Brent_Nall said:
The gist of my argument is that the information, art, etc. does not have value in and of itself, but the effort to create/discover the work does. If the creator receives reasonable compensation for his/her initial efforts that is sufficient. Recurring income for later use of the information is not necessary to ensure "proper" compensation to artists, et al.
But that means that the artist has to earn their entire income for the work "up front" rather than having it spread over the period in which the work is "used" as happens nowadays.
This doesn't (IMHO) make much economic sense, because it requires that the money be generated in one big lump *before* people actually use the work, rather than being generated as and when they use it.
i.e. The reason why authors get a continuing income stream is because they don't get paid for writing the book, they get paid only when people read it, because it's the reading that generates a desire in the reader to reward the author, not the writing.
(That's assuming that you want them to earn the same ammount of money as before - if you're talking about them getting merely a token fee upon publication rather than a reasonable wage through a continuing period then it does make economic sense).
Brent_Nall said:
- A full-time writer could demand a pre-determined amount of donations before publishing his/her work (see the Ransom Method above).
- A full-time writer could request donations/charity before or after publishing his/her work.
- A patronage system could develop in which interested parties (EN World members, for example) pay the writer an annual salary to provide them with his/her works.
- A patronage system could develop in which individuals pay a writer an annual salary to publish good works.
- Writers could become much like research professors at universities. The university pays a salary. The professor does research and publishes the information (usually) at no charge to the public.
There seem to me to be a number of problems with that:
1) I doubt it will raise much money. When there is no connection between how much you donate and how much you get back (i.e. you get the book regardless of whether or not you donate) I think that while many people might donate, it will be relatively token amounts.
2) How many rich people are there out there who want to donate $30,000 a year to fund an RPG writer?
3) I dislike the whole charity idea. It's like having to beg and is (IMHO) perhaps even demeaning. I'd rather it be on the basis of me saying I have something you might want, do you want to buy it? (i.e. no suggestion that either side is doing the other side a favour).
Brent_Nall said:
Do you really believe that the current environment encourages the production of IP to a greater extent than we had during the Renaissance period in Western Europe?
Actually, yes. When you consider that we reward our artists enough that you have tens of thousands of people in a country that make a living entirely from artistic endeavours I'd say we're doing pretty well. Whereas when you consider that even someone like William Shakespeare led a pretty hand-to-mouth existance I think things were pretty hard then. I doubt many people in those times made their living purely from artistic endeavour.
Brent_Nall said:
I believe that the current publication environment very much discourages production of IP. How many artists, muscians, etc. will you NEVER hear about because major publishing houses don't believe they could sell? If, on the other hand, it was common place for people to make donations/give charity to artists they prefer you would see thousands (millions?) of people publish their works in an effort to earn fame (probably first) and income (probably second).
That assumes that whichever business model these guys would use (presumably releasing their works as PDFs or MP3s or whatever) *isn't* available now.
Brent_Nall said:
True, but that doesn't mean it's not POSSIBLE to make money publishing "freeware" RPGs. Again, I refer to donations made to keep EN World up and running as a perfect example of paying for a service when you don't have to pay for. I'm sure people would pay for RPGs as well.
As people have pointed out, ENWorld is a hugely supported Internet site, and yet it's not even capable of supplying enough money to pay even one full time worker. (Morrus runs it in his spare time, and the $13,000 was to pay for a new server).
Brent_Nall said:
No, I don't believe that is the case. A person that creates art (in any form) almost certainly makes the world a better place and deserves some compensation for his/her efforts. I just believe that the current method of compensating artists for their efforts is asinine and immoral.
Again, the whole "deserves" smacks of charity, and "throwing the artist a bone".
Brent_Nall said:
I don't think there are nearly that many active users on this system. I would wild-assed guess that there are probably somewhere less than 3,000 unique users of this system each week. So, now we're talking nearly $5.00 per user donated. Of course, most people probably didn't donate. That's fine. If $13,000 was the amount required to run the site, and that's what they got . . . so be it. If they needed more I bet they would have gotten more. If they didn't get the amount needed then that would be clear evidence that EN World is not a viable enterprise.
People don't work that way. Otherwise you'd never have the tragedy of the commons.
The point is that the larger the group of people, the less people trust others in a group, and the less they are prepared to cooperate. Once I get to the point where I feel that I'm donating more than my fair share, and that others are freeloading, I'll stop donating - even if it means that the thing I'm supporting (website, author whatever) goes under. Because I don't want to feel that I'm being ripped off by freeloaders who are taking advantage of me.
That basically puts a cap on the mass donations model. (It's different where it's one rich patron, because he or she gets the glory - but how many rich patrons are there out there)?
Brent_Nall said:
The current publishing paradigm pretty much ensures that the proliferation of art, music, literature, and scientific knowledge is controlled by a relatively small group of people in major publishing houses. Were most people to reject the idea of Intellectual Property we would come to understand that we must still compensate artists, musicians, writers, etc. for their work, but that a per copy compensation model doesn't work. So instead we would see voluntary payment arrangements made between artists and fans that would probably benefit both parties significantly.
When you buy a CD for $15.99 how much of that cash goes to the artist? I don't know the answer, but I would guess somewhere less than $2.00. Wouldn't it be cool if you could just sign on to the artist's web site and pay him via PayPal $2.00 or $5.00 or whatever you thought the music was worth . . . or not pay anything if you really don't value the music.
I could make similar arguments about books, RPGs, etc.
But your argument is totally irrelevent to what this thread is about: the ripping off of RPG PDFs, in which in nearly all cases 100% of the money goes to the creators.
