why should you care? Theft is bad because the victim no longer has the original.
      • dageshi 15d ago
        Theft in this case is bad because you're removing the ability of someone to make a living from the thing they created. On the basis it's digital. I don't care if it's digital, I care if it took time and effort to create. If it did, it does not matter if it's digital or physical, it's theft.
        • joquarky 15d ago
          > removing the ability of someone to make a living from the thing they created. So layoffs should be illegal?
        • armchairhacker 15d ago
          Today, practically zero new indies make a living from selling digital copies of a thing they created. That income is eclipsed by giving away their main work, then asking for donations, maybe selling merchandise, early access, tailored commissions, or some other token (and sponsorships but those unfortunately hurt quality). So abolish copyright, and indies still make money from creating digital works - at least almost as much as they do now, but probably more, because it will further normalize the alternate incomes. Copyright maybe used to help indies, but every copyright case I’ve heard anywhere in the last decade, the plaintiff is a publisher with more than enough revenue. Meanwhile, in many cases the defendant hasn’t actually infringed, but regardless suffers from the DMCA, C&D, or lawsuit. Copyright relies on wishful thinking to provide an illusion of helping small-time creators, in reality far more often it hurts them.
          • dageshi 15d ago
            I regularly see posts on reddit r/royalroad where people write amateur stories and have their works stolen and put up on other platforms for money. https://www.reddit.com/r/royalroad/comments/1uwyuf1/psa_stolen_books_part_three/ https://www.reddit.com/r/royalroad/comments/1uwyuf1/psa_stol... Here is an example of the theft you endorse. Please go tell those people they should be happy for someone else to steal their work and charge for it even after they've given it away for free. It doesn't matter whether "few" people make a living from it. Copyright does not guarantee you an audience. Copyright going away would not guarantee you more of an audience. The only thing it guarantees is that if you manage to write something that resonates with an audience you have the potential to earn a living from it. That is what you want to take away.
    • inglor_cz 15d ago
      I am not a fan of complete removal of copyright, but I also consider its current duration absurd and extreme - saying this as someone who wrote 10 books so far, so I have actual skin in the game. Some person in 2130 should not be able to profit from something I am writing now, that is just feudalism in a new cloak. Any creative person whose ego is not overinflated accepts the fact that no art emerges from a vacuum, that they themselves were inspired by others and their work, and that they should pay this forward to the coming generations. For me, the worst aspect of long copyright is the de-facto ban on derived works. Work derivation is how civilization and culture came to be.
  • myrmidon 15d ago
    The more successful "self published" authors writing web novels make significant money from patreon (>$20k/month); this relies on copyright protection (but interestingly, just a few months would be sufficient for that business model).
    • randysalami 15d ago
      This is way too much
    • armchairhacker 15d ago
      My understanding is that most of these web novels are free, and patreon grants early access at best, which is enforced by trust anyways (the creator doesn’t have the time or resources to track and sue someone posting the early access on a pirate site, when it will be public a week or month later, but the people who pay to get something a week or month early mostly aren’t the type who would pirate even if it was easy).
    • wizzwizz4 15d ago
      In what way does that business model rely on copyright protection? "Get the next chapter early" requires a source of chapters, so all you need is for paying clients to not be motivated to redistribute the chapters in an organised way, or would-be paying clients to not be motivated to use such organised "slightly more chapters of that webnovel you follow" services instead. Humans aren't amoral ideal rational economic actors. The authors I'm aware of making >$20k don't do any significant gating. That practice is only really common with people republishing through Amazon (which probably demands it).
      • myrmidon 15d ago
        > so all you need is for paying clients to not be motivated to redistribute the chapters in an organised way This is exactly what copyright is. I agree that you could work around this in a world without copyright (e.g. by watermarking content and blacklisting), but it would be difficult and make the whole profession less viable. Mass distribution and payment becoming accessible/low overhead was an extremely helpful development for authors in my view, and removing copyright would have the opposite effect (but cutting it down even to several years would change surprisingly little).
• mistrial9 15d ago
  many people commenting have never tried to earn a living from independently created works of authorship. The NAPSTER-fans say "more for me, what is your problem". Other economies (China) do not have commerce law that protects original works of authorship, but the Western tradition has enabled this. Blinded by corporate abuse, calls for removal of copyright law are often naive or ill-willed IMHO
  • Lerc 15d ago
    That is not a given. I have earned a living from created works of authorship. I think copyright suppresses creation and does very little to support creators in general. It has enabled businesses to choose a few winning creators that reap the benefits of copyright. That kingmaker position allows them to dictate what is created. For the last few decades the median income from a creative work has been nil. I would much rather have universal basic income and no copyright.
  • rpdillon 15d ago
    Just treat copyright as an engineering issue, rather than a religion. Is copyright doing more good than harm when it comes to encouraging creativity? I think everything tilted in favor of abolishing copyright around the turn of the century, and AI isn't improving things. Your point about making a living off of creative endeavors underscores this point: if copyright were doing its job the way it's supposed to, your first sentence wouldn't be a note alluding to how damn hard it is to make a living on writing. Somehow you're twisting that to be a feature, which I get, because there's no alternative story, but at the same time, let's be honest: copyright doesn't work well, and incurs huge costs for society.
• rpdillon 15d ago
  The part this analysis misses is that the author's "dream" of doing that full time is almost never realized -- 25% percent of authors identify as "full-time", but only 10% of those authors can actually make ends meet. Only 30% of books ever pay back the advance. The best shot is to be a "romance" author, which earns more than other genres, pretty much because sex sells. Copyright isn't doing a great job at its stated purpose, and yet we endure endless fights over it. The juice isn't worth the squeeze, and writers are mostly supporting themselves with other jobs anyway.
  • clickety_clack 15d ago
    Novels aren't the only thing with copyright, and aren't really even the main thing that copyright protects. It also covers engineering reports, technical specs, journalism, blog posts, emails, internal memos, marketing copy, academic papers, user manuals, legal briefs, and a lot more. Even in the particular case of novels, I would prefer to live in a world where some authors are making money than live in one with no novels at all.
    • rpdillon 15d ago
      I understand copyright covers lots of things. It doesn't do a good job with any of them, sadly. > Even in the particular case of novels, I would prefer to live in a world where some authors are making money than live in one with no novels at all. That's not the choice. Novels will be written regardless, and there are ways to make money that are not copyright-related: Substack and Patreon are doing more to fund small authors than the publishing industry as a whole, and people pay because they want to support the author, and to get early, exclusive access to the author's work. None of those authors are surviving and making money because someone can't copy their work and distribute it. Piracy is a fact, and that people give money to these authors in the presence of piracy shows that copyright is not necessary to support these artists.
      • nucleogenesis 15d ago
        > None of those authors are surviving and making money because someone can't copy their work and distribute it. I tend to agree with your sentiment but this line made me think you’re underestimating the degree to which the law stops the powerful from doing evil. They see the law as a hassle to be calculated against and if there is no legal friction to stealing and using others’ creations they just will. So it’s not that Amazon would take your novel, short story, etc and redistribute it. It’s that they’d make a whole series of movies or TV series using your creations and give you nothing and have to give you nothing. Copyright being eliminated is among my more “idealistically anarchistic” wishes I think but so long as we’re in a society as legalistic and with such an imbalance of power generally, copyright protects more than it hurts I think.
• inglor_cz 15d ago
  A variant where the copyright would be automatic but very limited (say, 10 years), with a necessity to pay some growing fee for extended protection, would solve most situations. The vast majority of stories do not make any money ever. Some do, but only briefly so. The true money makers should have no problem paying the fees. Only very rare cases of authors who get discovered decades later would not be covered by this, and this is less likely to happen with the Internet. There are no publishing gatekeepers anymore.
• seki285 15d ago
  They hate artists.
• cornell532 15d ago
  People arguing against parent are Property Thieves. see 5th amendment which requires "private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation". It's your property. Do what you want with it. In a free society, the public isn't compelled to buy your books.
• Caracas288 15d ago
  Authors and artists are not (and souldn't be) making Art for money. It is not a 'job' where effort goes in and product comes out. It's more like a religious calling, they often have no other option. That's true, but it's also the reason people are paid less than their technical peers. It is difficult in the current climate to prevent industrial actors from cultivating genetic lines instantiated by Artists in Art. In a different future, the seperation between small and large-scale genetic agriculture would be recognised, and the abolition of copyright may proceed. In a world where money is devalued, genetic lines and mental constituency will become even more powerful. See: the mental constituency of sci-fi books in E. Musk's brain
  • jolmg 15d ago
    >> Author: I spent six months writing this story. > Authors and artists are not (and souldn't be) making Art for money. Hmm... > Author: I spent some years researching a topic to write a book about it. Authors don't just make art.
    • Huarache1 15d ago
      Neither do Inventors, which arguably make much more contributions to society, yet their work is only protected for 20 years tops. What excuse do artists have?
      • Caracas288 15d ago
        As with academics, inventors and artists should be paid for their labour long-term, not for their result.
        • jolmg 15d ago
          Not sure if you really mean it, but you're kind of making the argument that a person that mindlessly shovels dirt from one hole to another in a circle should be paid. People are paid for the result, not for their labor.
• Huarache1 15d ago
  Copyright is described by its proponents as a "Monopoly held by the creator". Considering how much we take from the Public Domain, I'd argue that Copyright should only last as long as Patents do, up to a maximum of 20 years. Anything beyond that is not personal property, but a literal monopoly which impedes creativity, seeing the many, many, many sequels which are terrible often made to keep a studio's grasp on an IP. It happens so often those are often called "ashcan copy" or "rights-retention" films, which wouldn't happen if Copyright law expired as naturally as Patents do.
  • saaaaaam 15d ago
    What do you mean by “considering how much we take from the public domain”?
    • Huarache1 14d ago
      As an example, the entirety of the Disney Catalogue makes multiple references, or retellings of old Folk Tales from Europe, while also defending their "Intellectual Property" so fiercely, that they artificially extended copyright from 56 years to 96 years for corporately owned products, or the author's life and 70 years for a single author. It used to be roughly on par with Patent expiration, but it's now almost either 100 years to almost 200.