The popular rebellion against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was an impressive display of democracy in action. The opponents of the bill were able to use the web and various social media venues to educate the public about the specifics of the bill. The resulting flood of e-mails, phone calls and letters caused the bill's congressional sponsors to cut and run.
While this revolt against the entertainment industry's effort to rein in the web was inspiring, there is a real issue at stake. It is getting ever harder for creative workers to get paid for their work.
This is seen most clearly in the music industry. Sales of recorded music in the United States dropped from $14.6 billion in 1999 to $7.7 billion last year. If sales had kept pace with inflation and the growth of the economy they would be over $23 billion today.
Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of this money stems from the work of small number of performers who are promoted by the major entertainment companies. The vast majority of singers and musicians get almost nothing from copyright protection.
However the answer to this problem can't be the SOPA route of closing off the web. The more obvious route is to develop alternatives to copyrights for funding creative and artistic work.
The idea of alternatives to copyright should not sound strange. There already is a vast amount of work supported through universities, private foundations and different levels of government. While the existing channels of funding are not sufficient to replace copyright-supported work, they can be expanded to fill the gap.
One route would be to allow individuals a modest refundable tax credit -- an artistic freedom voucher (AFV) -- that would allow them to give $75-$100 a year to support creative work. This money could either go directly to the worker or to an intermediary that supports specific types of creative work (e.g. an intermediary may finance action films, jazz music, or mystery novels).
To be eligible to receive money through this system a creative worker would have to register with the IRS in much the same way as a tax-exempt charity or non-profit registers. They would have to give basic information about what it is they do, just as charity for feeding the homeless or the Heritage Foundation think-tank must do to get and keep their non-profit status.
The IRS would not evaluate the quality of the work; it would simply have the ability to verify that a registered worker actually engages in the type of work claimed. It would also be desirable to require some minimal level of funds to be a recipient, like $1,000 a year per worker or organization, to prevent some of the most obvious ways to game the system.
The other condition for receiving the money is that the person would be ineligible for copyright protection for a substantial period of time (e.g. five years) after collecting money through the AFV system. This rule is to prevent the AFV system from turning into a farm system for the entertainment industry.
If someone makes a reputation with AFV funding, they would take a big risk by dropping out of sight for five years so that they could then produce work that was subject to copyright protection. This provision also has the benefit that it is completely self-enforcing. If a singer records a copyrighted record two months after his last check from the AFV system then the copyright is simply invalid. The singer will not be able to take any action against anyone who makes and sells unauthorized copies of their work.
From the standpoint of tax filers the contribution would be similar to a contribution to a charity. They would simply need some record of a payment having been made and could then deduct this amount from their income taxes or receive the sum as a negative income tax payment.
While there is a risk of fraud and abuse in this system, as with any system, there is far more opportunity with the current charitable contribution tax deduction. A wealthy person donating $10 million to a bogus charity would stand to gain $3.5 million from this fraud. The most an individual could pocket through cheating on the Artistic Freedom Voucher system would be the $75-$100 maximum contribution.
This funding mechanism would likely generate a vast amount of music, books, movies and other video material. None of this work would be protected by copyright. Rather than using SOPA-type bills to limit the Internet, creative workers would have incentive to spread their material as widely as possible. This would increase the probability that they would get more support through the AFV system in future years.
There may well be better ways than the AFV to support creative work, but the real lesson from the SOPA debacle is that we need to develop alternatives to copyright to support creative work. The institution of copyright dates back to the late middle ages. It may have served a useful function back then, but we will need something better for the Internet Age.
Follow Dean Baker on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DeanBaker13
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You're proposing a sort of tax-free, government-run, version of Kick Starter, with a limit per contribution and a rule that recipients receive no copyright protection for 5 years.
It's not really a very viable solution to piracy, IMHO.
Intellectual property is the lifeblood of creative work, and copyright still provides some monetary compensation when a work is enjoyed by the public - and believe me I'm not just talking about major label or Hollywood.
I don't know anyone in the arts who would relinquish their copyrights for such a small amount of money. Good luck "funding an action film" with your voucher!
Unless I'm mistaken, it's back to the drawing board, Dean.
please reread the column until you understand that i am not asking anyone to give up copyright for $75-$100 a year. Then you will be able to criticize my proposal rather than something that has nothing to do with anything I wrote.
this violates no treaty -- we aren't getting rid of copyright, just creating an alternative. you'll need a lot of optimism and creativity to show how our trading partners would have anything to complain about.
Oh yes, one aspect of it does, or the work wouldn't need protection in the first place. In our country, commercial interest always come first, but in other countries, the moral aspect of idea integrity is important. We were slow to accept that, but we have adopted it in 1988. (See Berne Convention.)
Don't think that the high tech companies don't have legal departments devoted to patent, trademark and copyright protection, because they do. It's the ultimate in hypocrisy to cry censorship when they do the same thing. If the system needs fixing, by all means, let's come up with solutions that everyone can live with.
Copyright protection extends to books, so what do you think would happen to book writers if in the future everything they wrote would no longer produce an income as whatever they wrote was available for free just by another party electronically copying and distributing it at near light speed? Would the "joy of writing" be sufficient motivation?
please reread the piece as many times as it takes you to understand that I proposed a way in which writers would be paid. When you understand that nothing in my proposal involves an assumption that writers would work exclusively for the "joy of writing" then we can have a serious discussion.
In the book world, 99% of all submissions get rejected. Of the remaining 1%, about half of those get published and create little to no profit. A few make a profit. A handful are best sellers that bring in huge revenues. Yet, hundreds of thousands of books get written each year from hopeful writers knowing what the odds are. Why swim in that pool if you are talented enough to produce something wonderful while many others are producing schlock? I see many posters on these boards whose real objective is to get something for nothing and they do this by proposing schemes that work against human nature. I can't see any way where your proposal will go anywhere but it would do a lot of harm if it got implemented.
So, you steal because you were not signed to a major label and were not successful. Three of my sons were signed to a major label and they got screwed too. Even though they had 4 star reviews in Rolling Stone, major articles in nearly ever important music magazine as well as US mag etc. Sometimes, it doesn't work out great. However, they developed a following in Europe, especially in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland where they filled halls of about 1500. Not exactly Coldplay but decent. Two still earn their living making music and their father does as well. His royalties have have been halved because of "file sharing."My third son in the group often appears in regional theater, which pays well. The two older sons
have small deals now and are releasing their music in England first. 9/11 happened the day before my boys were set to fly and begin a major tour opening for a huge act. The record company canceled their tour out of fear of what might happen. It didn't hurt the major act, they were well established. So, I do understand your disappointment. The only way to combat the limited music we have easy access to is to stop file sharing and beef up the artists and the labels with revenue so they take more risks. Please remember those who wrote the 'classics' which are downloaded daily are really being hurt by file sharing. Royalties take care of their families.
I'm betting the smaller (indie) market music industry is more alive than it's ever been with the ease of disseminating and marketing it's products which were normally kept down by the stranglehold of the major label oligarchs.
Far more careers have been launched by the internet than have been destroyed.
http://entirelysubjective.com/oh-the-irony/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/music/inside/cron.html
Without "free" cassette tape trading, I imagine my exposure to a variety of music might not have ever happened (or certainly been much delayed). There was certainly a stranglehold by major labels in those days that taping helped overcome, to the benefit of the emerging or alternative artist. Rarely will people buy a record or go to a show by an artist they have not heard, and the internet is unparalleled as an advertiser. The SOPA legislation seems for more draconian than theses earlier tariffs.
The challenge with people not being protected by copyright comes from their own mistake in not copyrighting their work, a very simple process. And, when dealing with corporations, not protecting their work product by contract. Should they bow to a corporate contract, as I have done, that demands ownership of that work product produced while being paid by the corporation, then that is their choice. They are being compensated for that. If they want more, they need to join and support the unions that look out for screenwriters, songwriters and other creatives.
Creating is hard, time-consuming work. It takes dedication and persistence. It results, hopefully, in something that will continue to entertain, inform and inspire people for centuries. There is no expiration date on that, and as long as anyone is willing to retain their copyright through existing procedures, they should be allowed to do so.
You're pretty easily insulted. FWIW, people have copyrighted my work. You'd have to check with my publishers as to how much money they made, but presumably they expected to make money at the time of the contract.
You have a very odd idea of socialism. If artists freely contract to be paid through a non-copyright based systems, then this is socialism? I'll have to go reread my Marx. So the folks who write stuff for non-profits, which get big tax subsidies, must all be socialists? Very interesting worldview.
care to give us some insight into why this plan is unworkable?
What we are seeing is corporations demand, through their powerful lobbies, our government, using our tax dollars, bare the entire burden and expense of "finding the thieves" and then bare the entire expensive of prosecuting them.
Also, SOPA relies on the ability to shut down a website with NO TRIAL or evidence. Just gone.
They can't stop the signal so this entire thing is a ridiculous charade that will NEVER be effective and will just cost taxpayer money chasing ghosts.