I'm sorry - I can't agree that those are 'lieterally THE SAME IDEA'.

They are two very different ideas, conceptions of performances inspired by the same book.

And, yes, I trade in ideas, and information, and I make it freely available without charge. I make a living by changing an hourly rate for custom work, and asking for donations for work that is freely available.

And btw. I would pay money to have Ian McKellen read the Hobbit to me.

Last edited by TheGreg (2012-11-29 23:11:35)

Well, I simply don't agree. Ultimately I don't know that there is a way to settle that. It seems obvious to me that Ian McKellen reading a book is a very different idea from a film adaptation.

You seem to be making the case that it should be the 1950s, so that Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens can make a living adapting the Hobbit for film. I would kind of like that too, in some ways, but I can't make it happen for them. They have to create a business model for themselves that works in the 21st century. Actually in their case selling the experience of seeing it on a huge screen, and selling fancy box sets with post cards and the like does pretty well. I don't really think that digital copying hurt LOTR.

As I say, I'm not sure, but it's really up to them to figure that out.

Last edited by TheGreg (2012-11-29 23:19:39)

Here I was drafting a reply to theGreg from way back in the thread, and look what's happened in the meantime...  goodness.

Anyway, leaving my intended post aside in order to jump into the thread where it stands now...

Buggy whips may not be the best analogy here, since the market for buggy whips literally disappeared due to technological changes in society.     However, the market for media is arguably bigger than ever, which is one of the good things about the new digital world we live in.    There are more opportunities and options for content creators than ever before, this is absolutely true.

The "buggy whip" that is in most jeopardy is high-end professional content, which as others have pointed out, only comes from a front-loaded high-priced investment of a lot of time and talent.  Nobody will ever make that investment only to give it away for free and hope they get some donations.    Without a reliable revenue stream to support such a risky undertaking, then yes, that industry will die out.

And thus it may well be that  tv networks and movie studios will eventually go away.  There may be a future where "media" is nothing but garage bands and youtube webcam videos, supported solely by donations because that's all they need to keep making them.   However, since all of us DiF panelists make our livings in the buggy whip industry, you can maybe see why we're not excited about that prospect. 

I'll say this though - at the current state of things, the pay-model is still a far better bet than the donation-model, and the obvious example is Down In Front.    Here at DiF we make content available for free on a weekly basis, and only ask (gently) for donations in return.   Only Teague knows the dollar figures, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess there hasn't been a huge fiscal return on our three years of effort.

And that's fine, none of us does DiF to make money, nor do we expect to.  But you should note that every one of us abandons DiF on any given week if there's a paying job available instead.     Even with its damn-near-nothing production overhead, it costs every single one of us something to make DiF every week.   Even if it's mostly just time and gas money, that's not nothing.

Now I'll go out on a further limb and bet that if we changed to a paid model, we'd lose most of our listeners... and make a lot more money.    If we switched to a ten-dollar-a-month-all-you-can-eat subscription model, and thus immediately reduced our listener base to a total of seventeen people... DiF would be making more money than it does now via unlimited availability and a donation model.

And although you pointed out some cases where donation models are successful, those remain the exception and not the rule.    Most internet "we made a thing, now give us money if you liked it!" models are just like DiF - unprofitable.

Regardless of whether it's buggy whips or cars or Cloud Atlas or strawberry smoothies: if a thing is available for free, it has no value.  We choose to make DiF free because what the hell, we don't care.     But if you insist on removing the value from things that were intended to have it, you are removing the market incentive to make those things.     You may not miss buggy whips, but you might miss (name of favorite tv show or movie) when it stops being worth making.

EDIT:  Posted before I saw Teague's post, to which I will only say, wow. 

Well Teague, I do take that in the spirit that I think it was intended, and you have to get up pretty early in the morning to offend me, so here goes. Let me try to make sense of this.
1. My sister runs a business.
2. She has an hourly rate that she charges clients, that varies depending on services provided.
3. A client photographs her at work, and puts that photograph on the internet.
4. She feels that her business is negatively impacted by the picture.

OK, so what recourse does she have, if any? Honestly? I don't think she has any. It seems like a client took a picture (perhaps against her will? Who knows?) to which they own the copyright. It doesn't sound like there is any commercial angle, or defamation involved. It seems like it's unfortunate, but if, in the 21st century, you want to run that particular business (or any other for that matter), you probably do have to deal with the fact that your clients have phone cameras and twitter accounts.

Last edited by TheGreg (2012-11-29 23:46:50)

It pretty much boils down to, do you like living in a world where movies like this exist?  Then until a better model can sustain them, please support these movies in the model that exists.

I hate this thread with the very fiber of my being because you're all having 28 arguments at once centered around a very complex topic and aren't getting anywhere as a result.

I have a feeling Feudal Lords made that argument about food to peasant farmers.

I would like to say Greg, that in all of your critiques of the current model, you have very few specifics of exactly how a new model would sustain it. 

"I'm sure creative people will find a way to make good content pay for itself - they always have, even before copyright."

There's a lot of this hopeful language in your parts and very few sustainable solutions.  How would financing major feature films work, exactly?  You can poo poo the current version all you want, and there's much to poo poo.  But just like the Nielson's, it's the best option for now that allows most creators and most consumers to walk away happy.

Right, but we're not talking about life sustaining food which everyone needs, and in my opinion, is a human right.  We're talking about entertainment which people want, and come to an agreement under a social contract to reward goods and services.

It's not really my job to figure out how people should make a living in a new era of technology. I don't know how to 'finance major feature films', I don't really think digital copying impacts them particularly much, and I'm not sure whether there is really that much interest in saving them, even if they were endangered.
If recouping per-copy-sales disappears as a revenue model I am certain someone will figure it out.

MP3s aren't available for free LEGALLY, though. Most people don't like to break the law. You can say torrenting something isn't stealing because you're not taking it away from anybody, or you would never have paid for it anyway, but it's a form of stealing. And there ARE laws against this particular variety, even if they aren't strictly enforced. That's a big part of the reason why places like Apple can still sell MP3s.

If every MP3 that you could buy on iTunes was conveniently available for free somewhere else on the internet, I'm sure you'd be seeing a much different story.

Just want to give everyone a heads up.  SAME DAY DELIVERY ON BUGGY WHIPS.  Just in time for Christmas, you guys!

http://www.bigdweb.com/BUGGY-WHIP-50-IN … o/65-5100/