I think I really irritated some friends this evening, or rather amused. Well, probably irritated a bit.
Our discussion started with me making the point that I don't think musicians have an intrinsic right to charge exorbitant amounts of money for cheaply/freely replicable music. For me one of the basic principles of capitalism is that you can't claim that anything has an intrinsic value... its value is determined by the market. The musicians don't have an intrinsic right to lots of money for what they make. The reason they have made lots of money in the past was because it was easy to create barriers, and demand could not be cheaply met... demand was high, so prices could be kept up.
The only thing that now keeps prices up is a feeling that it is `wrong' to copy music. We can now make digital copies that are as good as the original for all practical purposes. Is this theft? You had it. I copy it. You still have it. There is now more of it. More people are happy.
BUT... you cry... what about the intellectual property. Surely the musician has the RIGHT to charge me for enjoying the music, even if it costs nothing for me to listen to it.
There are two questions now:
1) Is the musician likely to make more or less money if more people hear their music for free?
2) Should the musician be able to make this choice?
I think the answer to (1) is more. I think there should in theory be some way for (2) to be a price negotiation between the artist and the customer... but realistically, the music costs essentially nothing to replicate anymore.
Essentially free replication makes the price setting mechanism of capitalism difficult without regulation. The concern if I can't make money off replications is that there will be no financial incentive to make quality music any more. Funny, we got around that for pretty much our entire existence till the Beatles and Elvis.
Maybe music will carry on... maybe money doesn't drive music. Maybe, we have intellectual rights to originals... maybe replications are just something we have no control over and should use to raise the price of originals?
The reason I was irritating is that I probably didn't know my key point and the argument kind of flowed. By the end of it we were talking about the environment and whether capitalism is a force for good in improving environmental concerns. To know how we got there, you would have had to jump around our various steps during which I jumped from person to person in who I agreed with and who I didn't.
1) I have a feeling that there should be some way for people to be compensated for intellectual property.
2) Free or almost free copying is here to stay, we need to find some way to still make the system of incentivizing innovation without excessive regulation.
3) Giving intellectual property away for free doesn't always stop you from making money... sometimes it makes you more.
3 comments:
I find it difficult to pin down exactly the thesis of your post (and the discussion last night).
The key points seem to be
1. you can make more money by having lots of free copies out there.
2. Zero marginal cost has the effect on the artists right to intellectual property....
surely it isn't really relevant how best to make money with music. For some giving away loads is probably good, for others not so much. Some people will choose the wrong option and the other side can go neener neener if they like.
I wish Al Gore wouldn't mock US carmakers for overlooking the "obvious" profitability of green cars, as though that were the sure way back to sucess. it's almost as though blind greed and hatred of the environment are so all consuming that they no longer want to make money.
I also don't see what the cost of reproduction has to do with intellectual property. why would artists not have this right now? Bill Watterson has been pretty sucessful in preventing the copying and distribution of his stuff even though that was always pertty costless to do. Was this wrong of him?
Who is Bill Watterson?
The problem I have is with artificial barriers created to preserve an industry that needs to change.
Reproduction allowed people to make money in the past... BECAUSE it could be controlled. It can't be controlled anymore.
Musicians need not fear having to roll over and die...
You just can't expect to make large amounts of money from things that can be easily replicated.
I donno dude.
I'm gonna say movies and pharmacuticals again.
We just don't know what the music market will look in 10 years. I'm confident that it wont collapse, but some kind of structure will emerge.
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