There's no incentive to make a movie if it will never make any money. Without copyright, anyone can purchase it once and give it away for free or sell each copy for $0.01 and undercut all competition. Digital content takes X amount of work and then allows it to be duplicated by creating infinite copies. If someone can infinitely copy your work, you will never get paid for that X amount (or make any profit). While I don't strongly support current IP law, getting rid of it isn't the solution. It's like having an economy based on fake money, after a very short period of time the money becomes worthless (except here the money = work).
> There's no incentive to make a movie if it will never make any money.
> Without copyright, anyone can purchase it once and give it away for free or sell each copy for $0.01 and undercut all competition.
That's not a problem if the creators were paid to make the movie.
The parent mentioned several mechanisms to do this. It's not hard: after all, that's how basically all industries have worked since forever.
Anecdotally: half of the jobs I've had were producing private, in-house software; I got a regular wage for doing this, since the companies found such software useful. No need for copyright. The other half were paying me to produce FOSS which, once it was written, we wanted people to copy and spread for free, since that would gain us more attention (and potential customers for our related services). Again, no need for copyright (although some were strong copyleft, with network-use clauses)
I don't think it's wise to compare software development with other creative production. Software can provide a quantitative value through functionality to its users. Copyleft software often makes sense because it becomes possible to create a community of users that also support the project, making it cheaper and functionally superior for everyone.
Media is a much different story, and transforming creators into beggars (as suggested) is not a solution. At that point, creators are competing with their ability to beg, and not their ability to create. Any person with a reasonable amount of self-respect and pride in their work would not tolerate that kind of existence.
Content creators can not justly be called "beggars", because they provide services and create goods that people value. Most people recognize this and want these creatives to be rewarded. Sometimes it's done through donations, other times through commissions. Patronage of the arts through these means has been going on for most of human history.
Because "customer acquisition" means that a business offers something of value, reaches out to entities that might be interested in obtaining that value, and enters into an agreement to supply that value for another value.
That process is totally different from asking for donations (which is literally begging -- no value is being offered, but value is expected to be received.) Kickstarter can certainly produce valuable media, but it eliminates the possibility of a small group of people taking a risk on content. That will undoubtedly have major effects on the kind of content that is produced, the question is what will that impact be?
> That process is totally different from asking for donations
Whilst donations might work for some, I was mostly talking about doing work (to provide value, e.g. writing, sculpting, etc.) for an amount agreed-upon in advance (either paid to an escrow service, or invoiced afterwards). Movie companies could take on the role of escrow service, rather than their current role as investment vehicle.
> (which is literally begging -- no value is being offered, but value is expected to be received.)
If 'no value is being offered' by movies, games, etc. then why do people already pay money for things like DVDs? Copyright can't be the reason, since that doesn't compel anyone to buy stuff they see no value in (copyright just restricts who can do the selling).
> That's not a problem if the creators were paid to make the movie.
Where do you think the money to pay the creators comes from? Movies, games, and most other modern forms of mass art are incredibly expensive to produce. If the content creators can't recoup their expenses, they produce less of the content.
> Movies, games, and most other modern forms of mass art are incredibly expensive to produce.
Meh. Work expands to consume the available resources. There's nothing special about "modern forms of mass art": it just sits at a local optimum of available capital, risk, labour and technology costs, projected returns, etc. (optimised by the market). Change those factors (e.g. with a labour strike, or an improvement in CGI tools) and the balance comes out differently, and so do the movies.
> If the content creators can't recoup their expenses, they produce less of the content.
Or they reduce the expense. In general, I would rather have 10 movies made for $1,000,000 each than a single movie with a $10,000,000 budget.
It's really easy to throw money at graphics, special effects, technology, etc. which are mostly superficial. Good storytelling, interesting game mechanics, etc. are much cheaper, and have been around for thousands of years.
Consider Pixar, for example: they've managed to funnel hollywood money into fundamental computer graphics research (a very neat trick!). They do this under the premise that it's needed for their movies, which could have actually been executed very well as traditional cartoons.
I would rather have 1 quality movie made for $10,000,000 than 10 crappy movies made for a million. Movies are more expensive to make than people realize. For $10,000,000, you're not paying for much, if anything, for VFX. Case study: Get Out's budget was $6 million, not including marketing. That includes a single non-practical special effect (the sinking scene). All the actors worked for minimum wages [edit: movie wages]. The movie was limited to 3-4 physical locations. Split had a budget of between $6-9 million, and that movie takes place in two locations.
What's wrong with that? The price to the first person would go up astronomically and they would get all the rights to resell it. It would be the difference of getting paid 10k upfront or 10k over the course of royalties. You would have incentive to make new works.
I guess I could have been clearer. there is no exclusive resale right. I meant because the lack of rights, there would be competition to drive down distribution costs. The idea is that the first purchaser pays full price to be able to know what the item is, as the idea is otherwise a secret. Consumers could then pay content creators directly to generate the content, rather than going through a publisher. There could be demand to have a distribution network that is up to date.
That's not true, but why let the facts get in the way?
6/10 highest-grossing movies last year were not comic book movies:
Dunkirk - Original property
Fast & Furious 8 - non-comic franchise based on original property
Despicable Me - non-comic franchise based on original property
It - remake
Beauty and the Beast - remake
Get Out - original property
Star Wars Episode 8 - non-comic franchise based on original property
The most profitable movie of 2017, Get Out, was an original franchise. This follows on the heels of 2016s most profitable movie, Split, a sequel to an original property (The Sixth Sense/Unbreakable universe).
