The thing about modern copyright is that works are supposedly protected regardless of the copyright symbol. But how does that work in practice? Because if everything is copyrighted, including something as simple as a doddle, then nothing is.
Copyright Doesn’t Provide A ‘Living’ For A Successful Author
Submitted 1 month ago by PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat to workreform@lemmy.world
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/12/23/copyright-doesnt-provide-a-living-for-a-successful-author/
Comments
tonytins@pawb.social 1 month ago
fubbernuckin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
if everything is copyrighted, including something as simple as a doodle, then nothing is.
Care to explain? If I make something that inherently has copyright, then if you copy it I can take action.
tonytins@pawb.social 1 month ago
Well, before the 90s, copyright was defined by a copyright symbol and publication date. Now, that symbol is merely a formality, which kinda defeats the purpose of why it was there in the first place. And, I mean, good luck policing the internet.
Anyway, copyright was only formed for monetization reasons in exchange for protection, and works were supposed to enter into the public domain within a decade or two. If that was still the case, we wouldn’t need Patreon.
Bronzebeard@lemm.ee 1 month ago
This makes absolutely zero sense
Godnroc@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I believe the default assumption is that anything you created is yours, which seems reasonable to me. I don’t need to be DaVinci for my doodles to be mine, the quality or value of the work does not change that it is mine.
Now, imagine someone took your doodles and started selling them in a book they called “1000 of the Worst Fucking Failures of Art.” That would probably be offensive to you, and on top of it they are profiting off of your work (regardless of how much you actually put in).
Copyright gives you a tool to combat them legally to get your art removed or even damages if you were now known as “That person who tried and failed horribly to make art.” There is a saying along the lines of doing 1000 good deeds is good, but you fuck one goat and you’ll be known as a Goat Fucker.
You could, of course, fail to defend your copyright which, in some places, is seen as acceptance of how it is being used. You could also release the copyright and allow the work to enter the public domain so that anyone can use it for any purpose, including their worst art book.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It took her 12 years to write a book! That’s not a successful author, that’s a hobbyist.
Look at an actual successful author like Nora Roberts. Since the start of 2012 she’s published 57 books!
And before you say “there’s no way those 57 books are as good as the one book which took 12 years to write” let’s look at reviews on Goodreads:
The Actual Star by Monica Byrne (2704 ratings for a 3.88 average rating).
Private Scandals (2012) by Nora Roberts (10151 ratings for a 4.01 average rating).
And that’s just one random book I picked by her. Many of them are way more popular than that (hundreds of thousands of ratings on Goodreads).
The point is: if you want to make money as an author (of books, video games, YouTube videos) you can’t ignore your own productivity. Taking 12 years to write a 624 page book is extremely unproductive! That’s 4383 days (including leap years) to write 624 pages for an average of 1 page per week. A part time newspaper columnist writes several times that output and probably spends no more than an hour or two working on it.
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 1 month ago
She writes full-time, maintains her own streams of writing income separate from royalties. And, if she’d written this book in one year, she’d be making $40k/year. And, she points out that her book income is in the top 20% of writers.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Book sales, like almost everything else based on popularity, follow a power law distribution. This means that having a book in the top 20% of all books by earnings is not that great considering that the bottom 80% of books earn basically nothing.
qyron@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
I call that bullshit. Smells like ghost writers from afar.
quixotic120@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I knew a lot of musicians like this in my younger days before I gave up on my music dreams
The ones who grinded everyday for 8-10 hours writing and practicing? They’d write you a song in a day or two
Dudes who sat around “until inspiration hit”? They would have a new song randomly like every 6 months or so, sometimes garbage, sometimes solid. But if you asked them to write for you? Flake and missed deadlines regardless of what you’re paying