8 Comments, 8 Threads

1. 1. Pribek

   Roger, I was glad to see that you said..

   “This may be good for diversity of political opinion and for bypassing the stranglehold of mainstream media in news, but it is less clear the advent of new media is a good thing for the arts.”

   If you bring up the words “art” or “creativity”, people tend to look at you the way a pig would stare at a drill press.

   Here’s a scenario; A clip from a network sitcom is placed on YouTube and generates millions of hits. The network and performers benefit from increased exposure, YouTube drives traffic to a site on which they sell ads. The creator of the content is left out of the equation. The writer doesn’t benefit from exposure the way a performer does.

   This is the reason performance royalties for writers were created in the radio biz. When internet radio came along, the labels, who were just beginning to see sales declines, horned in and tacked on their own performance royalties. A situation that has never existed in over-the-air radio.

   Hopefully, the guild will stick to their guns and change the course of this type of infringement.

   As we go along it appears that all industries that rely on creative sources are moving into the territory of being loss leaders; generators of traffic.

   Creativity is a developed skill. If the incentive isn’t there, even if it’s a mythical carrot, why would someone go through the toil of developing this skill.

   January 17, 2008 - 11:21 am   Link to this Comment | Reply

   

   
2. 2. LarryD

   “… that the power of the Internet as a distributor of content may spell nothing less than the end of Hollywood as we know it.”

   Given what Hollywood is producing now days, I hope so.

   Seems like most of Hollywood has forgotten that their business is to tell a story, entertainingly. And most seem to have forgotten how.

   Unfortunately, most of the big studios are now tax write-offs for massive corporations, so they can’t fail, no matter how bad their product is.

   January 17, 2008 - 11:34 am   Link to this Comment | Reply

   

   
3. 3. Roger

   Pribek, thanks for your excellent clarification – which I suppose mean I wholeheartedly agree.

   January 17, 2008 - 5:32 pm   Link to this Comment | Reply

   

   
4. 4. LarryD

   FYI. Baen Books has had free downloads of selected books (with authors consent, of course) for years. Here’s their reasons:

   I will make no bones about it (and Jim, were he writing this,
   would be gleefully sucking out the marrow). We expect this Baen Free
   Library to make us money by selling books.
   How? As I said above, for the same reason that any kind of
   book distribution which provides free copies to people has always,
   throughout the history of publishing, eventually rebounded to the
   benefit of the author.
   Take, for instance, the phenomenon of people lending books to their friends — a phenomenon which absolutely dwarfs, by several orders of magnitude, online piracy of copyrighted books.

   What’s happened here? Has the author “lost a sale?”
   Well. . . yeah, in the short run — assuming, of course, that said
   person would have bought the book if he couldn’t borrow it. Sure.
   Instead of buying a copy of the author’s book, the Wretched Scoundrel
   Borrower (with the Lender as his Accomplice) has “cheated” the author. Read his work for free! Without paying for it!
   The same thing happens when someone checks a book out of a
   public library — a “transaction” which, again, dwarfs by several orders
   of magnitude all forms of online piracy. The author only collects
   royalties once, when the library purchases a copy. Thereafter. . .
   Robbed again! And again, and again!
   Yet. . . yet. . .
   I don’t know any author, other than a few who are — to speak bluntly
   – cretins, who hears about people lending his or her books to their
   friends, or checking them out of a library, with anything other than
   pleasure. Because they understand full well that, in the long run, what
   maintains and (especially) expands a writer’s audience base is that
   mysterious magic we call: word of mouth.
   Word of mouth, unlike paid advertising, comes free to the author –
   and it’s ten times more effective than any kind of paid advertising,
   because it’s the one form of promotion which people usually trust.

   And here are the results:

   What usually happens. Within a year after a novel comes out,
   the sales usually drop right through the floor. Thereafter, sales
   steadily dwindle away. And, sure enough: in the third and fourth
   periods, An Oblique Approach sold considerably less than a thousand copies each period-835 and 795 respectively, showing the expected slow and steady drop.
   It’s what happens next that is significant. Because, all other things considered, those “sales this period” figures should have kept steadily dropping. Slowly, perhaps, but what most certainly shouldn’t have happened is a sudden rise in sales-and a rise which increases in the next period.

   Nor can this be explained, as the sharp rise in sales of Mother of Demons perhaps can, as the result of me becoming better known as an author. David Drake, not me, is listed as the lead author of An Oblique Approach-and
   Dave has been a very well known SF author for twenty years. Granted, my
   increasing popularity as a writer was undoubtedly responsible for some of that increase. (Just as, for that matter, the fact that Dave’s popular Lord of the Isles and With the Lightnings series started coming out during this period undoubtedly attracted some readers also.)
   But… but…
   Nonsense! Between the January-June 2000 reporting period and the
   period one year later, the sales for that title-which had now been out
   for two years, remember, long past the time when it should have been
   selling very much-were suddenly almost 250% higher. (239%, to be
   precise: 1904 compared to 795.)

   What happened in the interim? Well, obviously I can’t “prove” it,
   but it seems blindingly obvious to me that it was the fact that An Oblique Approach went
   into the Library in the fall of 2000 that explains most of that
   increase. It would certainly be absurd to claim that being available
   for free somehow hurt the novel’s sales! I can guarantee you
   that most authors would be delighted to see a two-year-old title
   suddenly showing a spurt of new sales.
   It’s worth noting, by the way, that the second volume in the series, In the Heart of Darkness, shows much the same pattern. In the Heart of Darkness went into the Library at the same time as An Oblique Approach, a year and a half ago. In the last period before it appeared in the Library (Jan-June 2000), Heart of Darkness sold 1,704 copies. A year later, during the equivalent reporting period, it sold 1,886.
   The difference is certainly not as dramatic as the difference in sales of An Oblique Approach, much less the near-doubling of sales which Mother of Demons experienced. Still, the mere fact that sales increased at all instead of declining is significant.

   Before I move on to my next point, I want to take the time to
   emphasize the significance of these HARD FIGURES. I stress “hard
   figures” because those people arguing the “encryption/enforcement” side
   of the debate NEVER come up with hard figures. Harlan Ellison, for
   instance, screams that he has “Lost sales!” because of piracy-but, to
   the best of my knowledge, has never once even tried to demonstrate that this is true. Not once has
   he done more than endlessly assert the “axiom” that since a title of
   his was pirated he “must therefore” have lost sales of that title.
   I think my hard figures demonstrate how absurd that claim is. It
   does not follow that simply because a copy is available for free that
   sales will therefore be hurt. In fact, they are more likely to be helped,
   for the simple reason that free copies-call them “samplers,” if you
   will-are often the necessary inducement to convince people to buy
   something.

   January 17, 2008 - 6:29 pm   Link to this Comment | Reply

   

   
5. 5. LarryD

   Sorry about the formatting error, the entire last part of my last post is part of the quote.

   January 18, 2008 - 6:50 am   Link to this Comment | Reply

   

   
6. 6. dclydew

   Creativity has existed long before Hollywood and RIAA. Be it poetry written by someone moved by religion, creation, nature or the like (in any society), or someone living on the graces of a patron (Da Vinci, etc). During the late Middle Ages, bards sustained themselves on traveling performances…

   In the 20th century, production companies, recording companies etc existed because the artists had no way to distribute their works, except through travel and live performance. To make use of the recording/broadcasting world, they needed lots of money for very expensive equipment, so the studios came in and provided the channel. The studios don’t exist to make money for the artist. They exist as a patron of the artist in some sense (providing equipment etc), but really they act as a middle man more than anything, the broker between the artist and the audience.

   Now that home/amateur equipment is of comparable quality to production houses (audio, video and animation) and the Internet exists as a valid distribution medium, I think Production companies/Studios will slowly die out, or at least remain focused on the sort of blockbuster stuff that is available only with millions of dollars and hundreds of people (Lord of The Rings for example). For the average artist, they will likely make more money on their own as the equipment and Internet (as a distribution channel) continue to grow and improve.

   I have friends that are actively making money off of creative works that they created and distribute on their own music, software, books, and artwork. Some of these people would probably never gotten a chance at *LARGE STUDIO/PRODUCTION LABEL”. Yet, with their own equipment, their own marketing and their own distribution channel, they’re connecting with some audience and that audience is paying.

   Hell, look at Michael Totten for a good example of the future of media… I think he makes about as much off his Tip jar as he would selling the essays per word to a tree pulp vendor.

   January 18, 2008 - 10:32 am   Link to this Comment | Reply

   

   
7. 7. Pribek

   O.K., I am not against the ideas of self promotion, self production, self distribution etc.

   The author of a book or any piece of literature, is in fact the artist or performer, if you like. It’s really a separate issue than what the guild is facing.

   The big picture is not necessarily using the web to distribute content. It is how content will be used to generate traffic, sell advertising and products.

   Roger is dead on when he says that not all are cut out to write scripts. If those that are, are not being compensated when their work is used to promote others and sell stuff, they aren’t going to do it. They can be creative at home.

   January 18, 2008 - 11:32 am   Link to this Comment | Reply

   

   
8. 8. dclydew

   In other news, according to this article:
   http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA17Ak03.html

   The entire Iranian boat scene was hyped way above what it should have been… thoughts? Truth? Evil Liberal Plan?

   Here are some quotes:

   The commanding officer of the guided missile cruiser Port Royal, Captain David Adler, dismissed the Pentagon’s story that he had felt threatened by the dropping of white boxes in the water. Meeting with reporters on Monday, Adler said, “I saw them float by. They didn’t look threatening to me.”

   A separate audio recording of that voice, which came across the VHS [I'm guessing they meant VHF, not VHS] channel open to anyone with access to it, was spliced into a video on which the voice apparently could not be heard. That was a political decision, and Lieutenant Colonel Mark Ballesteros of the Pentagon’s Public Affairs Office told IPS the decision on what to include in the video was “a collaborative effort of leadership here, the Central Command and navy leadership in the field”.

   If we assume for a moment that this is true (who the hell knows anymore?), is it ok for the government to massage data in a way that improves their position on some political issue? Is it ok to drop propaganda on our own citizens, to sway their thinking?

   Again, I don’t know the veracity of the article and bring it up only as a discussion point.

   January 18, 2008 - 11:37 am   Link to this Comment | Reply