Francis Ford Coppola is one of the most prestigious and critically acclaimed directors in cinematographic history. He directed, among others, the Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now, and has won so many awards it’s hard to keep track. In an interview with 99%, he touched on the subject of art and making money, and his musings are fascinating, and yet another indication that the times are changing in the content industry. “Who says artists have to make money?” Coppola wonders.
While you might think Coppola made most of his fortune through his filmography, you’d be wrong. He finances his film career through his wine business, which is running quite well. As 99% details, Coppola works according to his code of ethics: one, write and direct original screenplays; two, make them with the most modern technology available; and three, self-finance them.
You have to remember that it’s only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script.This idea of Metallica or some rock n’ roll singer being rich, that’s not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I’m going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?
In the old days, 200 years ago, if you were a composer, the only way you could make money was to travel with the orchestra and be the conductor, because then you’d be paid as a musician. There was no recording. There were no record royalties. So I would say, “Try to disconnect the idea of cinema with the idea of making a living and money.” Because there are ways around it.
And he’s right. This construct that artists have to somehow make more money than ‘normal’ people do is a recent idea, one first pushed by the booksellers in London during the aftermath of the enactment of the Statute of Anne. The big content providers we know today ran with this idea early last century, and have been trying to cement it in the collective consciousness ever since.
I’d hazard a guess that over 99% of the world’s artists – no matter the discipline – get by on a limited income, forcing them to work hard to earn their money, just like everybody else. I’ve been saying it for years, and it seems Coppola agrees with me: why do we need to ever keep extending copyright law just to protect the fabulously rich few in the entertainment industry?
Then there’s the issue nobody ever talks about because most people are never confronted by it, and that’s the devastating effects copyright law has on the world of science. Basically all of our science is locked up by a number of large scientific publishers, meaning most of the world has no access to it. The end result is that even my own university simply doesn’t have the funds available to buy access to all our learning – and I live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, so you can imagine the effect this has on universities in less wealthy countries. They simply don’t have an honest chance to compete with us, holding science as a whole back.
It’s sickening.
As someone on Gizmodo said, “At first I didn’t know what to think of this. Then I remembered he made the f—–g GODFATHER so his opinion holds more weight than anyone else’s on the planet.”
Damn straight.
Yeah, and who said artists have to eat?
I think artists can make a lot of money from concerts and other live shows; of course they have to eat.
What I do not understand is why people like Michael Jackson (to give a famous name) have to get zillions and zillions of moneys; same for actors. Why do they have to earn a shitload much more than a teacher, a surgeon, a researcher or a soldier?
If you’re taking a role-call of people in life who make more money than they deserve, where do you think musicians come on that list?
They barely even make the list.
You can’t expect all artists to live on stage revenue.
It’s only the top performers that can make that kind of money.
Some artists don’t have a stage presence and rely entirely on digital sales but I can see that some here would take that away from them based on some self-declared right to digital content.
I happen to pay for all my music. Not digital though – I buy CDs. At my local professional record store (not some crappy chain store).
Your thesis is provably wrong, though. Thanks to the internet, we’ve seen an absolute splurge of new artists come up that otherwise would’ve never made it. Thanks to the internet, I get to enjoy music record labels deemed unmarketable, like Shirley Manson’s noir solo work.
These new artists used the internet properly and rose to prominence despite copyright law, not because of it.
Where’s the pay off for an artist if they make no money for their first 3 albums and then when they reach prominence, people pay them nothing for their previous work. Work that could’ve come out as recently as 2003.
Good news for the likes of Simon Cowell and their gravy trains, who already measure artists’ careers in months rather than years. They can get some baby-faced muppet to sing a schlock version of your work, or mix it into an R&B tune and pay you nothing for it.
They get rich off fickle teen’s pocket money, while you get to play a slightly bigger venue in Milton Keynes. Everyone’s a winner, ahem.
Edited 2011-01-31 17:21 UTC
> when they reach prominence, people pay them
> nothing for their previous work
And? Ppl did pay me nothing for my school, college and university too. Shame on ppl, let’s sue them!
I guess they can always get another job to support their hobby. There are many professions throughout history that has come and gone. Some has been very well paid during some periods just to disappear when humanity moved along and new technology replaced old. If people are not interested in paying so much for the artists work as they used to then the artists will have to come up with some other way of supporting themselves. Tough bananas but making a good living from your hobby is a privilege, not a right.
Spot-on. What about whenever you buy a digital camera, order digital prints, or browse Flickr, you have to pay a tax to support the fledgling film-photo industry. Everyone would think we’d gone raving mad – yet that is exactly what we’re doing for the content industry.
Exactly. And that’s what TFA was all about.
Take a self stacker in a super market … any able body person can do their job. It is simple, thus the pay is low.
Myself I am a web developer … not as many people can do this job so I get paid a lot better.
Not many people are bright enough or work hard enough to become a doctor so they get paid more than me.
And only a few people in the world can be Micheal Jackson, Jimmy Hendrix, Dio etc etc. So they get/got paid lots … because they bring something that people like that no-one else can …
That is why they get paid more, because they bring something of value that no-one else can.
Edited 2011-01-31 17:44 UTC
I think you are begging the question. The point is that there are probably 1000’s of people who can do what they did, but there is no way to make it through the producer/marketing/industry machinery. The internet cuts out all of the promo folks that “build stars” for profit.
Most of these “idols” are really mass-marketed. There are oftens thousands of more talented people who can’t make it through to us.
If the content industry has its way, it will remain that way. Otherwise they have to get real jobs.
You bring up an interesting point about marketing. The problem is, it’s an investment. It generally works exactly like an investment should. Why would you invest in someone not talented, all things being equal? I hate many things in the mass media, but that’s just me. It’s called mass media for a reason, lots of other people with bad taste like it.
“Why should you invest in someone not talented?”
I dunno, it seems to work for them at the moment… I’ve ranted my mediocre starlet theory here plenty of times, it amounts to a “plenty more where that came from” logic. It’s in the recording industry’s best interest to not give us quality, or we’ll become accustomed to it and won’t buy the rest of the crap they foist on us.
Well obviously the artists that I highlighted obviously did get through the system … why did they make it through and not others …. is it because they were substantially different or did it better or was there at the right place at the right time?
There are plenty of people now that can do the moon walk and sing thriller but Micheal Jackson did it first.
You’ve never seen X-factor over in the U.K. then. It is a machine for promoting and selling pop music.
Yes I agree but most people seem to like it and it you produce something people like and are willing to pay for you should be compensated.
The thing is that people like Simon Cowell (basically owns pop music in the U.K.) has got this stuff down to an exact science. He gets paid a lot of money because he managed to figure that out and exploit it.
I don’t see any problem with that he produces something that the majority of people want to see and he makes money off of it … lots of it … but that is how any business works.
Most people like what I call “shit”, that is the way it is. It is never going to change … intelligent people will always hate mass media, music and television … and there are those artists that will cater for them. They cater for people like me and that is how they make money.
i.e. I love action 80s action flicks, Rambo, Predator etc … I don’t like a lot of new action movies because they don’t cater for me. Stallone created The Expendibles … it was aimed at guys who like the VHS era action heroe, like me and it showed when I went to the Cinema.
I forgot to add the expendibles did rather well over here because it catered for it intended audience well.
Is this rhetorical, or are you actually asking? Either way, the whole point is that only those people got through for reasons already identified. You’re asking a question that has already been answered. Hell, you quoted the answer to your own question:
Either refute/invalidate the premise, or grant it. Regressing serves no purpose other than stalling.
…and? What’s the point of this statement? Never mind that Jackson’s adult career is widely regarded as the beginning of the MTV culture, where music and musicians play an increasingly diminished role in, well, ‘music’. Weta Digital and ILM have probably put more sheer effort into the average single than the singer has and that really began with spectacles like Thriller.
And the internet retaliated with but a pinky finger:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/dec/20/rage-against-machine-ch…
Sadly, no one told them that Rage Against the Machine were on those big labels.
‘willing to pay for’ being the operative words here. That’s the first problem with this premise.
The person you’re replying to hasn’t indicated otherwise. Besides being a probable strawman, it’s completely irrelevant to his argument. If Mr. Cowell wants to make money, fine. If people want to pay for it, fine. The question is one of whether people should be obliged to pay for it, if they intend to consume it, factoring in the marginal cost of exactly diddly squat.
The greatest musicians of all time – the Baroque classical composers were all lowly paid servants.
Doctors are only highly paid in English-speaking western countries. In communist countries 80% of doctors were female because it was a very lowly paid low-status profession. In many African countries a doctor would be lucky to earn $100/week
Money is a point system. Given a limited number of points, how do people distribute them according to what they value? Since people VOLUNTARILY give money to actors and singers and sports figures and bitch and complain about the salaries of teachers and soldiers and other useful people, it shows exactly what they (and the society values).
Hey, I want to make money on my hobbies too. Why do i have to have a real job to support myself and my family?
Clearly everyone owes me something here.
My hobby was programming a computer … and now I get paid for it … are you saying I shouldn’t get paid for it because it was originally a hobby?
You talk utter nonsense.
You just don’t like it that they are making money for something which you don’t think is hard work.
Edited 2011-01-31 23:44 UTC
The difference is that someone pays you cause you deliver rather then has to pay you cause of lobby-law’s that are applied on everybody else.
Nobody said they had to starve; but why should they have to eat 16oz porterhouse steaks with Dom Perignon for every meal, with 5lb lobsters for desert?
Everyone deserves to eat. But not everyone deserves to sit on their laurels doing nothing while raking in millions in royalties, spending money hand-over-fist, and suing anyone who makes a mix-tape (or CD) for the SO.
Get a grip.
What makes an actor, musician, etc different from the rest of us? Why should we have to wake up at 6am, bust out hump for 10 hours a day, and live in poverty when they do nothing for most of their days?
There’s nothing wrong with working for a living. There’s nothing wrong with making “art” for a living. There’s something very wrong with the “entertainment industry” and copyright law.
They have provided something which is of commercial value. If I make a piece of software and half the western world think it good enough to buy enough copies so I become a billionaire … I have obviously created something of considerable worth and I have been compensated for it.
That musician has done that, it called working smarter … not harder. That is why businesses exist … to make more from less.
Edited 2011-02-01 00:20 UTC
If you think actors and musicians “do nothing most of their days,” you obviously have never known a working actor or musician, and you obviously don’t know what you’re talking about.
I really, REALLY dislike the inherent selfishness implying that we should be entertained without compensating the artist for their endeavours. I happen to think that copyright for original works of art makes a hell of a lot of sense.
In fact, I’m not even opposed to the idea of DRM. I just want more consumer protections against defunct providers, and more flexibility so I only need to pay once for media that I purchase. Fundamentally, if you derive benefit (pleasure) from something to the extent that you’re prepared to seek it out, then that “something” has value, and the person who’s laboured to create it deserves compensation.
The “free entertainment” theme has been around a LONG time. Consider radio and pre-cable TV as two, long-running examples.
Replace “free” by advertising-supported, or government-funded, and you might be actually making a factual statement. TANSTAAFL
Which is why “free entertainment” was in quotes. People perceive it as “free” if they don’t have to pay for it directly. This is nothing new.
Sure, but vinyl existed right alongside radio/early TV, and nobody complained about paying for records.
Because people paid for vinyl to get the songs that they could play when they wanted to. Those that thought it was too much, stuck with listening to the radio. Today you have a different arena. Music and other entertainment is available from many sources. People can “shop around” and get what they want, sometimes even legally for “free” (to them).
If it costs you $20 for a CD from a store or you can buy it online for $12, there are a lot of people that would go with the online version. Better yet, get a subscription to some online radio-like product and get the songs you want whenever you want them, without having to buy a new CD every week or so. A similar inconvenience can be avoided online by only buying the songs you actually like instead of a CD of 12 songs and only 3 that you like.
If you want to put some blame somewhere, blame the clueless music powerhouses that seem to only be interested in selling products people no longer want. People want to be able to buy their music once and listen to it in any way they see fit, not having to pay for it again and again for every device and day of the week. The music industry would never have tried that in the vinyl days (Please sir/madame, buy one record for every record player in your house!). The Internet didn’t create piracy, it just made a way for people to get what they wanted, not paying was just a side-effect (desirable by some/many, for sure).
The success of iTunes, Amazon, and other non-DRM music stores should be reason enough for the industry folks to realize that people want, and will pay for, the “buy once, play anywhere” model. Many people will pay for the right product even if the “illegal” free option is available. I’m one of those people and most of the people I know are, too.
And the first person to mention paying once for media in this reply thread was …?
Exactly right, the internet didn’t invent piracy. My family were pirating music LONG before the internet came along. Well, it would be called piracy now, anyway. They’d buy the CD and then record it onto a cassette for the car. Hell, most stereos came with that as a listed feature!
The legal ground is a little more questionable when we’d buy CDs and give people cassette copies of them in exchange for cassettes of CDs they’d bought.
That is fair use in the U.K. , you can make as many copies as you like for yourself.
I’m not sure it’s still considered fair use here in Australia, right now, but there haven’t really been any copyright court cases (to my knowledge) to test it out in this country. Rightsholders here are too scared of setting a losing precedent, I think. Copyright law here is strong, but either the rightsholders suffer from Australian apathy (she’ll be right, mate), or they just don’t want to risk a negative precedent. A few years back there was a startling statistic released that said about a third of the world’s piracy happened here (this included the rampant piracy in China), all because we got TV shows 18 months late
Strangely enough, TV networks here suddenly stopped being so far behind, and we’d see new episodes the week after.
It’s maybe in the U.K. still but not in lot of other countries where things moved on. You can expect that this will change too for you long-term. Private piracy is not accepted any longer.
It isn’t private piracy … it is fair use. If I watch a DVD with my friends, people don’t have each own a copy of the DVD, and it would be impossible to enforce.
I find it hard to believe that the any content producer are going to come after you because you ripped you CDs onto MP3 so you can listen to it via your phone.
<p>
Broadcast radio and TV has three direct sources of funding: advertising, taxes, and charitable donations.
Donations of content ready-to-air and not dead-on-arrival comes from the same sources.
Talent and production values do not come cheap.
The sponsor always expects a return on his investment.
Of course he does. However, not to the extent that it becomes detrimental to the promotion of arts and sciences – as copyright today has clearly become.
Again, please note the title of my original reply. BTW, I should have gotten around to saying that I completely agree that different rules should probably apply to scientific research – _especially_ that paid for by public funds.
Big Content (and the egregiously corrupt lobbying that they’re allowed to get away with) is the problem, not the concept of copyright itself. Again, modern copyright law is the lifeblood of the independent artist. Fix the (often illegal) sway over the system exerted by the large media conglomerates, and stick with the original 75-year (or whatever) copyright limits, and we’re probably good on the entertainment front. Scientific publications should be a separate case, with a separate solution.
A copyright term should expire after about 7 years. This forces creators to come up with new stuff, and thus promotes the arts. Especially in our fast-developing society, copyright terms of ten million yonks make absolutely zero sense. Turnover in the marketplace has become way too fast for that. It’d be like demanding a speed limit of 15 km/h because cars made in 1913 weren’t safe enough to travel any faster.
Why? The 75-year number was to allow an artist to profit from their labours throughout their lifetimes. Again, if that work of art is being actively sought out by new consumers, then it has continuing value, and the artist deserves continued compensation. I agree that there should be some kind of limit, but let’s just agree to disagree that 7 years should be it.
So it’s totally fine to work once, and live on it forever?
So if you work on someone’s house, they should keep paying you as long as they live in that house?
If you painted something for a particular person, and then someone likes it so much they want you to do the same thing exactly again , it is much easier to make a copy of it, and to give them that, then it is to keep on spending hours painting it again and again for each person who are willing to pay for it.
They are essentially selling a product … this is how businesses work.
Edited 2011-02-01 00:18 UTC
I doubt anyone would suggest that. What if, however, the work is so amazing that the home’s owner makes significant, ongoing income by charging people admission to tour it/view it/etc (with that being his plan from the get-go)? In that situation, would you consider the carpenter greedy for expecting a cut?
That’s probably a little closer to the situation of most professional artists.
An author would rarely sell more than a few hundred copies of a book when the copyright laws were introduced.
Fixing corrupt systems like the music industry that exploit artists is what matters, not your romantic notion of free art. That only punishes anyone with creative talent even further.
> “This forces creators…”
The creators aren’t the problem here. You’re lumbering genuine artists with problems created by pin-striped industry spivs.
High-profile mega-rich artists are a tiny minority, but said marketeers are happy to push a few artists while screwing everyone else over.
Cutting the copyright length to 7 years will only make the industry churn out more short-term money-makers like the X-Factor teeny chart crap. Genuine artists once again bear the brunt. Any artist who makes it big later through years of hard graft, will never make any money on the back catalogue they worked so hard to assemble. Meanwhile multinationals are free to feast on their back catalogue for their TV adverts. As if the work wasn’t devalued enough. Yeah, nice plan!
“A copyright term should expire after about 7 years. This forces creators to come up with new stuff, and thus promotes the arts. Especially in our fast-developing society, copyright terms of ten million yonks make absolutely zero sense. Turnover in the marketplace has become way too fast for that. It’d be like demanding a speed limit of 15 km/h because cars made in 1913 weren’t safe enough to travel any faster.”
I agree generally agree with the idea, however I actually think the artist should be able to negotiate the terms of their copyright with their label.
A lot of people have hobbies they don’t get paid for. A lot of people get paid very little for their hobbies so they have to have a another job to support it. Why should artists be different? Want to make money? Cut your hair and get a real job.
…like an investment banker or an oil company PR man.
There’s no bigger cancerous drain on society than someone with scruffy hair who makes art for a living.
Yeah, but the real issue is very few artists DO make anything from their art, only a FEW do and the promoters are the one’s who make the vast majority of THAT money as well.
Copyright law is fine as long as the corporations aren’t given some sort of advantage by it.
Indeed, most musicians aren’t millionaires but on the other hand they don’t seem to complain about piracy ruining their income either. That seems to be mostly the territory of the well-established big stars and the big record companies. One might wonder why that is…
I agree. Laws always seem to benefit the corporations and/or the rich.
If you happen to produce something that people want to buy that is a real business and a very real form of income … whether you like it or not.
Obviously people do NOT want to pay for it since we’re having this discussion.
People don’t want to pay for most things. Some are just easier to get w/o paying than others.
No it is just easier to get for nothing than via bittorent than to spend a lot of time going to the record store, having to wait in a queue and pay a lot of money.
People will do the least amount of work possible.
In the u.k we have spotify and I have paid for an account with no ads because it is cheaper and easier than buying CDs … no other reason.
Most people use it with the ads because they don’t want to pay, but it is still easier than searching for songs on a torrent site/rapidshare.
People will generally choose the path of least resistance unless they are trying to martyr themselves for a particular cause.
Edited 2011-02-01 00:05 UTC
So, in other words, the traditional business model of the record companies are no longer functioning. The price and hassle of purchasing their product is not worth it. Companies and artists wanting to survive would do well to adopt to the new reality instead of stubbornly clinging to the past.
So?
That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get paid … does it.
People are still willing to pay for it … whether they are the advertisers or the users themselves wanting no ads … people are still willing to paying.
What people aren’t willing to do is make something harder for themselves than necessary.
I think you haven’t seen or digested my point. It’s not that the value has gone down, it’s that it’s become easier to do w/o permission. If I become armed, and it’s suddenly easier for me to rob you, your peers shouldn’t ask you to “adopt” (adapt?) to the new reality of getting robbed!
I guess you could look at things that way, but I would rather go the aggressive route. In this case, that would mean working with law enforcemnt to get justice. Or arming myself (think DRM.)
Along those lines, the leechers have motivated the suites to add DRM and make the regular users lives more difficult. Woohoo if you like war.
No one said anything different. Copyright has its uses.
Nobody’s arguing that. But should they be compensated until the end of time for a single piece of work? Should future “artists” be deprived from building on the previous generations’ work (copyright terms so long nothing ever goes into the public domain)? Should a single piece of “art” be enough for a person to live on for the rest of their life, and possibly down through three generations of their family?
For most of human history, slavery was commonplace, and democracy non-existent. Human “rights” is a pretty new concept too. I don’t hear too many people wanting to go back to the old conventions on THOSE fronts.
I’m sorry, but the editorial part of the original post comes off as the ventings of a selfish prick. I certainly don’t think of Thom as any such thing, but boy, it sure came off that way this time. There’s a reason that “starving artist” is a powerful (and still accurate) cliche.
The wealthy artists that can _choose_ to be more lax about giving away their material (mostly musicians and a few writers) are the exception that mask the reality of most artists. Their reality is that copyright protection is vital for their ability to continue to produce original works. I think the “professional” artist (as opposed to performer) is a great modern development. Lets keep them.
Sales of copyrighted material makes artists very little money. Performing and merch is what makes the cash.
Replace the general “artists” with the specific “authors”, and make that statement again. A total crock, there. Repeat for “painters” – another crock. Artists does NOT equal musicians. Oy.
Different arts, the copyright length argument still holds.
We have to look at society _as a whole_.
Cost/Benefit for _everyone now and in the future_, not just “I DID SOMETHING PAY ME FOREVER!!!”
My mother is an artist. Not big and successful or rich, but she makes enough extra money on the side to help supplement her income as a teacher.
Her work is copyright and the prints she makes in her lifetime will generate money for her, in a way that I think is fair and needed. 7 years is not enough time when you only produce 5 to 8 paintings a year. Plus your work builds on itself. Her old stuff gets better as the collection of her style grows. I think it would be unfair if someone was able to run prints of her older work and sell them after seeing the amount of time and years she has put into building a following for her style.
In this context 75 years seems fair, or maybe 50 would be a better number.
I don’t think it’s fair to work once and expect to get paid for something that doesn’t even exist.
She wants more money from her art? Paint more, or charge more for the originals.
I nearly leaped out of my skin when I saw a special on savants, where some preteen girl spent all day every day painting Jesus, and her parents only job was to manage the print business.
Time invested per painting: 2 hours (savant…)
Cost to reproduce a quality print in quantity: Maybe $10 US
The prints were being sold for $2000 US.
That’s reprehensible. (Though, since the paintings weren’t that great, imo, ‘I suppose there’s one born every minute’ applies)
I’m no Christian, but I’ve read the book. I recall something about camels and needles…
Are you saying you think there should be no copyright at all, or just that 75 years is too long?
She can’t charge any more then she does for originals.
Unless you are very well know people just don’t pay that much for art. Getting $5 dollars a print is what makes it worth it.
Per Thom’s example, prints to a painter are like concerts to a music artist. It is not like my mom can repaint her paintings on stage for money.
I’m sure the same goes for a photographer. How much do you think most people can sell a photograph for, but if they are diligent, they can make enough money off the reprints to make it worth it.
It is hard to argue with extreme examples, it is too bad you think they apply to everyone.
If she can’t charge more for her originals or get commissions, maybe she shouldn’t be making money from her paintings.
I’m not saying she’s bad, but I am saying she doesn’t command the demand that makes doing it for a living make sense.
I’d do commissions if I got them, I don’t get them, but I don’t whine about it. I’ve commissioned several works from a friend of mine, and I’m not alone. He can’t sell his originals often, nor prints, but he gets irregular commissions from $40 to hundreds to favors.
Everything I do is CC licensed, because I believe that art should promote art, and I no more want someone else to claim to be the sole creator (bullshit, everyone’s ‘inspired’ by someone else) than I would claim to be Gan himself.
“She does it, she wants money, therefore she deserves money for it.” Doesn’t hold water.
Are you saying that because my mom needs some form of copyright to make money off her paintings that it is not worth it for her to try to sell paintings?
If so then from a philosophical point of view you are suggesting that since people can’t freely copy my moms work (as their own), that the world would be better off if she never produced art in the first place? She wouldn’t paint otherwise, she would get a second job.
I personally hate many aspects of copyright law, or should I say I hate many of the contexts that copyright law is applied in, but I think there is a place for copyright, a middle ground so to say. I wish the laws could be fixed, not done away with.
Most people who are against copyright are against the way that big businesses use copyright to keep out the small and upcoming. As you suggest with your comment above, not having copyright in this context would keep out the small and only support the large.
Sounds like you are against copyright in any form, and believe they produce now value to society in any context?
As I said above there are many cases where I think copyright does enforce the monopoly and hurt the small (software for example), again I don’t think that applies to all of the contexts in which copyright is used.
I never said that, don’t put words in my mouth.
Playing the Devils advocate:
Unless you are very well know [sic] people just don’t pay that much for art.
Thus the inherent value in the work is low. Once the person reaches “stardom” do people think the work has more value.
Looks to me like the value of art is based on a “look at me, I can play in the big league” factor. People are only willing to pay up when the “stardom” of an artist attached to a work can give the buyer a leg up on their peers. I which case the value is more based on ego boosting hot air, than any inherent worth.
For every artist in every genre, at every stage in their professional career?
The audience ages – and so do you.
There are only so many coffee mugs and tee shirts you can sell to someone over thirty, over forty, over fifty.
When the economy goes south, so do ticket sales and merchandise.
When the economy goes south, everybody else trying to make a living does too. It’s not privileged to “starving artists”.
Look, no matter how hard you try, piracy is not justified.
We are not talking about art here. We are talking about the business of making art.
There is a whole industry behind art these days. This industry did not exist back then. This industry drives part of the technology and economics of our society.
Are you seriously saying that we should go back to a time where society was totally different? we can’t go back, and you know it very well.
And, if you think about it, I don’t see why artists don’t have to be paid. Why not? just because there were not paid yesterday? is there a law that says artists must not be compensated for what they offer?
Furthermore, who are we to dictate how one will conduct his/her economic affairs? if one wants to sell his/her art, it’s his/her right.
Thom, you cannot apply 18th century logic to the society of the 21st century!!!!
Apparently we cant move forward either since the industry behind art seems to be stuck in their ways and keep trying to flog a failing business model.
Also, I would say that Coppola’s opinion, you know him being a respected, actual *artist* and all, counts more than yours.
Imagine how much more respected he’d be if he’d “cut his hair and got a real job”. It’s difficult to take your contributions seriously when you can’t decide whether to condemn artists or take their words unquestioningly.
Edited 2011-01-31 17:04 UTC
It’s called humor and it was obviously a play on the old parental phrase “cut your hair and get a job”.
“Hey, I want to make money on my hobbies too. Why do i have to have a real job to support myself and my family? 
Clearly everyone owes me something here.”
You’re a riot!
You are trying to argue it both ways … it is obvious to support a failing arguement.
With all due respect, that kind of thinking has driven societies for eons. Most people don’t like being forced to change how they think or what they believe in. Or, to put it another way, “it was good enough then so it should be good enough now”.
Its not piracy, thats the point
Intellectual piracy, the piracy of ideas, isn’t very well piracy
Now ask him if he supports piracy of his own movies.
Artists are free to give their work away if they want.
Why take away an available source of revenue for them?
He says “maybe [those that download] are right”. He answered your question already.
He has millions in the bank from the copyright system and yet he wants to kick the ladder for anyone else. What a great guy.
Artists are free to give their work away within the current system. How about finding a better cause like helping people in poor countries instead of attacking a system that funds artists.
It’s already been stated, here and lots of elsewheres, that the system under discussion wasn’t put in place to fund artists. Its purpose was to fund lawyers (and the policy makers in their pockets) and other corporate interests. The artists merely take a number and get in line.
…many people confuse art and entertainment. You rarely make money producing art. Entertainment is another story altogether. Entertainment != art. It’s always nice when the super rich talk about those beneath them not needing to make money. He may make the great portion of his income off of wine, but he is still being paid millions for directing. It’s a farce.
Exactly. Unless he’s going to refund all the money he made from directing (basically, put is money where his mouth is), then Francis needs to have a Coke and a smile and shut the f**k up.
I’m not sure when it happened exactly. But somewhere along the lines, society decided that every job has to be monetized as a regular job.
People like Thomas Edison worked regular jobs (clerk…) and then pursued their hobby in their spare time. If they could become great in their hobby, then great. If not… well who cares. No one should pay you for your hobby or interests.
The same is true of artists. Yet today, we have people who want ‘arts’ funding and trying to make art a regular job.
Why should society pay for your hobby? I’d generally argue most of these fields should be left as hobbies… including technology and research and yes… the arts. People seem naturally curious in them to want to invent and play. Then if they do something useful (become a great artist, invent something amazing…) and can sell it/themselves, or rise in their community (artist group, scientific journal…), all the better.
Now of course, I wouldn’t argue this position is practical in isolation. It used to be practical… today not so much. Property taxes, other taxes, inflation, regulations… have made saving and living cheap difficult and regulations means certain fields are hard to explore without being a part of an institution.
But it’s another way of doing things for sure. l
Do you realise that most artists are already working to support their hobby?
That any money is usually a little bit on the side as reward for putting in hours on evenings and weekends?
Hardly anyone is making it rich. Some are lucky enough to go professional and you want to take that away because you have some high-horse mentality about what a proper job is.
Finally artists risk getting a fair slice of the profits that used to shovelled up by bone-idle wide-boys preserving the status quo, and at the same time the freetards want to take any remaining pittance away from them.
“Do you realise that most artists are already working to support their hobby? ”
That is how it should be. Depends on where you live I guess. I’m in Canada… and we never hear the end of artists wanting government funding.
“Some are lucky enough to go professional and you want to take that away because you have some high-horse mentality about what a proper job is. ”
Where do I say that? If they can become professional, and make money off it… more power to them. Just don’t expect society to bend over backwards (via direct funding of arts, or restrictive management of the internet).
Any professional musician can make a good living doing live shows. Movies themselves are an outing and movie stars/producers can make a good living…
I’m sorry if I misunderstood the main thrust of your argument. Arts funding is a separate issue which I don’t know enough about to comment.
You do mention restrictive control of the internet. I don’t disagree with that in principle. I don’t want dodgy characters like the RIAA to make the rules. It needs to be done by someone accountable, independent and who has the best interests of both artist and consumer in mind.
If someone comes up with a fair system with non-hysterical penalties meted out like parking fines (instead of violent robbery) I’m all for it.
Edited 2011-01-31 18:31 UTC
I don’t think this thread is based on whether people should get government funding for their hobbies, but whether your works should have some protection of copyright.
Edited 2011-01-31 18:20 UTC
It’s part of the same package.
It’s weather or not all ‘work’ needs to be monetized.
How it’s ‘monetized’ is immaterial to the desire for it to be monetized.
I read the interview… and Coppola is more along the lines of not monetizing everything.
“I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script. ”
““Try to disconnect the idea of cinema with the idea of making a living and money.†Because there are ways around it.”
I don’t think anyone is saying artists shouldn’t make money… but neither should you focus on monetizing every aspect of your work.
He makes the point that before recorded music, artists would have to travel and people would pay to see them. This is still largely the case today. Whether or not an artist is paid for every song sold, every time it is heard… is immaterial to the reality that a successful artist can make a living doing live shows.
He more or less tosses out an idea. That’s what I’m doing.
I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t have copyright or anything… It’s obviously a question of what kind of copyright, what kind of enforcement… but too often the discussion revolved around monetizing all work.
And today… the restrictions needed to ‘monetize’ all work are far too intrusive in terms of government that it should cause us to reevaluate.
As I said in another post… it’s a little impractical today as we don’t live in times of cheap existence… but maybe we should be looking at thing differently.
Whether or not an artist is paid for every live performance… is immaterial to the reality that a successful artist can make a living selling records.
I don’t really have the time to go to a concert in the morning during the drive to work, so I listen to recorded music (purchased mp3’s.) They’re more valuable to me than a live concert actually, even though I like those as well.
Artists have always been capable of self releasing, but they don’t. Why? If freely realeasing their album could get them more exposure and therefore more concerts, why don’t they do that? If that’s where they make their money. Now we’re back to marketing and investment. Releasing for free doesn’t give you exposure unless you’ve already made money or are already famous. You need marketing, which costs money. Which is why I shutter to say it, but big music deserves a small fee for the marketing they provide. Then a small fee for the musician. Then Amazon or iTunes fee for making my download experience easy etc.
How those fee’s breakdown can be an issue. I don’t think it should be 62%/29%/9% Label/Store/Artist, which it generally is by my brief internet search. However free doesn’t cover the costs to produce and market the music.
> 62%/29%/9% Label/Store/Artist
The Label is of no use and the store is replaced with the internet.
You name iTunes which is a store. There are dozend of free stores around.
You name marketing but marketing is not needed in such a scenario. Either you have something good that will sell if lot of people know about it, in which case marketing makes sense, or you don’t and try to create a product. The second is what will not happen any longer and I think that’s good so.
If we are realistic then you don’t have a point or at least wasn’t able to make it here.
Any royalties shouldn’t be tied to any set years but change to “artist’s lifetime”. I am FULLY against making income from someone’s artistic life’s work and making money on it.
“Get their own job”.
At the same time, the company distributing the product should only be able to recoup distribution fees, meaning the cost of distribution plus a “reasonable” fee.
So if there are 10 artists involved, the cost someone buying the content should be reduced each time an artist dies.
As for “free radio/tv”. In American that is TOTALLY wrong. It is NOT free. It is either subsidized by commercials, hence “commercial radio/tv” or “public radio/tv” which is subsidized by public (including govt) and private donations.
As for the esteemed director saying he doesn’t need to be paid much. He is taking into account that he made a fortune through wine. Everyone should be so lucky.
As for artists getting rich off their talents? Better artists should make “more” just like in any field. But I FULLY agree that the top artists make waaaaaaay too much. The same it true with top basketball players (well all pro basketball players making more than maybe four times what their average fan is making.
At the same time, “owners” make waaaaaay too much also.
Don’t get me started on any company where the top people make more times the medium that employees make.
Keep in mind that I am satisfied with the amount that I make. It is modest but above average for America. I could easily make more, and used to, but decided “life” was much more important than spending all my time at work. I decided that while I was in my 30s so this wasn’t a mid-life crises kind of thing.
Monday is paper. Family is not. In the end everything is dust. Be good to others. Find someone to love. Life shouldn’t be all about money and only money. Greed is evil, money is not. Be happy.
Note: I am NOT a communist. People that don’t do a good job should make less than other people. The state should not own everything. If you aren’t WILLING to work you shouldn’t get paid.
Note: Willing and Able “can” be totally different.
Edited 2011-01-31 17:40 UTC
“Who says artists have to make money?” Coppola wonders.
So when is Coppola going to pass some of that money he doesn’t need to me?
Artist is workers. Many times very had workers.
Society place value in those things that keep our minds pleasantly occupied and entertain us and there will always be market for it.
I don’t know what to make of this article.
I know professional musicians who’s record sales make up a substantial part of their income. These are mostly artists who is self publishing, selling their cd’s from the car booths on between performance breaks on stage.
They also use there cd’s as a sort of business card with there contact details ect to book performances.
They are just normal people trying to make a living. Mastering an instrument, recording,mixing,publishing ect. while keeping an 9-5 job while marketing yourself, getting and honouring bookings ect. is difficult. Making money from live performances is also very cyclic and precarious.
Before we can change the copyright system the general ills of the current economic system should be adressed first so that there is a social safety net for people, ,where food, lodging and energy ect. is not so expensive and arts, innovation and self realisation can flourish.
I know you advocate a noble cause, but the problem is part of much wider indemic economic failure in which you have to play the game in order to survive.
The biggest challenge is to abolish or improve the fractional reserve system of banks, the monetary reserve system not tied to actual gross domestic product, the expense of energy and resistance to new technologies of lobby groups and cartels together with the phenomena of patent momentum making it almost impossible for anyone a bit late to catch up.
In short we should keep the generalisation of “artist” out of the anti copyright lobby equation until we solve other more serious problems of society.
Thom, the lesson you are taking from the interview may be the lesson Coppola wishes to impart, but I’m not sure that’s what Coppola means, and if it is he’s being at best disingenuous, at worst hypocritical.
Coppola started his wine business after he became rich through filmography. The wine business allows him to be independent now, but he wasn’t in the beginning. According to Wikipedia, for example, the chronology is as follows:
(emphasis added) And God alone knows how many people buy his wine because it has his name on it.
Does anyone else remember a time when journalists did research that extended beyond quoting celebrities who say what they want to hear?
Anyone at all?
Edited 2011-01-31 18:36 UTC
Uh, I think you need a reading comprehension class. There is nothing wrong with the quoted sentence.
It’s still spin and bad research on your part. He finances his film career through his wine business, which he managed to start with the money from his first movie. So no money from the first movie means no wine business which means no (personal) funding for his other movies.
Not that I disagree with most of what’s being stated here, but a fair discussion is only possible when the whole truth is known.
About copyright itself, I think the current term is way too long indeed. On the other hand, everyone can claim public domain content as his own and freely commit plagiarism without attributing any credits to the actual authors. So rather than putting everything in public domain after 7 years, it may be a better idea to put everything after 7 years in a BSD-like domain (i.e. proper attribution is still required but you can do whatever you want with it) for perhaps another 50 years and then finally become public domain.
This should make everyone happy except Big Content perhaps, which is fine by me.
Edited 2011-01-31 20:49 UTC
No, Thom. You’re either spinning it, or you’re being as disingenuous as he is. Coppola would not have been able to finance his later films using his winery, if he had not first gotten rich off the current scheme.
You said it better than I.
I think you need to take a lesson in deductive reasoning.
What the previous poster pointed out pretty much invalidates whatever Coppola says … since he basically made his money, so he could invest his time in a more sustainable source of income.
So if Coppola made no money from the Godfather, he wouldn’t be able to afford the vineyard … and thus not be in a position to make those statements.
Thus it puts into doubt the validality of those statements.
Seems pretty obvious to me.
I am making the exact same statement since ages and I am not in a position like him is. So what?
Just because many of you would make horrible artists and have zero skill, doesn’t make it worthless.
This website is a good example. Is it a hobby or is it a job? It’s protected by a copyright notice. That should help advertisers stick around. Otherwise I’d imagine this content would be copied elsewhere and no users/advertisers would be here.
Also Coppola is full of it. He sued Hollywood for 20 million over his directing of Pinocchio. He’s declared bankruptcy multiple times. He switched over to making movies for fun instead of profit because other than The Godfather and Dracula, he basically sucks at making movies. It’s a good thing he was paid well for The Godfather, so that he had money to invest in the wine making business. Now he can make junk indie movies. Arguably the movies he did make money on were standard Hollywood stuff…. that critics liked. His indy stuff…. panned.
As much as I love Coppolas filmmaking, I can’t say i love his argument here!
There is none!
Let me ‘para’phrase: Why should ANYONE get paid for ANYTHING?
Sounds like bullshit?
ok, Why should WallStreet-nerds make (HUGE AMOUNTS of) money? They’re not producing anything, except communication, and a very abstract kind of communication, that noone actually benefits from, except themselves…
And it’s not just “artists”, and I agree that the term is used very loosely these days. Check out the ludicrous amounts paid to some sporting professionals, and there are other industries where it happens too.
While I agree that the amounts are insane – Charlie Sheen $2 mil per episode of Two and a Half Men and he blows it on drugs and porn stars – footballers on multi-million dollar contracts and we regularly see them in what passes for the News on drug / assault / drunkenness charges. The problem is it’s all about “entertainment” and people are willing to pay big bucks to escape their mundane daily existences, our kids have the constant “buy – consume – spend” mantra bombarding them, so those who create that entertainment are remunerated accordingly.
And while I also agree with a limit on the timeframe – indeed I’ve made very similar suggestion with regard to patents, although I think 10 years is more workable – I don’t believe it will have any impact on these pay rates or the pirating of materials, IMHO they are completely separate issues.
Are you the best in the world at Tennis or Football or Golf …
Charlie Sheen is free to spend his money on anything he wants, someone obiously thinks he is worth it.
Same with the footballers … if they are breaking the law that is the responsibility of the law enforcement to respond to that.
All you are doing is whining.
Have you heard of a Colosseum in Rome? This stuff has been happening for a while now.
Lets make up a number of years off the top of our heads and we think that is the right answer.
Coppolla has made hundreds of millions off of his scripts, dvd distribution, film sales, etc.
He poured a lot of it into his Winery and distribution channel.
He wouldn’t have that secondary channel of income to allow him to make pittance off of being an artist if he didn’t first make his fortune.
A complete hypocrite.
He’s a multi-millionaire and already financially secure. He has a vineyard. The rest of the artists can eat cake, as far as he’s concerned.
The rest of the artists can’t afford cake. They have to eat dirt.
And why exactly is a real job not an option for them?
I didn’t say they couldn’t. Please indicate in my post where I said that.
In comparison to the artists making a ton of money for the corporate interests (ie. the artists that are selected by,for example, record labels to mass market and haul in a load of $$$ most of which goes to the label), the vast majority make virtually nothing at all.
I put a lot of hours and hard work into my business, so I should be paid accordingly. Why should artists — many of whom also put in hours of hard work practicing, in the recording studio, on tour away form loved ones, buying paints, etc — be any different?
Is it because deep down, many feel the Arts isn’t a “real” job? It may come as a surprise to people, but a majority of artists do more than just eat lobster and porterhouse steak all day.
In their ignorance, many of the posters here shout their approval of Coppola’s proposal. They seem to think the Arts should only be a hobby, and that a second real job is needed to supplement their income so that they can continue to provide entertainment for us at little-to-no cost.
Why should they have the legal right to earn more than the rest of us? Why doesn’t this apply to horse shoe makers? Why don’t us poor translators get a special law that protects our work? Why don’t construction workers get a special law that grants them royalties on every brick they laid?
Why should artists be any different than the rest of us?
Since when did construction workers stop getting paid for the bricks they lay?
Read more carefully what I said
.
I know exactly what you said. It makes no sense! I can’t right click on a building you built and paste a copy over on my property.
[ Redacted ]
Edited 2011-01-31 23:11 UTC
There are photos from the building, there are other buildings who are using the same way to lay bricks and there happen businesses inside the building where others are making lot of money what would not be the case without those bricks.
Because Thom they do something that is more popular and unique than than the horse shoe makers. They are perceived by people to be of more worth than you.
A top boxer makes more money because he is the better fighter, the best Tennis player gets more sponsors because he always wins and he gets the airtime.
When I got my current job as a web developer I got paid more because I was perceived to be of more worth than at my previous employment (I like to think that is true)
This is how the world works … and unfortunately for your arguement it makes quite a lot of sense.
Edited 2011-02-01 00:46 UTC
No, it does not. When you switched your web-hacker job you did not raised your income by 1000%. The work done by translators has more value then those done by artists. The best tennis-player is the best in something while most mainstream-artists are not even good (star-builder). In fact they are even not good enough to be well payed, compared to the best tennis-player. Those artists are earning money by implementing dirty laws and not by being the best or just good. This is exactly what needs to stop.
The key is _perceived_ value. Forget “best”, and think “most popular”. The pro athlete/entertainer overpaid argument has always been just silly. That money _always_ comes from the consumer – therefore they’ve assigned a value to the entertainment they’re receiving. If that’s the case, I’d rather the athlete/entertainer get the bulk of those proceeds rather than the suits.
I can also guarantee that for 99% of the people on this site, if they suddenly “hit it big” for any good/service/etc. that they produced, that they wouldn’t be throwing the money back. I don’t have a problem with a system that allows for extraordinary financial success based on consumer demand. I just think it’s important to tackle the corruption that artificially reduces the opportunities for many to achieve that kind of success. To me, leveling the playing-field doesn’t mean: “I don’t want anyone making more than I do for something I _personally_ don’t think is that valuable”. It means: “Don’t restrict my opportunity to achieve that kind of success”.
Firstly I am not a web-hacker … I am a web developer.
Secondly I earn 400% of what I was when I didn’t have a degree if Software Engineering … I was on £6000 pound a year as Tesco wines and spirits man now I am on £24000 as Web developer.
Not quite your 1000% but quite a nice increase … that has allowed me to get my own flat, nice furniture and lets me eat out more than 1 night a week.
It is “perceived” value, I am not saying that someone such a teacher,doctor, nurse, cleaner or whatever you name it aren’t important, however this is not how their value is calculated, and this isn’t how they are compensated for their work.
Secondly if someone in the current copyright period wishes to use your work, that means surely that the works is of value and that the producer of such work should be compensated … does it not?
e.g. I produce a computer program and someone within the current copyright period wishes to use a copy, should I not still be rewarded for my hardwork and effort in the first place?
There is no dirty law, copyright protects people that produce something that is intangible, such a computer software or music … which are creations purely from one’s mind.
Edited 2011-02-01 12:05 UTC
Is tennis more valuable than art?
It not a question about that, it is perceived value of that individual and that is why they get paid more.
If you earn a business lots of money in a short amount of time you are a more valuable individual than someone that earns the less in the same time period.
Edited 2011-02-01 16:11 UTC
So you are talking about literal value… how much $$$ you have.
Because any horse shoe maker, any translator, any construction worker, and “the rest of us”, would love to be in these artists’ shoes, had they had the sensibility, talent, will, luck, and whatnot that makes Alicia Keys, Lene Marlin or Sinead O’Connor exceptional to my ears and Fiona Apple to yours and Justin Bieber to others’.
I don’t mind paying for an Eva Cassidy album today despite that she has died many years ago like the current copyright laws force me to. What I mind (and every poster seems to agree) is that the money we pay now is profit not for the artists or their children, but for the likes of Sony and BMG who won’t hesitate in suing the underground DJ for a sample used in a mix tape or kindergartens for kids singing songs at a public venue. The real problem is there. Why are Universal Music (what an ironic name) and their ilk the ones that benefit the most from consumers’ money?
If we had to live by the “Why should they have the legal right to earn more than the rest of us?” you wrote, we would all be earning a fixed salary. After all, why is the CEO of any company earning more than the average employee? Why do managers, foremen, police chiefs earn more than the people below them in the hierarchy, the people who do the real work? Take the little ants like me out of the picture or police officers out of the streets and there’s no software being developed and no superintendent receiving medals. And yet, these managers et al. earn more than what we call “les fourmis travailleuses” in French.
Many earn degrees, become actors, have ambition, etc. not just for the love of studying, acting or shining at work or kissing asses, but because they want to “make it”. I too want to make it, because I’m tired of being a busy bee and having people make money over my work instead of me reaping all its fruits. But who, in their heart of hearts, wouldn’t want to climb up the social ladder? Not me. Am I the only one who has been told by his parents “study well at school, you’ll have a better life later”? I doubt it.
If I had children, I would also be thinking of providing them with an edge over the rest of the world. In the world we live in, that means a financial advantage, be it a house or hard cold cash. For ordinary workers, that’s some savings. For artists, well, there’s the current copyright law. Yes, too long as to its term, but the intention is understandable to me.
Last thought… some of the posters have been belittling the work of artists; I doubt they’ve ever endured the hours of work necessary to play any instrument better than most other people, I doubt they’ve ever endured neighbors banging the walls because they are fed up with hearing umpteen repetitions of your piano scales or vocal exercises.
Why should anyone have any “LEGALITY” associated with how much they earn?
And why should we pay a certain fruit company hundreds of dollars for 137 grams of silicon, plastic and metal.
For open scientific publishing, check out http://www.doaj.org/ .
Totally agree. It was a concise summary of my thoughts from the past few years.
An artist chooses to do what he does. Naturally when he puts in time to do concerts, etc, he gets paid for his _time_. There is this implicit assumption (driven by various recording industries) that he has the right to get money if his work is copied or reproduced at 0 cost to him. This is, at the very least, questionnable.
He chose how to spend his time. He is not a slave (gets paid for his time in concerts etc). If something he has produced gets copied due to someone elses efforts what right does he have to say “I own this piece of arbitrary creativeness”? Does he also compensate all others who he derived his “creativeness” from?
Fundamentally you can own something physically (a physical CD for example), you can also “own” your own time in a sense. But to claim you own something arbitrary that is defined by someone (and who would be the expert on this?!) as being “uniquely creative” is very very shaky ground.
Of course organisations that are legally obliged to make money for their shareholders care little for these types of arguments and only care about their bank accounts getting more zeroes, which is perfectly understandable and logical.
OK. So imagine you spent years, ahead of anyone who could have had the same ideas, devising a revolutionary desktop environment that fits perfectly on top of current versions of Windows. You created that little big software and start selling it to a niche of geeks around you. Such a brilliant idea that each and every copy of Windows ends up kicking explorer.exe out and using your software. Because you purposefully and willingly spent your evenings and week-ends (for years!) doing that, you would be OK if the hundreds of copies you sold, without even thinking it would be a cow to milk, landed on billions of computers? And you would have no regrets as to the money you could have had from that software?
If I were your friend, I would call you crazy insane but I’m not so I’ll just voice my doubts about the sincerity of your argument. After all, this hypothetic software of yours is an immaterial creative work that was copied at no cost for you.
A good part of the economy, everywhere on the planet, is made of “services”. Actually, the whole tertiary sector. While writing this, I went on to search Wikipedia, here’s an excerpt from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_sector_of_the_economy :
When you get hired, your experience is assigned a value, isn’t it? So what exactly are you saying?
I happen to work in software and have it as a hobby, since I was around 13 and I’m 33 in two weeks. Never have I considered having another occupation; and it’s probably because it’s my hobby that I’m this good at it. The idea of becoming a carpenter, elementary school teacher, doctor or else so that I can write software (and to top it off, expect no retribution for it) doesn’t sit well with me. Not at all. Sorry.
Btw, an OSnews editor is famous for saying “code is art”…
Edited 2011-02-01 15:17 UTC
Yeah ok I am not saying it is black and white, and also my argument was more regarding music and films. Music I would say is possibly the most difficult to justify ownership for – how can you claim ownership to a sequence of sound waves? Even worse are companies in the US now claiming ownership of sequences of DNA in seeds.
Two points id make though:
1) If we lived in a world where all copying of software was allowed then before you had invested lots of effort into producing such software, you would realise it could legally be copied by others. Logically, this would mean you would know beforehand that your creation had little potential financial gain. It would therefore be your choice whether or not to spend so much time creating something that would bring you little or no money.
This, of course, is the whole reason copyright was invented. So there would be an incentive (in this case money) for you to invest your time and effort.
2) If you take the absolutest view that you own this piece of software 100% and are legally justified to monetary compensation for it. Then, you must also admit that you owe compensation to a) all the sources of your inspiration for this software and b) all other software used in its creation.
This assumes that nothing is ever 100% creative. Everything is ultimately derived from thing(s) before it.
Usually b) is satisfied (you pay for your IDE, Windows, etc) but a) is really difficult to quantify. If you want to own your “creation” and therefore be legally entitled to money from it. Then by implication you must owe compensation to all things you took inspiration for your creation from.
This gets into lots of arguments like: when is a song copied and when is it just similar? when is a piece of software copied or when is it simply similar. Naturally a 100% copy would mean you would owe 100% compensation to those you had copied it from – but how do you quantify instances where its not 100% (i.e. a 5 minute clip on youtube, at low quality, with another soundtrack, and maybe your “own” custom editing)?
My opinion is pragmatic: nothing is ever 100% original, we can’t really quantify the sources of inspiration, so lets remove copyright completely (or at least with significantly shortend expiration periods e.g. one year). This way we avoid the above arguments. From a business perspective it would be detrimental, but from a worldy perspective its overall going to be better for everybody.
This is getting into the happy-hippy-land of people who think all software must be open source and “free” for copying etc.I don’t go this far – it’s still the right of the creator to make what he wants, how he wants, including making it as difficult as possible to copy or take parts from.
Edited 2011-02-02 13:53 UTC
I agree to all this, except the “one year”… too short, even in this world. I am currently catching up with many many years of gaming that I’ve missed, even trying to buy Half-Life 1! Imagine, Half-Life 1! a game more than a decade-old.
75 years is definitely too long a time, 1 year is too short. Something around 7-10 years seems more appropriate to me… but I’m just an average consumer, not an artist.
True, you may not want to become a carpenter to support your programming hobby, but what if you worked during the day as a programmer in a corporate headquarters making their payroll system hum, and used the fact that you had money to allow you to write something really cool on the weekend. Maybe someday you would make even more supporting it.
Even a musician can make money doing concerts and jingles for commercials without ever selling a single CD. The point being that while the same act that is art may make you a living, it does not mean that selling the same piece of art to lots of people needs to be how you make your living.
Creepy! You didn’t know but that’s exactly my current situation except that I don’t make a boatload of money. In fact, I found myself losing money by making dents in my savings with each month that goes by.
I work as an external “consultant” on internal software in the headquarters of the group that owns the Peugeot and Citroen brands of cars. My evenings and week-ends are spent working on features for music editors. I happen to be thinking (and acting) a lot about launching a startup based on software implementing these features. One of the reasons is of course my current pay.
Edited 2011-02-03 08:50 UTC
From my point of view, that’s why Coppola is an artist, he’s focused on art not money.
While some others directors, let’s say Cameron, are more focused on business. Avatar is a great show, but I don’t call it art.
You mean to tell me that you watched Avatar, and confused it with some other movie? Really? Just because something is massively popular, and very lucrative, doesn’t preclude it from displaying creativity, or having artistic value. Many artists throughout history have been ruthlessly commercial – they had to eat too. You may not like it, but that’s just your opinion. Artistic or commercial success is all just a popularity contest.
It’s not a matter of money or popularity, but technics != arts.
Avatar is a cool movie, but it’s just a show made for audience.
If Kubrick or Godard had a made a story with blue aliens, even not in 3D, I’d change my opinion.
Van Gogh is a good example, of course he probably would love to earn money or be famous. But even if he was considered a mad red head drawer and sell paint for food, he can’t help stop painting.
…we call it `riding the gravy train’ “
Really, Coppola agree with you ?
No problem with the size of your inflating head ?
One thing that really disturbs me about some of these comments is that many have suggested that people shouldn’t be making money off of their hobbies. IMHO, if you’re not making money doing something you love, and would do anyway in your spare time even if you weren’t getting paid for it, then you’re probably in the wrong line of work.
If I invent the universal cure for cancer, then I have 17 years to monetize my intellectual property. If I write a poptastic tune, I have my lifetime, plus the lifetime of my grand children!
Does this not seem wrong?
The original purpose of copyright and patent laws is to further progress of the arts and sciences, not to protect people’s incomes. The media corporations have hijacked fair laws and made bad laws.
I think you’re wrong here about patents. The initial intent, which I don’t know, was necessarily about giving the inventor the time to have a monetary gain out of their inventions. Otherwise, a better way of progressing science is to immediately drop the patent in the public domain. Imagine where we would be now if Intel’s design of x86 had been examined and “forked” by someone who wanted and had the ability to “fix its flaws”.
Is this the same Francis Ford Coppola who waited until 6 days after Carl Sagan had died to sue his estate, claiming that Contact was partially his idea?
See that’s the thing. Most people are hypocrites. Most people are biased one way or another for some reason… so when someone comes along voicing their opinion about open source, or some particular operating system, or how much artists manage to make in proceeds for their work, they jump into the conversation and get a load off their chest.
Now, I tend to agree that the laws are unfortunate in the sense that entities like record labels basically use the laws to steal from their clients and for pushing limited artists into the wider community for their own greedy purpose.
At the same rate, I think that while some aspects of art are objective, mostly it is subjective and it becomes difficult to declare great artists (many great artists were shunned or ridiculed in their lifetimes) and it comes down to who likes their art and how much they are willing to pay for it. I think artists should be allowed some protection… and I am not necessarily one to buy into the idea of a global RIGHT to share all art and knowledge.
I do think there is something wrong with our copyright laws. Things enter into our culture, and once that happens, society is the real owner. In the modern age, we have perfect information copying, but we are broadcast to and are expected to have less ability to share things (Sky+/etc) then we did in VHS days. Maybe the problem isn’t so much people owning copyright, as corporations having the rights of people, thus being able to own copyright. Or the ability for creator to completely sell the copyright, meaning that is the only done exchange and the rights to the work become a commodity bought and sold, the original author only getting a thin slice and maybe only on the first transaction. There is something wrong with it all. BUT, copyright law is the basis for copyleft, and I think that works rather well. If we change copyright, we could mess up copyleft. Maybe of course copyleft is the way out, leave the law as is, but use copyleft and don’t sell products directly, but sell things surrounding it (support, endorsements, T-shirts, concert/cinema experiences, advertising space) and just plain donations, or get people to pay up front for the creation (Pioneer One style). This does seem to be what is happening. But I fear the anti-copyright people and the anti-copyleft people could form an unholy alliance that buggers up all the good things coming from copyleft. We shouldn’t rush into anything.
He can say all he wants now, but he was able to buy the winery and use his name on the wine because he was already famous as an artist/director. Very disingenuous on his part to now say that artist do not need to make money after he benefited from it.
Now, for the poster that asked why Michael Jackson and actors make so much money, well, my friend, they do because “we” buy the records and pay to see the movies. Supply and demand. Economics 101. I know that they are overpay compared especially to the work of a soldier ( I am a retired one) but that is the reality of things. On the other hand you have the extreme view of Coppola and others.
The bottom line is that you should get for your art what the market is willing to pay. As much as I dislike Charlie Sheen making all that money on his TV show when he is not even an accomplished actor and seems not to understand how lucky, that sucker of a man, really is!
How about the free software people? They want you to write good software and give it away for free and hope that someone will hire you and put food on your table. That idea is as foolish as Coppola comments, and look how many people adhere to this philosophy/religion.
Same thing there. Your software should be able to get whatever price the market is willing to pay. Plain and simple. The fruit of your labor is yours to keep, not someone else’s to decide on how to market it or distribute it.
If you do not believe this to be true, tell Stallman to quit his day job at MIT and stat writing free software for a living. That would really show to me his dedication to the movement he started but that he do not participate in fully.
If you put a wink on the end of that, it would make more sense.
“In February 1984, Stallman quit his job at MIT to work full-time on the GNU project, which he had announced in September 1983.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman
If you don’t actually like the GPL and free software, it makes no odds. It’s everywhere with or without you. So it clearly works. Maybe it hasn’t historically on the desktop, not for everyone anyway, but it’s pretty good now.
I won’t comment on the artist part, which has been over-debated.
However, I totally agree with you about scientific papers which cost 20$ one (<10 pages !), 100% being for the publisher (yeah, we researcher have to “give” our copyright in order to publish in most conferences). IEEE is killing science.
The problem with copyright laws growth exponentially when the lawmakers extended the terms from 14+14 to 28+28 then to 75 and now 95 years. They also when moved to 75 years made it automatic and not facultative.
They, simply, locked the creations of anyone and everyone, whatever was their real intentions. If I’m a nobody artist no one know, I want be know first. Because if I’m not known I will not sell any performance or artwork and simply no one will know what wonderful things I did or do.
The evil part is the automatic locking.
They get rid of the records about when something were created, so people would not know exactly when it would be freed and usable.
Google, having an interest in managing the searches and the distribution of knowledge, have built a copyright databases of works so they will knoe what is copyrighted and what is not and when the copyright will expire.
Do you want better, fairer, copyright laws?
Make it valuntary and extensible.
For example, nothing prevent to give 5 years exclusive to the creators, then let them to extend it other 5 years until they live. Simply ask them to pay a small fee for it.
I would say, make the minimum 1 $ for a 10 years extension (from year 6 to 15). Then, if someone pay 100$ to them, it go on public domain. People could pay more, if they believe they will earn more from their copyrights.
Historically 95% of the copyrighted works terms were not extended. Probably 99% of the works would not be extended a third period.
I’m interested in this huge volume of stuff. Not in the small quantities of stuff big superstars produce.
And, it is this huge quantity of stuff that haunt the dreams of the entertainment industry and of the superstars.