COMMUNIA Workshop, Vilnius, March 31, 2008: Debate of Questionable Practices
Commercial use of public domain
I am afraid my Lithuanian does not go beyond some simple survival phrases such as "Aš noriu gerti alous", so I hope I may be forgiven if I start a discussion in English.
How to make a living in a public domain world is indeed a great question. First, I would like to point out one important thing: there is absolutely nothing about public domain that says you cannot use it commercially. It is not a Creative Commons licence where you can note that you do not want any commercial uses. Public domain allows commercial use and, indeed, for a very long time, it only applied to commercial use -- if you printed and sold a book, copyright law applied. If you lent your book to a friend, put it in a library, pasted the pages around the town for anybody to read and read it aloud from rooftops, the copyright law did not apply -- there was no difference if the work was in public domain or not.
There is another thing: for most of its history, copyright term was nowhere near the current life+70 term (sounds like a particularly harsh prison term, doesn't it?) -- at the very beginning, it was 14 years after publishing, extendable once for another 14 years. And you had to register your work to claim copyright on it -- which pretty well solved the problem of orphan works.
This shows a very good solution to the problem -- limit the copyright term so it becomes reasonable. For a rather limited term (say, 14 years), the author would enjoy all the benefits of the copyright. After that, the public, other authors and even the author himself would enjoy the benefits of the public domain. Surely it is a good deal -- to get money 14 years after doing something, isn't it?
I mentioned that the author himself would enjoy the benefits of public domain. This leads to the next point -- it isn't that authors are reaping huge benefits from the copyright system. For example, many musicians don't own the copyright of their own works -- the recording company does. Some musicians are able to make a living playing only music; most are not, as the copyright system's main focus is making money for the record companies, not musicians. This probably was justified back when recording an album was pretty expensive, and distributing it was even more expensive. However, now recording is cheap, and distribution online costs almost nothing, as everybody who has used any peer-to-peer network (Bittorrent, eMule, DC++) would know. So, if an artist has now signed a contract with a record company, he is not free to distribute his own work -- it is not owned by him. If these works had passed into public domain, he -- or anybody else, for that matter -- would be free to use them in any way he sees fit. For example, he could make a special boxed set with some new material and an extensive photobook -- people often buy that sort of thing. Sure, everybody could distribute his public domain works, but he would be able to add something unique that would make his product stand out.
That brings me to another solution how we can still make a living with public domain: by adding something unique that only we can provide. For example, musicians can use the free access to their songs to promote them and then earn money by holding concerts or releasing LPs. The biggest problem many young artists face is not that everybody's using their work for free; the biggest problem is that nobody knows them. Free access can fix that problem.
Now, I am not quite sure how that would work if everything that is made automatically passed into public domain, mainly because others would be competing with you using your own work. However, if the work uses, say, a Creative Commons licence which does not allow commercial use and passes into public domain after some 14 or 28 years, this would definitely allow people to make a living. It has been done before, after all -- and successfully.
As a matter of fact, this is pretty much what I am trying to start: as I am a translator, not a musician, I want to start a publishing house that would publish works using only free licences. I want to charge for the privilege of reading a hard copy of the book, but the basic right to freely copy it, distribute it and modify for non-commercial uses would be free -- both as in free beer and free speech. If I succeed, that would be an answer -- yes, you can make a living without severely restricting other people's freedom.
How to make a living in a public domain world is indeed a great question. First, I would like to point out one important thing: there is absolutely nothing about public domain that says you cannot use it commercially. It is not a Creative Commons licence where you can note that you do not want any commercial uses. Public domain allows commercial use and, indeed, for a very long time, it only applied to commercial use -- if you printed and sold a book, copyright law applied. If you lent your book to a friend, put it in a library, pasted the pages around the town for anybody to read and read it aloud from rooftops, the copyright law did not apply -- there was no difference if the work was in public domain or not.
There is another thing: for most of its history, copyright term was nowhere near the current life+70 term (sounds like a particularly harsh prison term, doesn't it?) -- at the very beginning, it was 14 years after publishing, extendable once for another 14 years. And you had to register your work to claim copyright on it -- which pretty well solved the problem of orphan works.
This shows a very good solution to the problem -- limit the copyright term so it becomes reasonable. For a rather limited term (say, 14 years), the author would enjoy all the benefits of the copyright. After that, the public, other authors and even the author himself would enjoy the benefits of the public domain. Surely it is a good deal -- to get money 14 years after doing something, isn't it?
I mentioned that the author himself would enjoy the benefits of public domain. This leads to the next point -- it isn't that authors are reaping huge benefits from the copyright system. For example, many musicians don't own the copyright of their own works -- the recording company does. Some musicians are able to make a living playing only music; most are not, as the copyright system's main focus is making money for the record companies, not musicians. This probably was justified back when recording an album was pretty expensive, and distributing it was even more expensive. However, now recording is cheap, and distribution online costs almost nothing, as everybody who has used any peer-to-peer network (Bittorrent, eMule, DC++) would know. So, if an artist has now signed a contract with a record company, he is not free to distribute his own work -- it is not owned by him. If these works had passed into public domain, he -- or anybody else, for that matter -- would be free to use them in any way he sees fit. For example, he could make a special boxed set with some new material and an extensive photobook -- people often buy that sort of thing. Sure, everybody could distribute his public domain works, but he would be able to add something unique that would make his product stand out.
That brings me to another solution how we can still make a living with public domain: by adding something unique that only we can provide. For example, musicians can use the free access to their songs to promote them and then earn money by holding concerts or releasing LPs. The biggest problem many young artists face is not that everybody's using their work for free; the biggest problem is that nobody knows them. Free access can fix that problem.
Now, I am not quite sure how that would work if everything that is made automatically passed into public domain, mainly because others would be competing with you using your own work. However, if the work uses, say, a Creative Commons licence which does not allow commercial use and passes into public domain after some 14 or 28 years, this would definitely allow people to make a living. It has been done before, after all -- and successfully.
As a matter of fact, this is pretty much what I am trying to start: as I am a translator, not a musician, I want to start a publishing house that would publish works using only free licences. I want to charge for the privilege of reading a hard copy of the book, but the basic right to freely copy it, distribute it and modify for non-commercial uses would be free -- both as in free beer and free speech. If I succeed, that would be an answer -- yes, you can make a living without severely restricting other people's freedom.
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Andrius Kulikauskas on -
Didzis, I have faced very similar issues with our laboratory Minciu Sodas which is likewise in the Public Domain. I put together my thoughts and wrote a paper An Economy for Giving Everything Away (and won a travel grant to India!) The basic idea is that wealth is relationships. If you have relationships, then you will get loans, gifts, jobs, ...
About
Badge
© 2009 Created by Andrius Kulikauskas on Ning. Create Your Own Social Network
