Posts by Matthew Poole
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Assuming that Tim Murphy is being absolutely straight and truthful with his assertion that there has been no change to the legal budget, and I certainly have no reason to doubt him, the entire rest of Kate's post becomes somewhat overblown.
As others with real journalistic experience have observed, there's nothing scandalous about reminding people that newspapers are not courts of law, and that high-profile people are more likely to sue than those with no profile. Somewhat self-evident, wouldn't you say?
Given the woeful state of Granny's content these days, I'm not at all surprised that it might be considered wise to remind the journos of their professional obligations. -
I think you are using `market' to mean `demand', which is wrong.
Only if one is rigidly adhering to a particular economics definition of market, which I quite clearly was not. Rather, I was using the word as per the definition "the customers for a particular product or service". That's no less a valid use of the word market than in the economic sense, so please don't tell me that I'm "wrong" to use market as synonymous for demand.
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But the blacksmith/cars comparison remains pretty useless. Culture and horse modes of transport don't really match up. It's a line for the media but it doesn't really become useful at second glance.
Kyle, the analogy is useful inasmuch as it shows how nonsensical it can be if you allow vested interests to dictate restrictions on the use of technology. And that is what ACTA and s92A are all about - vested interests seeking restrictions on utility of new tech, to further their existing business models. Note that a lot of creators, as opposed to their titularly representative mouthpieces, are not terribly supportive of things like s92A. There was a pretty significant creator backlash against s92A, quite contrary to the protestations of the likes of RIANZ that it was all about the artists. The artists want to talk to their fans, that's why they create. They don't create in order to enrich a bunch of suits at a label. If they can make money other than through the established order, they'll take it.
If, and I emphasise the "if", we discovered that technology meant that writers were just not earning as much and therefore were being turned off writing, that would be a concern.
Yes, but measured how? Currently-published writers? Total income across the market? If more authors are getting smaller slices of an increased aggregate income, is that a good thing or a bad thing? If the handful of really successful authors see their income diminish, but dozens more authors start making a meaningful income through increased exposure, is that a good thing or a bad thing? These questions actually matter, and matter a lot, if you want to look at technology as anything other than a tool that is entirely neutral. As soon as you start wanting to examine the economic impact of a particular technology, you get into some fairly metaphysical questions about positives and negatives. If it's bad for the existing order but good for the un- or under-exposed, is it net bad or net good? If aggregate income for the creators doubles but mean income halves, is that net good or net bad?
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Keir, your definition of "the market" is very clearly different to the one I have in mind, and you've demonstrated that you are perfectly aware of this discrepancy. When I talk of "the market" I am not talking about the market of gatekeepers, I am talking about the market of consumers. Consumers don't give a fig about copyright, and will demand the creative works even in the absence of copyright. Witness various online-only literary works that appear to be quite popular, if their authors are to be believed, and are distributed either as public domain or under the most-liberal of Creative Commons licences. It is only the gatekeepers who care about copyright in your market, and then only because it allows them control. Remove copyright and your market would cease to exist. My market, however, would remain, possibly less-satisfied than it is at present, but exist all the same.
Will you now stop arguing a distortion of what you knew I was meaning?
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Kyle, fair enough. I still don't view it as analogous to the state decreeing that certain technological improvements are not to be used in some particular fashion. I also don't consider it to be protectionism. It's state recognition that some things should be funded even if they're not valuable in a strictly commercial sense. Culture is not like manufacturing or commercial services, and terms like protectionism don't apply very well. I don't have a problem with the preeminent performers in some very niche areas being given state funding to ensure that those particular entities continue to exist. As it is RNZ Ballet took more from commercial sponsorship, donations and box office than it did from MCH, according to their 2008 annual report. That says that there is a market, and they could probably service the market without government funding but in a greatly-reduced capacity.
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Interesting, Craig. I didn't know that, though I am admittedly not exactly an avid fan of that sort of TV. It does show, though, that the market is already very, very heavily involved in what gets made. Possibly too heavily, in fact, when one considers how hard these gatekeepers are fighting to maintain the status quo and thus make it harder for others to try and compete.
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Er, it is the state creating a market. It may be that the market decides certain things are worthless, but it is quite meaningful to say that by creating a right that can be bought and sold the state creates a market*.
Keir, copyright still ain't creating a market for the end works. To accept that copyright creates the market is to accept that the Twilight genre only sells because of copyright. That's bollocks. The books may only be published by major houses because they can get copyright, but that's not the same thing at all. The market would exist with or without copyright, and if the books were being released under public domain or a liberal Creative Commons licence it would in no way diminish the market's existence or desire for the works.
To put it another way, people still buy the Bible, and collected works of Shakespeare, even though the underlying text of both is free of copyright. According to you, there should be no market for these things because there is no copyright in the text. That is, obviously, incorrect.If you want to argue that there's a market for the copyrights themselves, then I would agree with you. But that's not a market for the ideas and their expression it is only a market for the rights to reproduce. That is what copyright is - a right to copy.
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Ah, so it was support for the market. Excellent. I like the market :P
Going back to the funding of things through NZoA and MCH:
RNZ Ballet, NZSO/NZPO and others are, as much as anything, exercises in branding. They're a sponsorship opportunity for NZ Inc. It's no different from the NBR NZ Opera, or the Vodafone Warriors for that matter. That's not state protectionism, that's state sponsorship. People don't talk about Vodafone engaging in protectionist behaviour with the Warriors.
NZoA is looking for winners. It's no less a gatekeeper than ABC or the BBC, it just has slightly different funding criteria. And if something it funds turns out to be a dud, well, there goes the funding. It's still the market and the commercial model, except done with state dollars. I don't have an issue with that, because I know that there are things that are too risky to attract money from the main players. If NZoA were to keep throwing money at projects that weren't successful, though, then I'd be rather hacked off. That extends to tossing Russell's TVNZ7 show on the scrap heap if it's not getting eyeballs, non-commercial or not. We would be the poorer for it, certainly, but NZoA is a gatekeeper and should behave like one in making rational, dispassionate decisions about funding. -
Hey, Russell, any chance of a preview button on the edit window? It's very disconcerting to not be able to preview changes.
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there would actually be some benefits in being presented with de facto US copyright law, with its relatively generous approach to "fair use".
Yes and no. We'd probably lose moral rights, and from things that Islander and others have said in "that thread", I think the moral rights parts of NZ (and pretty much every party to ACTA except the US) copyright law actually matter far more to creators than anything that might happen about copyright terms and fair use.
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By "probably lose moral rights" I mean that if ACTA just supplanted existing copyright law, which is what would be required for US-style fair use to be on the table, I don't see moral rights surviving. The US doesn't have them, and it seems that ACTA is really just the wettest dreams of US-centric big media codified into a treaty.
</edit>Also, ACTA is something of an attempt to end-run around fair use. DRM is explicitly about restricting fair use rights, and the DMCA has proven to be a very, very big bat, studded with nails, when it comes to stomping on fair use for things like parody, satire, and criticism. NZ does have a "fair dealing" doctrine, sadly one not codified and also less-liberal than that of the US, but we could fix that without needing ACTA.
Plus, I don't think that fair use would be part of ACTA. That's a dirty phrase in the eyes of big media, and the last thing they want is for other countries to extend their existing consumer rights. Look at the fight that RIANZ put up about allowing consumers to *shock horror gasp* format-shift recorded music.