Why do copyright holders have to live on donations?
With this post, I would like to respond to today's research on donations to the authors. Thanks to him, I was finally able to verbalize why I believe that pirates are more right than rightholders in this war. Anticipating the charges, I’ll make a reservation: I regularly honestly buy a large amount of music, from time to time - books, and that’s why I’m fairly objective.
The key sticking point in the above study was the phrase:
It is with this quote that I disagree most of all. Books, music, cinema - in modern society these are the same essential goods as electricity and water. Yes, in Africa many people have neither electricity nor clean water at home, 14% of people cannot read, there is no guaranteed secondary education everywhere — this is not a reason to reduce the mandatory minimum of the standard of living available to people.
How does this relate to piracy and copyright? Whether I argue with the statement that the seller has the right to put the goods at any price, as it should be in a market economy? Yes and no. Perhaps, someone considers my demand too bold and contrary to some market and economic principles, but I believe that the author is obliged to sell books and music for any price - the one he appoints himself.
What's the Difference? In Russia, the law regulates the activities of stores, if a store puts goods on sale, this is a public offer, anyone can come to the store - even a French-speaking Negro - and buy goods at a stated price. The Internet market is not like that. You may be denied service on a territorial or national basis, impose additional services (prohibited by Russian law, not prohibited in “civilized” countries), even erase a product already sold!
')
How many years ago did regional restrictions appear on DVD, 15? Wors and even there, Wikipedia even mentions a curious story with a disc presented by Obama to the British prime minister, which he could not see - the “wrong” region. I come to the online store to buy music legally and get the answer: "Your credit card is issued outside the United States." “We do not sell this product to your country,” amazon.de told me when I tried to buy a digital copy of the album. I can come to the country (if they give me a visa) and buy a disk, but the right holders refuse me the right to do the same on the Internet.
Supporters of Mikhalkov, MPAA, RIAA and other curious names say: "This is their right, this is the market." Not! All these “right holders” always talk about the desire to bring to the Internet regulation from offline, so that people are responsible for their actions, that the laws work, that illegal copying is punished. Let's. Only first we bring in the Internet a real public offer. You offer a product, I come and buy. Then it is mine - in accordance with the Russian laws, I have the right to gut your DRM-protected book to work on my device, make a copy of the music in order to play on my player (and not just on my iPod), transcode the video into a convenient format for me and cut advertising - if you, the copyright holders, for some reason did not. True, in our country sometimes there are still excellent laws.
If for some reason the copyright holder has stopped offering the book for sale - he considers it unprofitable to spend space on servers, found some country unworthy of his attention, just stabbed something on the left heel - the book is considered publicly accessible, those who have not been given the opportunity to buy it , can go and save. Yes, it is cruel and infringes upon the rights of poor poor bankrupt publishers (they, the truth, do not even hide the fact that the money from the claims will go not to the authors, but to new suits). But in the XXI century objects of culture are the subject of prime necessity. Point. Either right holders offer goods, or let them live on donates.
Upd . Since some of them did not understand in the comments what I generally call for, I tried to formulate my entire idea in the form of a short manifesto, which, I hope, expounds everything more clearly:
The key sticking point in the above study was the phrase:
A book is not a first-hand goods, you can live without it. 14% of the world's population cannot read at all, and nothing, they live and reproduce.
It is with this quote that I disagree most of all. Books, music, cinema - in modern society these are the same essential goods as electricity and water. Yes, in Africa many people have neither electricity nor clean water at home, 14% of people cannot read, there is no guaranteed secondary education everywhere — this is not a reason to reduce the mandatory minimum of the standard of living available to people.
How does this relate to piracy and copyright? Whether I argue with the statement that the seller has the right to put the goods at any price, as it should be in a market economy? Yes and no. Perhaps, someone considers my demand too bold and contrary to some market and economic principles, but I believe that the author is obliged to sell books and music for any price - the one he appoints himself.
What's the Difference? In Russia, the law regulates the activities of stores, if a store puts goods on sale, this is a public offer, anyone can come to the store - even a French-speaking Negro - and buy goods at a stated price. The Internet market is not like that. You may be denied service on a territorial or national basis, impose additional services (prohibited by Russian law, not prohibited in “civilized” countries), even erase a product already sold!
')
How many years ago did regional restrictions appear on DVD, 15? Wors and even there, Wikipedia even mentions a curious story with a disc presented by Obama to the British prime minister, which he could not see - the “wrong” region. I come to the online store to buy music legally and get the answer: "Your credit card is issued outside the United States." “We do not sell this product to your country,” amazon.de told me when I tried to buy a digital copy of the album. I can come to the country (if they give me a visa) and buy a disk, but the right holders refuse me the right to do the same on the Internet.
Supporters of Mikhalkov, MPAA, RIAA and other curious names say: "This is their right, this is the market." Not! All these “right holders” always talk about the desire to bring to the Internet regulation from offline, so that people are responsible for their actions, that the laws work, that illegal copying is punished. Let's. Only first we bring in the Internet a real public offer. You offer a product, I come and buy. Then it is mine - in accordance with the Russian laws, I have the right to gut your DRM-protected book to work on my device, make a copy of the music in order to play on my player (and not just on my iPod), transcode the video into a convenient format for me and cut advertising - if you, the copyright holders, for some reason did not. True, in our country sometimes there are still excellent laws.
If for some reason the copyright holder has stopped offering the book for sale - he considers it unprofitable to spend space on servers, found some country unworthy of his attention, just stabbed something on the left heel - the book is considered publicly accessible, those who have not been given the opportunity to buy it , can go and save. Yes, it is cruel and infringes upon the rights of poor poor bankrupt publishers (they, the truth, do not even hide the fact that the money from the claims will go not to the authors, but to new suits). But in the XXI century objects of culture are the subject of prime necessity. Point. Either right holders offer goods, or let them live on donates.
Upd . Since some of them did not understand in the comments what I generally call for, I tried to formulate my entire idea in the form of a short manifesto, which, I hope, expounds everything more clearly:
0. This manifesto covers the dissemination of cultural property through digital distribution.
1. Literature, cinema and music in the modern world are as much a necessary product for a person as secondary education or public services.
2. Distribution of this product is both the right and the responsibility of the author.
2.1. The author has the right to distribute the product both personally and through any selected intermediary (copyright holder).
2.2. The right holder has the right to assign any arbitrary price to the product, to set it different for different categories of people according to the basis chosen by the right holder.
3. The right holder does not have the right to artificially limit the possibility of purchasing a product to any category of people (restrictions on a territorial or national basis, obviously impracticable requirements, such as using a bank card of a strictly defined country). If the pricing policy for some special category of people is not established, the product should be available to this category at a “basic” price that works for all people without exception. The base price is the one that acts on the largest number of buyers (for example, if a book is sold in three countries, the base price is the one at which the largest number of people have bought it at the moment). Correct determination of the current base price is the responsibility of the copyright holder.
4. Artificially restricting any category of people by setting a price that is obviously impossible for this category ($ 1,000 for Zimbabwe at a base price of $ 10) is a deliberate violation of the idea of ​​content availability. In the event of a complaint, each such case must be considered individually by the supervisory authority.
5. The right holder has the right to differentiate categories of people by price, but not by type of product. Any version of the product should be available for purchase by any category of people. The Finnish boy has the full right to buy the Russian edition of a Chinese film, if he suddenly has such a desire.
6. The absence of a product for sale for any category of people is a transfer of the product for this category of people into public use and permission for free distribution by any means.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/198220/
All Articles