Posts by Leon Macduff

Filesharers petition Downing Street on 'three strikes'

Art = Things made by people investing time in exchange for reward

> "Artists will always produce art, irrespective of whether or not they get paid for it - they always have"

No, they didn't. Great art is often created by having someone pay for it. From the wikipedia article on patronage; "From the ancient world onward patronage of the arts was important in art history. It is known in greatest detail in reference to pre-modern medieval and Renaissance Europe, though patronage can also be traced in feudal Japan, the traditional Southeast Asian kingdoms, and elsewhere"

And which artists got paid for their work? "Artists as diverse and important as Chrétien de Troyes, Leonardo de Vinci and Michelangelo, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson all sought and enjoyed the support of noble or ecclesiastical patrons."

I'm not interested in supporting the x-factor. What I'm interested in is how we support modern Shakespeares and Beethovens. How do we, as a society, reward these artists for their investment of time? Or do we declare that their investment is literally worth nothing, that they should expect no direct reward for their work?

> "The only reason you people keep speaking so disrespectfully of 'amateur' art"

I said "that's valuable and interesting and can produce decent stuff," which is hardly disrespectful. I'm a fiction writer myself. If someone paid me for my work, I could write a lot more and a lot better, because it takes time to create art, and some artworks, like the cistene chapel, take many man-years.

The question remains, though.

- Great art is commissioned for, and bought by people who like it. Beethoven wrote his symphonies on paid time. Homer was almost certainly a paid court poet. Michelangelo only worked on commission.

- Buying copies of art (CDs, posters, etc) is one mechanism allowing folks like you and me to choose which artists to support. It's a kind of 'micro-patronage' system.

- Filesharing reduces the income from selling copies of art.

- This means artists can produce less art for the people, and must either stop, or turn to other sources, like corporations, for patronage.

I suggest that filesharing, then, will have the following effects;

- Normal people lose an ability to 'vote' for art they like -- they can no longer put their money where their mouth is.

- Some artists will become part-timers, producing less art with fewer resources

- Some artists will get patrons; that is, they will turn to corporations, who will commission more McArt.

All in all -- less freedom to choose, less art that you like, more artists working for corporations.

Art = the results of investment

> "Artists will always produce art, irrespective of whether or not they get paid for it - they always have"

No, they didn't. Great art is often created by having someone pay for it. From the wikipedia article on patronage; "From the ancient world onward patronage of the arts was important in art history. It is known in greatest detail in reference to pre-modern medieval and Renaissance Europe, though patronage can also be traced in feudal Japan, the traditional Southeast Asian kingdoms, and elsewhere"

And which artists got paid for their work? "Artists as diverse and important as Chrétien de Troyes, Leonardo de Vinci and Michelangelo, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson all sought and enjoyed the support of noble or ecclesiastical patrons."

I'm not interested in supporting the x-factor. What I'm interested in is how we support modern Shakespeares and Beethovens. How do we, as a society, reward these artists for their investment of time? Or do we declare that their investment is literally worth nothing, that they should expect no direct reward for their work?

> "The only reason you people keep speaking so disrespectfully of 'amateur' art"

I said "that's valuable and interesting and can produce decent stuff," which is hardly disrespectful. I'm a fiction writer myself. If someone paid me for my work, I could write a lot more and a lot better, because it takes time to create art, and some artworks, like the cistene chapel, take many man-years.

The question remains, though.

- Great art is commissioned for, and bought by people who like it. Beethoven wrote his symphonies on paid time. Homer was almost certainly a paid court poet. Michelangelo only worked on commission.

- Buying copies of art (CDs, posters, etc) is one mechanism allowing folks like you and me to choose which artists to support. It's a kind of 'micro-patronage' system.

- Filesharing reduces the income from selling copies of art.

- This means artists can produce less art for the people, and must either stop, or turn to other sources, like corporations, for patronage.

I suggest that filesharing, then, will have the following effects;

- Normal people lose an ability to 'vote' for art they like -- they can no longer put their money where their mouth is.

- Some artists will become part-timers, producing less art with fewer resources

- Some artists will get patrons; that is, they will turn to corporations, who will commission more McArt.

Please *can* I buy art?

>> "One of the things that you see constantly in this debate is assertions like "if people don't pay for music then there won't be any recorded music" as if this is a big deal."

It really is. I like recorded music, novels, photography, computer software and hardware, comics, movies, and television. If they went away, I would be sad.

Now, I'm willing to pay some money to make that sadness go away. I pay a bit to consume, and someone is willing to invest time to produce. I can have art in my life, because art-makers can afford to invest time making art.

File sharing makes that much harder. If ten people are willing to pay £10 for a piece of art, then the producer gets £100. If nine people decide not to pay, then that one remaining person must pay the £100. They're probably not willing to do so, so the artist doesn't get paid, he quits his job and pushes excel spreadsheets forevermore. And that one guy does not get his art.

File sharing makes it actually impossible for me to pay the producer, except in limited ways. *File sharing effectively deprives a community of the ability to patronise artists.*

Now, there are always people willing to put time in around the edges of their lives -- musicians who record at weekends, people who make little videos in their spare time, amateur photographers -- and that's valuable and interesting and can produce decent stuff. Some forms of art (say, novels) can be produced entirely by one person in a matter of months. Some works, though, require the cooperation of hundreds of people, or tens of man-years of work, or both (movies, tv shows, recorded music, orchestral concerts, etc.) These people are brought together and cooperate because of monetary incentive. How do we fund these cooperating artist-groups? If their products are given away free, CAN I fund this group?

We're not talking about the "current music industry" per se, or "the film studios". We're talking about the ability of anyone to make any money from any digitisable media -- images, music, video, code, blueprints, prose, whatever. Basically, from art or design. If these things can be digitised, and everyone copies them, then their producers simply cannot justify the time they would have invested. Art and design, as a set of professions, may not be supportable.

So what your statement really should look like is this;

>> "One of the things that you see constantly in this debate is assertions like "if people don't pay for art then there will be no art in the world" as if this is a big deal."

That's a big deal.