> Dean Baker has figured out how to eliminate the inefficiency underlying
> copyrights (and patents).
>
> http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/the-artistic-freedom-voucher-internet-age-alternative-to-copyrights
I finally read this, but from my perspective, it doesn't seem like the slam dunk it's made out to be. I haven't had a chance to catch up on the last couple of days of LBOTalk posts on the issue of intellectual property, so maybe I've missed the obvious. Here are some questions/comments I had. I'd love it if someone had answers:
1) I don't see how this proposal is any easier to sell than any other arts funding proposal in recent history. As a tax credit, it takes $20 billion away from federal revenues, so isn't it government support for the arts? There's an exceedingly long history of opposition to arts funding, from "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" to "Piss Christ." What about this proposal makes it any more palatable to the George Donderos and Pat Buchanans of this world?
2) Isn't there a diluting effect in the way the credit is structured? If I was to give an artist $100 today, I might expect to receive five CDs over the course of a year. (Maybe that's too much of one artist's music.) With the pool of work that Baker estimates, in all likelihood, I'd acquire a lot more than 5 CDs, although by a wide variety of artists. When it comes time to give an artist that $100, how would I decide who to give it to? Or is Baker suggesting I could give any amounts up to $100 to any combination of artists I desire?
3) What about demographics? Doesn't the proposal favor artists that fit within a "U.S. taxpayer demographic"? Referring to age, what about artists that appeal to the "tween" demographic? Will young kids be badgering their parents to give their tax credit to J. K. Rowling or Miley Cyrus? This also goes for artists that have better reputations outside our borders. A lot of U.S. "electronica" types have much larger demand for their work in Europe than here, and there's also the Tejano singer that's got five CDs out in Mexico, but still has to work as a carpet layer here in New York State. How are they compensated unless this is adopted globally?
4) Baker also assumes that the cost of realization/distribution is small. If I've composed some works for piano, it's not hard to spend $10k on a "name" performer, studio recording and CD mastering (which doesn't go away just because you're releasing on the Internet.) Once an artist has to factor those kinds of costs, the $40k figure Baker mentions looks a lot smaller as an income.
5) I'm also unclear what this does to performance copyrights: the situation where Charlie Parker records "Lover Man" for Ross Russell, with Ram Ramirez getting the composer royalties, Dial Records holding the performance copyright, and Parker just getting paid for the session. Presumably, the voucher would require an "artist" to work with recording companies that would forgo the performance copyright, but where is the incentive for the company to alter their practice? From what I can imagine, it remains a point of argument between performer and producer: there's remains whole class of artists that are looked on as "performers" and can't get adequately compensated for their work.
6) What about the arts whose result is an object? How does this address the speculative situations that have Bobbie Rauschenberg selling his early works to Robert Scull for $100 a piece, and Scull turning around and selling them for $100,000 in a matter of a couple years? I realize that Baker's plan is about intellectual property, not objecthood, but it's also about funding artists, and I don't see how a plan to do that could leave out such a major section of the creative world.
Baker's plan seems to me to be a "Napster-eyed" view of how to solve the problem of funding creative work: it comes at the issue from the desire to emancipate consumers as "pirates" of intellectual property, and artist incomes fall into line from there. So it looks really great from the viewpoint of the consumer. But what about as a call to organize artists around a vision of fair compensation for their creative contributions? From my perspective, it not so enticing. How could you organize artists around Baker's plan?
Best, Charles