Comments on: The Death of Intellectual Property Rights http://bkish.com/2009/05/30/the-death-of-intellectual-property-rights/ Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:45:39 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Connor http://bkish.com/2009/05/30/the-death-of-intellectual-property-rights/comment-page-1/#comment-673 Connor Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:09:05 +0000 http://bookish.us/?p=584#comment-673 (That was less coherent than I had hoped, but you get the idea.) (That was less coherent than I had hoped, but you get the idea.)

]]> By: Connor http://bkish.com/2009/05/30/the-death-of-intellectual-property-rights/comment-page-1/#comment-672 Connor Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:07:32 +0000 http://bookish.us/?p=584#comment-672 First, I totally agree with you vis a vis the technology. If you're standing in a flood, you can stand there and thow sand in the water, but if the flood is permanent your time would be better spent constructing some stilts. I doubt, though, that the answer is quite as simple as the people deciding about compensation. You're absolutely right that ease of free access is going to continue to proliferate, and that there is no point in struggling against this. But this also means that supply will continue to proliferate out of control, compensation is *less* and streamlined (however unreasonable it's been in the past), and therefore skilled writers have a greater incentive to pursue other kinds of work. Unless we want writing to again become the domain of the ridiculously entitled, there's going to have to be some institutional structure to manage this. Philanthropy could account for some of this, as could the NEA. Of course, that begs the question of who is making these judgment calls: who deserves compensation and how much and how is it dispensed. But I can't imagine the arts being lucrative for *anyone* without some sort of a compensatory structure in place. First, I totally agree with you vis a vis the technology. If you’re standing in a flood, you can stand there and thow sand in the water, but if the flood is permanent your time would be better spent constructing some stilts.

I doubt, though, that the answer is quite as simple as the people deciding about compensation. You’re absolutely right that ease of free access is going to continue to proliferate, and that there is no point in struggling against this. But this also means that supply will continue to proliferate out of control, compensation is *less* and streamlined (however unreasonable it’s been in the past), and therefore skilled writers have a greater incentive to pursue other kinds of work. Unless we want writing to again become the domain of the ridiculously entitled, there’s going to have to be some institutional structure to manage this. Philanthropy could account for some of this, as could the NEA. Of course, that begs the question of who is making these judgment calls: who deserves compensation and how much and how is it dispensed. But I can’t imagine the arts being lucrative for *anyone* without some sort of a compensatory structure in place.

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