tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3340831264933167750.post6865599891250839686..comments2022-05-02T09:13:40.331-06:00Comments on the lithium press: Pirates, Part 2Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3340831264933167750.post-29911975239248162222010-07-15T22:23:08.075-06:002010-07-15T22:23:08.075-06:00I'll have to give that a read. We certainly ar...I'll have to give that a read. We certainly are going through a media revolution not seen since the folio was developed in Italy way back then, and made ideas and books so cheap that printers were absolutely floored on what to do about it.Mister Fweemhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10339287419996343926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3340831264933167750.post-82660009561895648572010-07-11T20:58:03.576-06:002010-07-11T20:58:03.576-06:00I'm not sure I have a good solution to this wh...I'm not sure I have a good solution to this whole problem, or even a consistent and useful philosophical perspective. What I was mostly saying here is that creator compensation is primarily tied to a market and should be fairly tied to that market, without creators being fleeced by corporate monopolies.<br /><br />When I said all creative acts are equal, as creative acts, that was me expressing the mysterious nature of creativity. I've seen works of pure accident hailed as genius and works of genius broadly dismissed. I'm often at a loss for how to evaluate creative acts, as creative acts, so my position is that at birth they are all equal. Only post-creative evaluation, heavily conditioned by culture, invests them with value. It's a post-modern perspective, admittedly, love it or hate it. <br /><br />Anyway, most creative acts that are celebrated as creative acts are not really that creative, in any pure sense, because mostly they are just the very familiar rearranged in a pleasing way. REAL creativity is rarely rewarded on any level. It's too strange, disturbing, alien, dissonant. That's why you spend most of your time being trained as a creative professional not actually being creative, but learning conventions. All creators are rip-off artists, on every possible level, and you have to be.<br /><br />So if that is a fact (I think it is), who deserves compensation and how is it determined? Does J.K. Rowling really deserve to be richer than the Queen of England for a handful of derivative and inartful juvenile novels, while very numerous writers of genuine talent can't turn a penny off their work?<br /><br />The repetition standard you suggest raises a good question, but I don't know how you implement it when repetition is easy, free, and done by almost everyone without consequences. For example, I've sung "Happy Birthday" dozens of times, publicly. This is a violation of copyright law, on the same level as downloading (pirating) an ebook without compensating the copyright holder. Licensing the right to perform "Happy Birthday" is so outrageously expensive that you will almost never see it performed on TV, etc. The copyright holders feel it is their right to demand high compensation (ca. $10,000 a pop), given its universal popularity. I can't disagree, but I never feel I should cut them a check whenever I publicly perform it, as they rightly demand. Why is that? Doesn't the "creator" deserve compensation for something literally everyone uses?<br /><br />I think everything on the internet is headed in the same direction as "Happy Birthday." Guilt-free use of copyrighted material by everyone all the time. We're already an "infringement nation." I think one solution is a very old old one, still found everywhere. Patronage. Creators should be paid to create up front to create, which I think produces far richer results anyway. But that's another post.<br /><br />If you haven't read Tehranian's "Infringement Nation," here it is:<br /><br />http://epubs.utah.edu/index.php/ulr/article/viewFile/7/11<br /><br />I've probably linked this before. Sorry.carl ghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14291193391743469159noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3340831264933167750.post-63290641944213580062010-07-11T17:54:17.916-06:002010-07-11T17:54:17.916-06:00Well said, my man. But still, don't you think ...Well said, my man. But still, don't you think that at the point that repetition begins to occur with a creative work that the creator deserves compensation? Where I have a bone to pick with the "pirates" is when they want the repetition without the compensation. Some of the repetition/compensation gets ridiculous, I have to agree (college textbooks come to mind).<br /><br />I can't treat all creative acts as equal. As a writer, I know most of the writing I do, although it is creative, is throwaway stuff. I spent nearly ten years working at newspapers, and getting paid for writing. I can probably count on two hands the number of articles I remember with fondness, out of the countless number I wrote. Still, those that I recall are golden to me. They show that out of the mountain of written crap I produce, there are a few nuggets of gold.<br /><br />Same goes when you're writing a novel. Lots of creativity gets poured into that process, even though most of what's written is "throwaway." (Ray Bradbury famously wrote that to find the 5 percent of your writing that's good, you have to write the 95 percent that's crap.) The throwaway stuff has no value except to get the bad ideas and bad writing out of the way, so the good stuff can come. Then there's the nuggets. You don't sift through tons of dirt just to give the nuggets away.Mister Fweemhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10339287419996343926noreply@blogger.com