undefined | Better HN

0 points4111111111111112y ago0 comments

You state this as a fact, but it's actually much less certain wherever it's ever been net-positive.

It was probably intended that way, but the reality is that the power has been with the publisher since the beginning, and they've absolutly been screwing over the author's as well. Only the most successful author's have gotten decent deals.

I don't have an answer to this either though, i just wanted to point out that copyright has arguably never been successful at getting money to the content creators proportional to the value the Publisher extracted from the work either.

0 comments

Auracle2y ago

The only way you’d know is to A/B test with a country with no copyright, and see how their authors get by.

My guess is extremely poorly. Again, the biggest might be fine. Instead of publishers paying fairly little to authors they could just literally take the best books and print them, taking all of the profits…not to mention ebooks.

I’m not an author so I can’t speak to how much publishers make, but I’d assume that if one was way better than the others in how much they’re distribute to authors all of the best authors would jump ship. Markets have a way of working things out.

A lot of people want to be authors, and any time that happens - game dev, teachers, musicians, etc. - you’re going to take on a bit of extra hardship compared to other jobs.

cesarb2y ago

> The only way you’d know is to A/B test with a country with no copyright, and see how their authors get by.

According to https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-... we already had that A/B experiment.

411111111111111OP2y ago

I'm not saying that it would be better for authors without copyright. That would indeed be hard to ascertain without a/b testing.

My point was that it doesn't improve their lives, and that's much easier to check in isolation just by reading the news about the current writers strike and how the industry just ignores it until fall, expecting their savings to run out.

Really, copyright just doesn't give the content creators any meaningful power as this right is generally owned by the industry/publisher, not the authors.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse