As someone with a humanities education (literature specifically) I feel like I've studied more than the average reader here about the particulars of famous printed works from the past. And that background says "bullshit" in response to your questions. Throughout history publishers have exploited authors mercilessly in an effort to keep ALL of the profit from their writing.

In short, the answer to your hypothetical question is quite simple. All of these people you're addressing have code, and have original ideas. You on the other hand are just a publisher, you don't have any original work at all. You're nothing but a middle man.

There are no more middle managers at toaster and television distributors in the developed world, sitting at desks filling out reports by hand and ordering fresh stocks of paperclips and staples. We got rid of those people when we modernized supply chains and in the process cut the prices of microwaves and televisions so that they're not luxury items anymore.

Similarly, there's not going to be any room for publishing middle men for very long either. If I were you I'd find a new line of work.

I made five figures by selling my book via a small publisher.

I know authors who sold their books via big publishers and they made magnitudes less money than me while selling magnitudes more copies than me.

To me this sounds like a broken system.

If the occasional developer working for free finds a profitable idea, the Google or Microsoft would pay them well under what that person requires to survive for one year, plus a small (less than 10%) residual royalty only after the developer has "paid back" the less-than-one-year amount which the Google or Microsoft called an advance rather than payment for the original work.

The only way the working-for-free developer could survive would be to teach other developers who also aspire to work for free, and in so doing suppress their urge to tell those students to go do quite literally anything else more productive, because succumbing to that moral urge would result in less students, which is the only way the developer can pay for rent and groceries.

Publisher denotes a person, who presumably has power over another person in this context. The assumption present in the definition of the term is that a content creator, artist, whatever you want to call them cannot communicate with their audience unless a person between audience and artist assumes control/ownership of its distribution. Publishing, as a verb not a noun, is another matter entirely. No one is arguing that publishing will cease to exist. Even extended in context to include marketing people, I'm sure the vast majority of people here will concede that marketing people serve a viable role in their business.

But the vocation of publishing is the only one remaining from the medieval/ancient world in which publishers demand ownership of the material being published, under highly dubious terms. We do not give ownership of car factories to car salesmen, simply because they sell cars. Nor do we give ownership of parks and streets to politicians, simply because they write laws governing their use and levy taxes to maintain them.

What stopped print publishers from selling devices like the Kindle before Amazon did? Nothing. What stopped newspaper publishers from building nationwide advertising networks before AOL and Google did? Nothing. What stopped the RIAA from building iTunes or Napster before Apple or Napster did? Nothing. What stopped the MPAA from building Netflix before Netflix did? Nothing. Mere decades ago, all of those publishing consortiums had infinitely more resources available to them to assert dominance over these new markets than those upstarts who have since supplanted them.

If your contribution to the livelihood of your own business has been a steady stream of nothings for about 30-40 years, you tend to get in fiscal trouble in this day and age...

This is a joke right?

There is absolutely a place for publishers, which is why they still exist fifteen years after anti-copyright campaigners said they'd be done in five.

If authors decide not to go to publishers and publish directly you'll have a point. Broadly, they don't.

How would you feel if some aging industry held back the creation of the society of the future simply because they don't belong in it?

The entire publishing industry has been rendered obsolete by modern technology. They exist to make and distribute copies of books. We have far better ways to do that now. The only reason they still exist is the fact they own the intellectual property. The government has granted them a monopoly that will last over a hundred years. That is literally the only reason why they're able to compete with vastly superior technology.

The truth is copyright makes no sense in the 21st century. When copyright was created, people had to be major industry players in order to make copies at scale. People needed industrial hardware like printing presses. This is no longer the case: everyone has at least one computer, making copies now costs $0 and is as easy as copy paste. Once the data is known it's trivial to make copies and distribute them. People infringe copyright every day without even realizing it.

Only the first copy must be paid for. Authors must find a way to get paid before they write their books. Crowdfunding and patronage might be the answer. Creation must be like an investment rather than a product to be sold. Insisting on maintaning the archaic copyright industry means ignoring reality.

Get paid before making something. Using crowd funding one might not even be obligated to deliver. A serious attempt to make something can be good enough.

There are monthly donations for those who continue to demonstrate relevant qualities. It's a bit like a job contract with a hundred or a thousand employers.

I think we will eventually figure out a system where we can collectively order a work and pay for it after delivery. Perhaps with a series of deadlines.

Strange thoughts: Books still have their value over digital media in that they are a robust storage medium and you can re-sell the copy. It should at least in theory be possible to reduce the number of copies printed to a point where value is preserved. If a book in a good state is new or not shouldn't matter to the customer.

When will the publishing industry finally accept that it exists in a world where counting copies made doesn't work as a business model anymore?

Technology isn't going away. The business models will have to change. Some businesses will fail. Some creators will have tragic outcomes. Some works will never be created. Entire classes of works might never be created again.

re: "...took my output without permission..." - I choose not to deal in "intellectual property". I've arguably left money on the table by not. I've chosen not to pursue projects that involved selling licenses for "intellectual property"-- projects that had a decent shot of profitability.

Under the current terms of US copyright I consider it a tainted and morally questionable business. It's not one I want to participate in.

I also have deep moral concerns with the idea that a creator should somehow be entitled to be paid again and again for work done once.

The 3% increase in ebook licensing revenue from 2018 to 2019 was an absolutely increase of ~20 million pounds. That doesn't absorb event a quarter of the decrease in print sales. Given the relative price parity between the two, I'd say that people who aren't purchasing print books aren't licensing ebooks, by and large, either.

Unless the book publishing industry can come up with some analog to subscription streaming services, or can use their lobby to kill general purpose computing devices, I don't think the long game looks very good for their business model. Video and audio media are well suited to the streaming market because there's enough inconvenience in making infringing copies to make paying license feeds worthwhile (at least, with current media file sizes and network speeds).

I don't think ebooks have as strong a value proposition for paying the license fee vs. making an infringing copy.

Paper copies have a few important advantages. They do not distract me. Do not run out of battery, and I can use visual and physical clues for finding topics, see my progress, make notes, etc.

Five years of using Kindle, proved that even a dedicated e-reader in no ways can provide a similar experience. So, at least for a niche printed copies would be a thing for quite some time.

You would do away with the ability of developers to license their software?

While I'm somewhat ambiguous about this IA matter, the example you bring up is rather unconvincing on HN.

I, just like many other fellow users here, publish our code (both end product and tools) to public, and to organizational, Git repositories.

We have structured our work and our contracts with customers to get paid for the services rendered[1], not the number of zeroes & ones (nor files nor LoC nor other incidental artifacts). It's not only doable, it's also the arrangement closest to fair & morally right we have found so far.

--

[1] yes, including some upfront payments where circumstances warrant it

Sure, but that code is generally tied to a license. Very rarely are people releasing things into the public domain. All that code people are releasing are being released with the support of copyright. In fact, people here on HN and other communities very much oppose people taking things without permission. I challenge you to demonstrate otherwise with your own repositories.

That's a whataboutist tangent, but let's entertain it for a while.

The copyright law is usually restrictive, in the form of "everything which is not explicitly allowed is forbidden", and some of the openings - like Fair Use - are somewhat contentious. Thus a specially crafted free license is used to make the work legally accessible & reusable in an unambiguous way in such legal environment.

A free license for software is generally used to unambiguously establish the legal status - that simplifies dealing, especially for organizations and professionals. It effectively increases ability to access and re-use the software [1].

A license & copyright information is used to convey authorship and guarantee certain author's rights, like the right to attribution. Some licenses (eg. copyleft) are also used to prevent certain misuses (eg. tivoization), again with aim of increasing availability of the software for access and re-use.

Conversely, releasing into public domain (which is a limited legal concept, not available in certain countries) runs with the risk of somebody else slapping a restrictive license on the code and making it unavailable via legal mechanisms.

Free licensing is not only about improving availability and protecting the author and the reuser, it's also about preventing subsequent yanking of the code via machinations by a 3rd party.

While those concerns are valid and need taking care of, pretty sure they aren't at the stake in the IA vs book authors discussion. They aren't mentioned in the OP either.

>In fact, people here on HN and other communities very much oppose people taking things without permission. I challenge you to demonstrate otherwise with your own repositories.

Ah yes, a challenge to prove a negative. I'll rise to it right after solving the halting problem :^)

> That's a whataboutist tangent

Yeah, you brought it up. Not me. You can't talk about something and ignore the part of that element that is integral to the conversation. Putting code up on GitHub does not make it freely reusable without restrictions.

Regardless, nothing you said disputes what I said. The public domain issue can easily be overcome by assigning a license with no restrictions for those places that don't abide by public domain, and while companies can put that code behind a non-free license, it doesn't make the original code anything less than public domain.

> Thus a specially crafted free license is used to make the work legally accessible & reusable in an unambiguous way in such legal environment.

Most all still impose restrictions and requirements that when violated, people last out against. You can argue whatever you want. Reality wins.

And, the best part is this:

> ...it's also about preventing subsequent yanking of the code via machinations by a 3rd party... They aren't mentioned in the OP either.

> How would you feel if someone took your output without permission, whether it's designs or code or something else unique and hard to make?

I mean, you haven't even addressed this concern. You just flat out ignore it. None of the shared code you have allows for someone taking your output and doing what hey will with it without your permission. And pretty much no one here on HN allows for that with their code.

> Ah yes, a challenge to prove a negative.

Or, you could simply release all your code into the public domain and a license that doesn't impose any restrictions or requirements. Not at all proving a negative. Back up what you are saying. That's all it would take to do what I asked.

> I'll rise to it right after solving the halting problem :^)

Would be more productive than your comment.

That's only to work around the fact that relevant governments are incompetent to send corporations and executives to prison for source code fraud. (That is, providing software exclusively in a form - such as a service like Office 365, physical device like a shitphone, or build artifact like a .exe file - that is not fit for use due to the practical inability to perform maintainance and further software development on it.)

I have a problem with copyright being transferable. The purpose of copyright is to encourage the creators. If you transfer a copyright or license it out, its term should get shortened dramatically. "Congratulations--you got a payout. Now make something new."

I have a problem with copyright outliving the author by very much. There will be no further output to incentivize, so why does the copyright persist?

I have a problem with multi-decade copyrights overall. I have a lot less problem with people asking for strong copyright enforcement if it only lasts 20 years.

I also have a problem with multi-decade copyright because it allows corporations to simply sit on works rather than licensing them because everybody is afraid that it might become popular and then they'll get fired--we've irretrievably lost movies and music because nobody would license them and then the vault they were sitting in burned.

I would be far more sympathetic to the "publishing industry" if they were an active opponent to the abusiveness of copyright law. Instead they are merely rent-seekers abusing the system.

That would devalue the copyright and creators would get compensated less. This also applies to a lesser extent to your other problems. Copyright outliving the author increases the value of the copyright even when the author still lives.

I also have many problems with copyright law as it stands now, but the problems are in the details, not in the principle of copyright being transferable, or of copyrights outliving the creators per se.

Um, tough?

The point of copyright isn't to create a perpetual rent ... it's to incentivize new creation.

For example, George R. R. Martin might actually finish his books rather than dragging them out as a meal ticket if the copyright only lasted 10 years past transfer (the moment where the TV show got posted). Or perhaps he might start a new series that might be better.

I'm not seeing the downside to society from giving creators incentive to produce rather than rent seek.

There are absolutely valid questions around how much diminishing that compensation affects innovation, and around the marginal value of each year of copyright validity.

The way I envision it, there is a baseline of innovation. I.e. innovation that would occur with or without copyright. For each year added to copyright length, I assume that some amount of compensation to the copyrighter is added (although the marginal compensation likely follows a bell curve). There is also some degree of cost, as other people are unable to innovate on top of those copyrighted works.

I think we can both agree, there are people who innovate because of the potential compensation. There are also people who will not innovate because of the lack of compensation. The lack of investment and innovation in antibiotic medicines is a good example of this.

The question is the optimal balance between compensating people who innovate and allowing other innovaters to build on prior work.

Academics have already calculated the optimal balance, in particular the optimal copyright term. It's probably in the region of the original 14 years instead of the current ~150. https://rufuspollock.com/papers/optimal_copyright_term.pdf

I believe that being able to profit strictly from control of intellectual property is on the decline and will ultimately disappear. "Payment for access" to IP will be outcompeted by easy and ubiquitous technology for IP distribution (and thus infringement). I believe we'll move back to a world of primarily "payment for genesis".

You want to make money as an author? Then find a way to say "hey world, I'll write a great book about XYZ if I get PQR money." In the same way software developers say "hey, you want this piece of software? I'll write XYZ software if I'm paid PQR money."

It's a brutally huge change to the historical way publishing's done and the way artists earn a living. But it's already happening and I believe it'll only accelerate.

The future is "payment for genesis" not "payment for control".

There is no incentive to invest substantial resources in development if there is no ability to profit.

Ever hear of this hip new thing called FOSS?

Is there something morally objectionable you find going on here, or are you just bringing up 'rights' and 'laws of the United States' because these fairly arbitrary laws happen to benefit you?

> How would you feel if someone took your output without permission, whether it's designs or code or something else unique and hard to make?

Let's be clear - we are not talking about taking something away from someone. We are talking about copying something. And I would be fine with that.

> How would you feel if people cheered this on, or called for your demise, suggesting that the world would be a better place without your work?

How is copying something a suggestion that the world would be a better place without that thing? That's completely backwards.

> Finally, even if you don't personally care for the book industry, try to show some respect for what we're doing, and the legal and business frameworks we need to do what we do.

What? Why should I show respect for something I'm against and don't like? 'Even if you don't like the cigarette business, please show some respect for what they're doing.' How about no?

1. Did they legally acquire the books they scanned?

2. Are they only allowing one subscriber at a time to check out/read the book?

If so, then they are doing exactly what libraries do. To argue that there's some fundamental difference between a physical book and an electronic book is exactly why people hate the music industry, and if the publishing industry tries to go in the same direction, they'll get the same results.

That would have been fine if the power balance wasn't severely tilted in favour of the publishers.

Most of them are greedy rent-seeker middle-men that do much more harm to the interests of the creators compared to if they tried to self-publish.

I am not doubting you in particular. An indie publisher is likely more ethical than most mainstream publishers. But you have to recognise that you have a vested financial interest and that this might make you skip the bigger picture, which is...

...that a lot of programmers are creators. We also have "publishers" (middle-men) in terms of bad employers or hiring mediators, so you maybe should make an analogy targetting them.

Copyright is clearly not working for humanity because a lot of people constantly try and break it. Maybe somebody should open their eyes for that fact and think of another paradigm. We can dream.

I can't wait until your market deflates enough that even the big guns don't have the money to push for this bullshit.

And I totally understand his frustration. It's one thing to have pirating websites that have always distributed copyrighted material illegally. But for IA to decide that they only play by the rules when they want to is different imo. Not only is it bait and switch but it's also just weird to pretend to follow the law when you don't.

Imagine your boss deciding that you just won't get compensated for a few months because they decided to give away for free the software you worked on. If IA wanted to give away other people's work , it's still up to them to foot the bill.

It's not even that I'm totally against piracy, it's just that when I pirate I realize I'm not compensating the author and that if I like the stuff I'll try to do that later. Even the cracking scene tries to put notices on the torrents that if you like what you downloaded, consider supporting the creators.

With how IA presents it's whole program, there's no way to explicitly know that the authors have had no say in the emergency library beforehand and that they don't get compensated . IA looks benevolent but the authors don't.

If I lend a book I own to a friend, the author doesn't get compensated again. It's my book, not the authors, and I can let anybody I want read it.

There has never been an expectation that authors get compensated for each person who reads a book. The system has never worked like that. A book is a physical object and authors get compensated for each physical book that gets sold.

It's only with the recent advent of ebooks in recent decades that "pay per reader" has even become technologically possible. Since the 90s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Lending_Right

The Danish system works only because the state has agreed to foot the bill for whatever amount of money gets transferred to publishers.

> In Denmark, library book loans fell from 34 million in 2000 to around 28 million in 2014. 38 E-lending has increased rapidly in Denmark since the launch of its eReolen national public library e-lending platform in 2011, but e-lending still only represented just over 2% of all book loans in 2014.39 Interestingly, eReolen has seen a surprising expansion in the number electronically loaned audiobooks, which are now outperforming e-books in the eReolen’s monthly loan statistics.

https://www.statewatch.org/news/2017/dec/ep-study-e-lending.... https://www.kirjastot.fi/sites/default/files/content/Rapport...

With regard to libraries and eBooks there are two common licenses. One, libraries can loan one copy of one book out at a time n number of times, then they can rebuy it. Similar to a physical book that degrades due to wear. Two, libraries can loan n number of copies of a book out for a fixed per-loan fee.

this phrasing confused me for a minute, so to clarify: do you mean that if libraries could magically create infinite copies of a book, they wouldn't be allowed to exist, and are only tolerated because their presumed impact on copies-sold is limited?

Libraries are allowed to only lend the number of books they have bought because it's a good compromise between public interest and copyright protection. It has nothing to do with scarcity.

Libraries didn't get the right to make copies of books when copyright was invented, simply because libraries didn't need an exemption - it's cheaper to buy another copy than to maintain printing capability.

I don't think that's true. As far as I'm aware, we're talking dollars, not cents. For mass-market paperbacks, it's less than that, but that's the opposite of small scale.

what would they print? they don't have the original "master" file for the book, scans look bad and take time and OCR-ing a scan is error-prone

honestly i don't find this convincing... i think if small-scale printing made economic sense (and was something people want), you'd see bootleg books, despite the illegality. digital piracy is mostly illegal and that hardly stops people

Currently, it takes greater than 2 average lifetimes for a work to transfer into the public domain and copyrights have been extended something like 12 times due to Disney's lobbying; there is a strong argument that that current copyright law is forever.

What interest does the public have in copyright that transfers nothing into the public domain? The "mainstream media" is in fact a publishing oligopoly of 4 companies (Ref: Media Monopoly by Ben Bagdikian). Furthermore, a 20TB HDD can store enough movies you can watch 3 a night for 2 decades; in 20 years time it'll be possible to store every newspaper clipping, TV Broadcast, movie and song on a desktop computer and in 40 on a thumb drive.

Congress and Businesses have neglected the publics interest, and due to that the public is using technology to wipe their arse with the law and rightfully so. The "Legal and Business frameworks" are outdated, orwellian cultural astroturfing exercises supported that are counterproductive to the operation of a disciplined, free society. Go read Vietnam and Korean era Psychological warfare manuals and tell me they are not blueprints for how a modern news org works.

When Mickey Mouse is free, I'll respect what you are doing. Until then, don't come sobbing to me. Nobody cares.

The output of my work is finally money and more than half is taken away from me; most people agree with this and quite a lot think I should be left with even less. It is called taxes and please don't tell me it's not the same because it is the output of my work and it is taken away without permission, so it is the same word for word.

As long as I sell work for money, profit is not my problem as long as I am paid in full. For taxes I don't get a better deal, it depends a lot on the country you live, in my country I get almost nothing.

Capitalism.

I want authors I connect with to be paid, but the best way of doing this is paying for their living expenses independent of their publishing schedule. All the while voluntarily promoting their public persona to my peers.

Direct "sales" of information only deserves to have a future insofar as the buyer of the information gets important social signaling value from it, per GitHub sponsorships.

It isn't limited to GitHub sponsorships, either. Use your imagination. Use your grasp of modern technology.

In the publishing model of the future, authorship is financially compensated based on how much social signaling value their readers derive from monetary patronage.

Rather than paywalling my work, or hyping it up using immoral sales psychology techniques which are extractive not contributory, I would much prefer rewarding individual patrons, who opt to voluntarily pay for any of my work, with social credibility. I think that's healthier for everyone, and I fully trust online communities dedicated to information consumption will be better than I am at packaging my information for further public consumption and distributing it far more widely than I could ever achieve as a lone individual.

that has happened to me all the damn time and quite frankly I've stopped caring so boo effin hoo.

we live in a postindustrial society.

People have value extracted from them without due compensation every single day.

Just be glad you're getting your slice of the pie as it is