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Author Topic: Copy Cats (and creativity) Throughout History  (Read 31782 times)

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RacePhoto

« Reply #25 on: February 22, 2012, 17:34 »
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Without payment or protection there is no reason to create.

Someone who is truly creative (I'm not but I know some who are) creates only because that's what they are (they must create), and not because it's commercially viable. The truly creative don't compromise with commerciability. That's why throughout history you had artists starving in garrets, being supported by sponsors or having other sources of income - because they were so far ahead of their time that the contemporary 'market' wasn't interested, though now they're hailed as geniuses.


This is a microstock site about making money not about starving artists living in slums making art pictures.  :) Send me a sponsor I'll work for free. Who pays your bills and lets you work for free? You want people to work all day at making pictures for nothing because it's creative. Whos first here to complain when someone steals your photo or uses it without the right license. You like working for free go do it.


Personally I want to trademark the letter "A", the musical note "A" and the key of "A" and related chords. That would pretty well make me rich, because you see, all those people have been using it since 440 concert pitch was standardized and I want a piece of the action!
 Using the below image in France is not allowed without a license. Don't blame some big corporation for what an individual and some dumb a$$ froggy court decided.



« Reply #26 on: February 22, 2012, 19:48 »
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I am not sure there would be so much more assignment work. One company could simply pinch the photos used by another company. There would still be stock photo libraries, but they would be made up of ex assignment photos uploaded by people who didn't take them, because they have no money invested in their production. Again, the middle man gets all the profit, the creator gets nothing. I am not assuming that the business model would be the same. It would be very different and far, far worse for producers. It would be fantastic for middle men who can get product for nothing and sell it on at huge volume for peanuts. It would actually be the same model as that used by rapid share or megaupload now. Zero incentive or kick back for the creatives.

As far as reverse engineering products and so on it sounds like you are advocating a market that would be entirely run by mega corporations who could easily afford to crowd out creatives by reverse engineering and promoting products based on their initial research and ideas. Customer loyalty is not secured by being first to the market but by having the budget to promote your product. That's how brand loyalty is created. That or having a unique offering, and you can kiss that goodbye with the death of IP. Big corporations would just watch the market to see what product looks like it's taking off then swoop. No chance for anyone else to get a look in. It's like crowd sourcing for ideas, they do it now but at least they have to buy out the creator rather than stiffing them.

One of the many problems I see with what you've proposed about how the industry would change is the idea that only people who didn't shoot the images would be selling them. That's incorrect in my eyes. First off, you're assuming they even have access to all the high res versions complete with search metadata embedded already. Secondly,there is nothing to stop the original photographer from selling his own stuff. The megaupload and rapid share examples are good examples, but they do not support what your saying because there was absolutely nothing stopping the film studios from banding together and creating their own exact version of those sites using their own content. Megaupload and Rapid Share are ingenious ideas. Megaupload and Rapid Share figured out that lots of people who are unwilling to pay for content are actually perfectly willing to pay for the privileged of easily sharing it or paying for faster download speeds.

The idea that big companies would simply sit back and wait for ideas to steal is another faulty idea. Proponents of IP Law always make this rather absurd claim that if it vanishes, nobody will ever make anything ever again. It's not even based on reality and open source software is a perfect example of how wrong that mindset really is. And for the record, many opens source programs are actually developed by companies who are paying their programmers to make them and all of the projects are perfectly free to take code from each other. That's one of the reasons companies like open source software. All the people involved get to benefit. Canonical (maker of Ubuntu) is making money off of support and aiming at cloud computing and online storage, so there is money being made off of open source programs as well.

I think one also has to realize that we already live in a post IP Law world, yes, we have a lot of silly laws on the books, but clearly laws that try to fight reality don't take much hold on it.
« Last Edit: February 22, 2012, 19:50 by cardmaverick »

RacePhoto

« Reply #27 on: February 22, 2012, 23:06 »
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So lets see, cardmaverick, you think we'll have open source movie's with distribution, free actors and production crews?  :D You suppose that the Rolling Stones will just play for free and someone will pay their living expenses, studio time, tour crews, equipment costs and all that goes behind their shows?

Not trying to explode anything. I like Firefox, I had a laptop running Ubuntu. Paint.net works pretty well. I never figured out Gimp but people swear it's good. Irfanview I love for quick viewing and making websize... the list is another easy 50 pieces of shareware long. So I agree.

What was going on, and still is, on the upload sites is one person obtains a bootleg album. (for example) They upload it and email a dozen close friends, who also have some close friends and pretty soon, anyone who knows anyone has a "Private" link to the download. The site makes money by hosting and turning a blind eye to the piracy. Pretty nice trick.

Then there's the case where someone steals 250 images from a photo site, maybe even using a stolen credit card (ha an people want the site to ay us for that?) makes a CD collection and uploads it to one of these sites and all of your work and the rest of the people here, has just been distributed for free, Worldwide. Plus through the chains, it makes it's way to more pirate sites and soon, we have a product with no value on the market. It's free.

So do we want to work for free and defend these "innocent" sharing sites? I don't.

I'd rather sit for nothing than work for nothing. People have financial needs. Lets not be silly and say, someone will create for free and be motivated to do that by the desire to create? Money is motivation. Property, cars, possessions, more than just food and drink and some poverty hovel to live in. Be real.

Does everyone here who supports these free sharing sites, also support giving away their work for free? Wouldn't it be a little hypocritical to say it's OK to have, use and steal other peoples work for free but not ours?

And the claims that people use these sites for backup and are innocent. Fine, everyone can access their own information. Just not share it.

Microbius

« Reply #28 on: February 23, 2012, 04:15 »
0
One of the many problems I see with what you've proposed about how the industry would change is the idea that only people who didn't shoot the images would be selling them. That's incorrect in my eyes. First off, you're assuming they even have access to all the high res versions complete with search metadata embedded already. Secondly,there is nothing to stop the original photographer from selling his own stuff. The megaupload and rapid share examples are good examples, but they do not support what your saying because there was absolutely nothing stopping the film studios from banding together and creating their own exact version of those sites using their own content. Megaupload and Rapid Share are ingenious ideas. Megaupload and Rapid Share figured out that lots of people who are unwilling to pay for content are actually perfectly willing to pay for the privileged of easily sharing it or paying for faster download speeds.

The idea that big companies would simply sit back and wait for ideas to steal is another faulty idea. Proponents of IP Law always make this rather absurd claim that if it vanishes, nobody will ever make anything ever again. It's not even based on reality and open source software is a perfect example of how wrong that mindset really is. And for the record, many opens source programs are actually developed by companies who are paying their programmers to make them and all of the projects are perfectly free to take code from each other. That's one of the reasons companies like open source software. All the people involved get to benefit. Canonical (maker of Ubuntu) is making money off of support and aiming at cloud computing and online storage, so there is money being made off of open source programs as well.

I think one also has to realize that we already live in a post IP Law world, yes, we have a lot of silly laws on the books, but clearly laws that try to fight reality don't take much hold on it.

You aren't really engaging with any of the arguments here. The point isn't that the actual creators of work wouldn't also be able to sell their product, it's that they would never be able to sell it for a price as low as someone who "steals" the work. That should be pretty obvious as one party has to pay production costs while another doesn't. I don't think the assumption that in a post IP world high res copies of photos would be easy to come by is incorrect. I could stock a new stock site with high res content right now from megaupload if the law didn't prohibit me.

Same with the ridiculous megaupload example, of course a studio could open a similar site, but as I said before, the income would never cover the cost of production as they are competing with someone who hasn't had to pay those costs so can very easily undercut the studios. Look at how much the biggest "sharing" sites make and how much it costs to produce just one film!

As far as companies stealing ideas, not sure what your point is here either, I am not saying that innovation would stop, just that innovators would stop being rewarded, and the winners would be those with the funds to manipulate the market.
A post IP world is a very, very ugly one where salesmen and middle men take all the profit while creators get stiffed.

Quote: "Megaupload and Rapid Share are ingenious ideas. Megaupload and Rapid Share figured out that lots of people who are unwilling to pay for content are actually perfectly willing to pay for the privileged of easily sharing it or paying for faster download speeds." Err no that's not what they figured out. All they did was provide content far more cheaply than the other providers by not paying to create that content.  They also don't provide it more quickly, they actually throttle the speed of those that don't pay them, not provide a faster service than for example Netflix, Lovefilm etc. where you can stream instantly. So to recap they are providing product less efficiently at a lower speed and lower quality that's harder to search for but at the cheapest price point. No new innovation, just lower operating costs. If you want to have a semantic argument about what people are actually paying for then you can waste time doing that but the facts remain the same.

Customers just flock to the cheapest option, the cheapest option is the one that doesn't pay for stuff, just steals it from creators.
« Last Edit: February 23, 2012, 07:44 by Microbius »


 

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