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Artistic Freedom Vouchers Proposed 314

Posted by CowboyNeal from the virtual-tip-jars dept.
Corvus writes "Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research has written a paper proposing a system giving everyone a voucher which they could use to support the creative artist/writer/etc of their choice, as a way of avoiding the intrusiveness and inefficiency of the current copyright system." I'm sure I'd use mine on MC Chris.
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Artistic Freedom Vouchers Proposed More

Artistic Freedom Vouchers Proposed

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  • AFV == Good (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dolo666 ( 195584 ) * on Saturday November 08, 2003 @04:39PM (#7425335) Journal
    Before we get a whole bunch of people bitching about how this might be a kind of popularity contest, note this quote from the article: "Under plausible assumptions, the savings from reduced expenditures on copyrighted material would vastly exceed the cost of the AFV."

    Public domain software saves everyone money. It's about time something like this AFV came along and hammered out the details on how to achieve it in a way that's cost effective.

    I don't know about you, but my first voucher will go to the person who invented AFV.

    From the article: "There would be two alternative mechanisms through which individuals could use their voucher. As one option they could have the funds paid directly by the government to the creative worker or intermediary of their choice, by indicating their selection on a tax form. Alternatively, they could pay an amount equal to the voucher directly to the creative worker or intermediary of their choice, and then file for a refundable credit on their tax return."

    That's amazing. I hope Canada adpots this as law, and I will vote for any left-friendly politician who supports it.
    • I will vote for any left-friendly politician who supports it.

      Are you lefty politicians better than ours south of you? Ours usually think that the "D" in front of their names in the congressional roster means "Disney". Frankly, I've got slightly more hope of the "righties" getting it.

    • my first voucher will go to the person who invented AFV

      ...instead of any artist whose music you enjoy, demonstrating why this half-baked idea won't work. Not for artists, anyway - I have hundreds upon hundreds of names in my collection, I perfer micropayments to each rather than having to give the whole pot to one of them, shutting the others out of the music biz. If I were in a monopoly position and had a large advertising budget, like say, the RIAA, I'm pretty sure I could use this system to make it

      • Even worse, they can feel free to rip off anyone, so you'll invariably get great songwriters starving to death while Britney and Justin sing their songs. Many people will abandon art as a career altogether since they can expect no protection for anything the sweat over.

        Why not just allow people to spend "money they have" on "music and art?" This "freedom" voucher (freedom from income for a lot of artists) idea takes the worst of socialism (as opposed to the less worse parts ;))and adds a tiny bit of free
        • The RIAA and music shares are focussed almost exclusively on the top 40 artists. No one seems to be noticing that thousands opon thousands of artists in the free market are now hawking limited run CDs. Anymore, you can cast an extra vote for your favorite local bands by buying a CD directly from the band when you attend their concerts.

          The problem we have now is that a left leaning sub group is intent on undermining the music community by building an expectation that all music must be free...just like road
      • What about putting more than one name on the voucher ? Then the value gets divided upon them. With nowadays information system this could be implemented without too much of a cost (hopefully).
    • I understand how this would work for independant artists contributing to the public domain, but what about all the others, who are bound by exclusive contracts (if not worse - *cough*workforhire*cough*) ?

      I suggest the system gets extended to them, except that the money would then come from the majors, instead of tax returns from the Government.

      Before you complain, yes, I know the RIAA will fight this to the death...

  • A more realistic and effective idea (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08, 2003 @04:40PM (#7425341)
    Can be found here. [penny-arcade.com]

  • So let's say I consider myself an artist... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Teppy ( 105859 ) * on Saturday November 08, 2003 @04:41PM (#7425350) Homepage
    Can I use my voucher to support myself?

  • Just Wondering (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jameth ( 664111 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @04:43PM (#7425356)
    How they determine who you can give it to?

    I mean, my kid made this awesome finger-painting, so I wanna give the money to him, and thus to me, so I can use it, and I'm not being greedy or anything...really.

    Seriously. How do they define someone who can receive these? Can I give mine to Linus?
    • "Can I give mine to Linus?"

      Not unless he renounce the GPL, which requires copyright. This is what the article wants to abolish.
      • In fact, once he was recieving the money, Linus could probably not work on the Kernel at all. The AFV would compel his work to be the public domain, but any changes to the kernel have to licensed under the GPL.
      • Under this system the GPL would not longer be needed since everything would be in the public domain there is no risk of a corporation stealing it an closing it up.

        • Re:Just Wondering (Score:2, Informative)

          by monkeyfamily ( 161555 )
          No, the GPL would still be needed and still need copyright to back it up. Source in the public domain can be used as the basis for a closed source project with intentional incompatibilities. Imagine if MS could take the linux source, add a MS compatibility layer that breaks interoperability with regular linux apps, and then market it as Windows LX. Their fork now has a corp with billions to develop it, but the public no longer gets the advantages source access gives. Without copyright, MS can still jus

    • Re:Just Wondering (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jadavis ( 473492 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:18PM (#7425533)
      Agreed!

      This really would just create a "buddy system" where everyone registered with the feds and everyone exchanges with their friend.

      We live in a demand-based economy. Demand is measured with money. It's really hard to determine the demand for something creative with money, because it's not exclusive property. It's not worth $1M to me to develop some some software to use, but it's worth $1 to 1M people to have the software available.

      The solution to me seems to be large groups supporting the system by agreement and pledges. Some people equate this like a government with taxes, but I don't think that's the right approach. The problem with that approach is that the powers we've conceded to the government were designed to protect us against more substantial harm, like someone stealing from us or hurting us physically.

      Maybe the copyright idea will work, but we need to organize into large groups. Maybe the techies organize a software group that develops software, and anyone inside the group has copyright, but has to apy a yearly fee. No legislative changes, just citizens acting in an organized way.

      We don't want to get the government involved with laws an so forth... they will skew demand, and they have powers entirely unnecessary for this type of situation (i.e. jail time and guns aren't really appropriate for this type of situation). The government will still have to enforce the copyrights to encourage people to join these groups (and pay the fees that support, e.g. software), but it's going to be an entirely different scene, I can promise that.

      U.S. citizens need to stop relying on the federal government to perform every citizen organizational function. We're free, and we need to excercize our freedom to associate. If we let the government in on this one any more, they're just going to screw it up even more.

      • The solution to me seems to be large groups supporting the system by agreement and pledges.

        This has been tried before [pbs.org]. Can you imagine: you're running Linux, and once a year, for a week, Linux stops running ten minutes an hour and bombards you with messages in which Betty White asks you to send money to support this quality program. Send in $30 and get a mug, send in $100 and get a lovely coffee-table book.

        Software supported by ... users like you.
    • Can I give mine to Linus?

      I find Schroeder to be much more worthy of an artistic voucher. Man, that kid can wail on the piano.

  • A good alternative to the NEA (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    IMO, the National Endowment of the Arts is a waste of taxpayer money, because it blindly pays some unsuccessful artists. This would be a good alternative; give the funding to the artists whose work people actualy like.

    • Re:Not an alternative to the NEA (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jameth ( 664111 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @04:50PM (#7425391)
      Heck No! Not a replacement at all!

      Without funding for unsuccessful artists trying random crap, you get recycled crap. And, yes, I honestly prefer random crap to recycled crap.

      The NEA is still useful, as the majority of people have shitty taste. Just using this vouchers system would result in most of the money going to Britney and N'Sync. And then, I'd have to kill myself (shortly preceded by a few hundred random idiots).

  • Maybe? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by TubeSteak ( 669689 )
    Its an interesting idea, but its essentially creating a gov't subsidy for 'artists' or at a minimum, the support of artists. We already have a system like this, its called going to the show or buying a shirt and its not a gov't based cash incentive. moving along, this is not, in and of itself a terrible idea, but if the program increases, thats more tax revenue down the toilet. Most important, the idea is just one big IF, because as we all know, the music, tv, and movie industries have a fantastically well

  • I love it, but...let's be realistic (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Gothic_Walrus ( 692125 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @04:50PM (#7425387) Journal
    As great as this idea is, it will never happen. The RIAA, MPAA, and the entertainment industry in general will blow their tops if anything similar to this appears in front of Congress.

    That said, I love this idea. Do actors and musicians really need millions to live on? No. $40,000 a year should be enough for most of them. Live with one car! One house! Don't buy $1,000 suits! Live like a normal American! You don't NEED to be rich to have a good life!

    Beyond that...free is always good. I still don't think it will happen, but I'll support it wholeheartedly if someone tries to make it so.

    /my $.02

    • Re:I love it, but...let's be realistic (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mutewinter ( 688449 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:10PM (#7425493)
      "In exchange for receiving AFV support, creative workers would be ineligible for copyright protection for a significant period of time (e.g. five years)"

      Though I am a strong advoate of copyright/patent reform myself, that does not mean copyright is useless. Without copyright Microsoft could take GPL'ed code, slap it in their software and sell it. Without copyright I, as a painter, could post images on a message board and some 15 year old could rip it off and win some art contest with it (ok, so this has happened anyways.) The point is, abolishing copyright altogether is going to solve very few problems. Copyright needs to be a tool for society as a whole.

      Vouchers? I'm not sure if I can use any adjectives to describe this without a lot of %&#@! To put it bluntly this idea is just dumb. If I want to be a n artist I shouldn't have to register with the government to get re-imbersed. "Sorry Mr. John Doe, but your song 'Fuck Bush' disqualify's you from recieving vouchers." Hell, forget censorship, perhaps the makers of GTA3 will just be ineligable for vouchers.

      $40k a year? Music, ok, but movies? With budgets in the hundreds of millions whose going to be getting all that capital? What a mess.

      Lets take a step away rather than a step toward becoming more dependant on government.
      • "Without copyright I, as a painter, could post images on a message board and some 15 year old could rip it off and win some art contest with it (ok, so this has happened anyways.)"

        That is plagiarism, and copyright isn't needed to protect against that. If that 15 year old copied a 200-year-old painting (i.e. copyright no longer applies), pretending it was original, he would be kicked out of the contest if the organizers were told the truth. Anybody is free to copy art, music or novels that are no longer
      • Yeah, ultimately vouchers just won't be effective.

        School vouchers, while some might disagree with the idea, at least makes sense. You can measure, to some degree, whether the school is teaching students facts, or just blowing it all on pizza parties. With art, no can do. The whole point of art is that it can't really be measured, so you can't certify someone as an "artist" and deny to someone who's just giving the money to their friend (directly or indirectly).

      • Without copyright Microsoft could take GPL'ed code, slap it in their software and sell it.

        How can they sell it without any copyright?

        Without copyright I, as a painter, could post images on a message board and some 15 year old could rip it off and win some art contest with it (ok, so this has happened anyways.)

        Laws against plagiarism do not depend on copyright law, so this is statement is nonsense. (The kid cannot turn in work by Leonardo Da Vinci and claim to be the painter even though that work has n
      • Let's get a couple of things straight. Under the AFV plan:
        • The gov't has no creative filter, just a system to make sure each person's only in the system once, and that real people submit their own work into the public domain in return for AFVs
        • Each citizen can direct their AFV toward whoever they choose. This means that really popular artists, or groups of artists like you need to make a movie, will get vastly more than $40k a year, and that people just noodling around in their spare time might pick up a

  • Secondary Market for AFV (Score:5, Interesting)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @04:50PM (#7425392)
    Interesting idea. I wonder how long it will take before a secondary market forms to buy/sell these vouchers. Since the cost of vouncher to the owner is less than voucher's benefit to the artist, there is opportunity for the sale of voucher rights. For example, an artist might pay $10 (up to $99 if the artist is in a 0% tax bracket) to people to sign their $100 voucher over them. The voucher owner gets cash and a tax break, the "artist" gets $100 minus what they paid to buy the vouncher.

  • I see on major weakness. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by amcnabb ( 682951 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @04:52PM (#7425397) Homepage
    In the article he said that under the current system a minority of the artists are making a majority of the money. I think that under the proposed system this would not be solved and might be even worse. There is a small number of artists that most people consider their favorites, and people would tend to elect for their money to go to them rather than going to all of the people they listen to. So the most popular artists would still make tons, and few people would send money to the little guys. The proposed system of intermediaries might help a little, but I still think that come April 15, most people would just write down the first name that they think of.

  • I'm sure I'd use mine on
    MC Chris [mcchris.com].

    On a whim I thought I would check out MC Chris and try and find any music
    samples I could listen too. I found
    one [mcchris.com] and I have to say that
    is the worst thing my ears have ever heard. Did I mention I work weekends
    at a karaoke bar? We have regulars that think they're going to be
    discovered there, and this guy sounds about 10 times worse.

  • What happens when most people don't bother?

    I mean, most people don't vote for president, or bother with much of anything else. How would they make this easy enough to do that it would be resilient to fraud and commonly done?

  • Vouchers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JamesKPolk ( 13313 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @04:53PM (#7425404) Homepage
    We already have a system of vouchers which can be given to artists, who in turn can exchange them for goods and services. Those vouchers are called "money."
    • But how do I give this money to artists directly? Everytime I try to it seems like this mysterious group of people wearing black coats that say things like "MPAA", "Producer", "Agent", and "Record Label" mug me and take 99% of the money away. By the time I get to the artists house to give my voucher to him, all he gets is a little nip off the corner.
    • Yes, but that stops working if people can get the goods for free over file-sharing networks. This proposal is trying to solve that problem, as well as do away with copyright, which some people would like to see axed.
    • Yes, but giving artists money costs us money, and therefore we won't do it without an incentive. The incentive used to be that we would get a copy of the artistic work, but on the Internet where any artistic work can be copied instantly for free that incentive is out the window. Using one of these vouchers costs nothing to the person using it, so artists can still get money from us even though we have less of a reason to pay them because we can get their works for free.

      When the artists' works are free, t

    • There is so much more to this proposal than simply issuing vouchers, this comment doesn't deserve comment.

  • you say MC Chris (Score:3, Funny)

    by zephc ( 225327 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @04:54PM (#7425409)
    I say M.C. Hawking [mchawking.com]

    "E" stands for energy, yo that's me,
    I'm a brilliant scientist and a dope MC.
    Before you step to me I'd think twice G,
    I'm the Lord of Chaos, King of Entropy.

  • copyright != feudalism (Score:3, Insightful)

    by geekee ( 591277 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @04:58PM (#7425435)
    The majority of important work in a book is the actual writing by the author. Other costs such as printing are incidental, and are becoming even less of a factor with digital reproduction. Therefore, it is even more important now then ever to protect copyright. An author needs compensation to pursue his trade. Copyright didn't originate with feudalism, but as an attack on feudalism. It was the merchants and craftmans that formed the middle class which helped destroy feudalism, a system in which land was owned arbitrariyl by aristocrats, who forced peasants to till the land and took most of the profits, distributing a small amount to the peasants to keep them alive. So familiar. Socialism is not much different than feudalism. A small minority (the rulling class or govt.) comtrols all the wealth, and doles out enough for the proletariat to keep them alive. Albolishing copyright is socialism, a concept where the public automatically owns the work of an author. Supporting such a concept is supporting theft, and hinders creativity and productivity by forcing the talented people to support themseves by means other than by using their real talent.

    • Socialism is not much different than feudalism. A small minority (the rulling class or govt.) comtrols all the wealth, and doles out enough for the proletariat to keep them alive.

      I don't know what world you come from, but on my planet, Socialism is a community supporting essential services (health care, public parks, transportation) by taxation. What you describe is Total state ownership, which is a society that is basically a C+C game from the central command. And Feudalism is again different, as it rel

      • In the world I live, socialism is slowly creeping over the US and Eurpoe. They haven't learned a thing from the USSR collapse. The only services regulated in the US currently, involve some scarce resource, such as wiring infrastructure for power and phone, roads, airwaves, etc. It's not difficult to show that govt. involvement has caused as many problems as solutions in these areas. Nationalizing health care and regulating drug prices are a big mistake. Regulating drug prices will kill incentive to invest i
    • It was the merchants and craftmans that formed the middle class which helped destroy feudalism, a system in which land was owned arbitrariyl by aristocrats, who forced peasants to till the land and took most of the profits, distributing a small amount to the peasants to keep them alive

      Look up the "iron law of wages". In the 19th century, it was considered a *good* thing that capitalists only paid their workers starvation wages -- the silly workers would just waste any excess anyway. No wonder socialist id
      • "Look up the "iron law of wages". In the 19th century, it was considered a *good* thing that capitalists only paid their workers starvation wages -- the silly workers would just waste any excess anyway. No wonder socialist ideas were attractive to workers."

        Labor unions solved that problem. Socialism in the USSR did not, as history shows.

        "While it was clear that the socialist nations during the Cold War didn't have as good quality of life as the first world nations, people there lived much better than in m
    • Abolishing copyright isn't socialism by any means, it is more anarchist or libertarian than anything. Copyright requires government enforcement. That socialism may not favor copyright is coincidental and irrelevant, and it would be more accurate to say that capitalism does favor it, and most other situations do not.
      • No true libertarian would talk about abolishing copyright. They believe that the purpose of govt. is to protect individual freedom. One of these freedom is the ability to own property, including intellectual property. It is no cooincidence socialists don't believe in property. They don't believe in individual rights, only collective rights. This proposed system wants my tax dollars to pay authors and musician I don't necessarily care about or may even want boycotted. That's a socialist system.
    • From an old joke:

      In capitalism, man exploits man
      In communism, its the other way around
    • Albolishing copyright is socialism, a concept where the public automatically owns the work of an author.

      The public does automatically own the work of an author as soon as he discloses it. Check the Constitution. It clearly states that the public licenses the work exclusively to the author for a limited time. It also states the reason for this: to promote the production of useful arts and sciences. It does not say that the author owns copies of the work, nor that the goal of establishing copyright was crea

    • Copyright didn't originate with feudalism, but as an attack on feudalism.

      The attack failed. Copyright only helps the artists if they never sign a contract. If artists never sign, the artists keep the money, and the labels, professional middlemen, get nothing. Unfortunately, the labels now hold the copyrights (by contract), and artists receive only a tiny percentage of the revenues from their work.

      Until recently, though, the best way to promote your music was with a contract. The artist provided talent an

    • Copyright didn't originate with feudalism, but as an attack on feudalism.

      Actually, copyright originated as a means for the Queen of England to censor publications she didn't like.

    • Albolishing copyright is socialism, a concept where the public automatically owns the work of an author.

      Capitalism is all about the free market. Copyright is a regulation of the market. Those who would have the government grant monopolies are anti-capitalist. The fact is, copyright doesn't fall under any of the three big economic ideologies (Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism). You could just as easily say:

      Abolishing copyright is capitalism, a concept where people are free to compete by manufactur

  • Why not spend the money on the grade-school kids that need an education? The money would be far more useful there.
  • Only things the masses like or know about would get funding. That leavs a lot of people out in the cold. If we paint this in terms of music, only the mass-consumed features would get funding, and the independent, lesser-known things would not get enough funding to continue, regardless of quality. Once again, mass-consumer-appeal (boy-band-of-the-week, etc) would take precedent over real talent.
    Basically, I just don't see this solving any problems.
  • I don't use special vouchers; just these little green paper things.

    Problem with my system is the green paper things I give never get to my artists although that is my intent...

  • This is a silly idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fname ( 199759 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:05PM (#7425465) Journal
    This idea is a silly, feel-good proposal that will not compensate artists in a reasonable way. Instead, people will assign their voucher to a friend, whether or not they'd ever pay for any of their music. Cash is a very effective way to compensate artists, and consumers choosing to use their own cash (not some free voucher that every taxpayer will subsidize) is the best way to allocate these scarce dollars.

    Music consumers like these "compulsary licensing" schemes because it means that non-music listening people will be forced to subsidize their favorite things. Seems like a good idea. Let's require poor kids to pay $10 a year so the rich kid driving his dad's Ferrari doesn't have to spend an extra $100 a year on his music.

    It's nothing more than a naked political grab, and the EFF is losing mainstream support because of their regressive stance.
    • This idea is a silly, feel-good proposal that will not compensate artists in a reasonable way. Instead, people will assign their voucher to a friend, whether or not they'd ever pay for any of their music. Cash is a very effective way to compensate artists, and consumers choosing to use their own cash (not some free voucher that every taxpayer will subsidize) is the best way to allocate these scarce dollars.

      Copyright makes more economic sense then any of these other proposals. Probably, copyright is ultima
      • The article clearly states that artists would get to opt in or out of the voucher plan. The only thing compulsory about it is the use of tax dollars, and the figures that you also didn't read make a pretty good case for the public payback being a lot larger than the input.
    • Did you actually read the article, or just see the word "voucher" and start typing?

      First, there is nothing compulsory about this scheme. It's clearly stated that an artist would get to choose whether to use copyright protection or the voucher system.

      Second, under this scheme any artist who receives voucher payments becomes ineligible for copyright protection for 5 years. Seems like a big commitment for a musician simply to get a few hundred dollars in vouchers from friends.

      The thing I don't like about th

  • Government's role? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Stile 65 ( 722451 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:06PM (#7425472) Homepage Journal
    Hate to say it, but is it really the government's role to promote the arts?

    I'd rather see the government relax its regulation of various forms of communication. Deregulate LPFM, for example, and let small hobbyists operate LPFM stations that give play to local artists. This would help to break the monopoly of "Big Media," which IMO has a stranglehold on what we listen to mostly because of the scarcity of legal broadcast media.

    At the same time, this would allow "open-source" music to thrive. You could just donate the money directly to artists in appreciation of their music. It (kinda) works for NPR. Under the current tax scheme (scam? hehe) artists could even unite under not-for-profit umbrella organizations that would pay them to produce music and accept tax-deductible donations to help pay the artists.
    • The mere fact that the government is in the business of enforcing copyright means that they are in the business of supporting the arts. As the joke goes, we know what they are. Now we're just haggling over the structure of the deal.
  • What happens if an artist signs up for AFV, but gets only $1000. They are screwed because in signing up for AFV, they had to sign over the copyright to their works for 5 years. Without copyright, no traditional publisher will sign them.

    So any artist who enters the AFV program better have a good marketing budget to ensure that they get their promised $40,000. Maybe they can get marketing help by signing over some of their AFV money to a publicist. Maybe they need to promise the first $20,000 to the ma
  • I'd give my voucher to the Disney Corporation. They've been ripped off on Mickey Mouse one to many times.
  • I like the idea, but I can see it being used as a commodity where these are 'bought' so that they can be claimed to specific people...

  • Unlikely to work, no one will do it. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MyNameIsFred ( 543994 ) * on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:12PM (#7425505)
    If I did my math right, the author assumes that 200 million people in the US will use their vouchers -- that gives the 500,000 artists at 40 Grand a year. Does he honestly expect the vast majority of Americans to use their voucher? I think it is safer to assume maybe a few percent of the population will use it.

    People who already follow the arts, are donating money to causes such as symphonies, local plays, etc. People who are less interested -- those that just turn on the radio and listen to whatever is played are not going to be bothered with finding an person or group to support.

    In my view, this is an idea that will never work.

  • Unnecessary Crap (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jason Earl ( 1894 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:15PM (#7425525) Homepage Journal

    You can already give money to the artist of your choice. Just send him or her a check, purchase an album, or, better yet, go to a concert. There is no need to get the government more involved than it already is.

    If you want to make a political gesture while supporting this artist make sure that you pay the thousands of artists that already offer their material in unencrypted formats. It really is as simple as that. If you don't like the media companies, buy from artists that aren't part of the media conglomerates. There are thousands of artists to choose from.

    Artistic vouchers would be the worst possible solution. If you think that the credit card companies take a bite out of transactions they are involved with then you never have dealt with the government. The taxpayer would almost certainly end up paying at least $20 for a $10 voucher, and the record companies would still get all of the money because they still control the most sure method of getting the publicity that is necessary to make it big. The only difference would be that the RIAA companies would get paid in "vouchers," which, with our luck, would probably be tax-free money.

    Not to mention the fact that you are volunteering my money, which I don't feel like spending on your "art."

    Further government intervention in this arena would be the worst thing that could possibly happen. Anyone that thinks that this is a good idea needs to take a history class, at the very least, and a remedial economics class would probably be a good idea as well.

    • First RTFA.

      This is an attempt to adress the fact that copyright law is not working out that well in age of Internet, hard drives and CD burners. This is an attempt to come up with a solution that does not require subjecting 12 year olds to million dollar law suits.

      Second.
      Copyright law is major government intervention in the free market! The government says who can and can not make and distribute certain things. If one thinks government intervention in the free market is bad, then one must be suspicious

  • For all the cries of this killing the GPL... (Score:3, Funny)

    by shaitand ( 626655 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:26PM (#7425566) Journal
    Under this system or any other in which copyright were abolished, indeed the GPL would lose it's might. But that is a moot point since the GPL would lose it's purpose as well. In a world where everything is in the Public domain there is no longer any risk of a corporation closing it up since their derivative would also be in the public domain.

    In essence this is the ultimate GPL.

  • The real way to do it.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by IshanCaspian ( 625325 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:31PM (#7425582) Homepage
    ...is to just monitor consumption of copyrighted works. Everyone pools 200$, and each song just gets a percentage based on its "mindshare." If, say, Madonna's music constitutes 1% of all music downloads, she gets 1% of the pool. Of course, this requires huge amounts of monitoring of popular media, but it is the only way to allow art to embrace technology.

  • Fascinating (Score:3, Funny)

    by 192939495969798999 ( 58312 ) <info AT devinmoore DOT com> on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:31PM (#7425585) Homepage Journal
    Count me in, but here's an interesting question. I have a degree in Fine Art and a number of other experiences that I believe would qualify me for the program. What should really be the criteria for being accepted to the program?

  • The paper is riddled by bad premises (Score:3, Insightful)

    by morelife ( 213920 ) <f00fbugNO@SPAMpostREMOVETHISman.at> on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:33PM (#7425599)
    Copyright is about ownership, not about the government or taxpayers "supporting" artists.

    Art is not the only case where copyright comes into play.

    Copyright and fraud are mutually exclusive ideas.

    All of the material produced by these workers would be placed in the public domain where it could be freely reproduced.

    Because you say so? What if an artist doesn't want her work in the public domain, or reproduced?

    If either artists don't sign up for the program (maybe distrust of government, looking at their past record in funding the arts), or taxpayers fail to contribute. You would quickly have a non-program.

    Even if all this is blatantly incorrect, I can't see any idea remotely like this going through the House and Senate; they're not gonna let a "Piss Christ" (remember Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe, the NEA, etc etc) become Public Domain.

  • A cool idea, but there are some issues... (Score:3, Funny)

    by axlrosen ( 88070 ) * on Saturday November 08, 2003 @05:36PM (#7425609) Homepage
    I really like the general idea. Capitalism works great for material goods, but it has a lot of problems for digital goods, in the face of unstoppable copying. It would be interesting to try a whole new system and see how it works. I think you could add software to this system as well as music and movies and such.

    That said, I see a few problems:

    - It depends on each taxpayer to be (slightly) altruistic. You have to take the trouble to remember and then designate a recipient on your tax form, but you get no direct benefit from this. What if you don't put anyone down, is the money lost? What if 75% of the people are too lazy to write down a recipient? Maybe the unassigned money goes proportially to all the artists that people did put down.

    - How do you remember which artist(s) to give it to throughout the year? I predict that every album and every movie will come out in March under this system.

    - How do you define a "fraudulent" registration? What if me and my buddy both register, then we each make a finger painting and give it to each other, and then we put each other down on the tax form? Who's to say that that art wasn't good enough to qualify as a "registered" artist? I think you'd have to make people pay $100 to register, to prevent this from happening.

    - Do people in other countries get to copy these works? If so, then the country that implemented this system would essentially be subsidizing
    listeners in other countries.

  • Sure, MC Chris is good and all, but he's no Frontalot [frontalot.com].
  • If copyright only protected performance rights and not reproduction of recorded material, artists would not be hurt very much if at all.

    That's because artists make the vast majority of their money from performing, merchandise, and endorsements, not from album sales. That holds true regardless of whether they are a local band that plays for $100/night or a double-platinum superstar. $1/CD isn't very much, especially after it gets split between band members, managers, and other interested parties. Britney

  • Fundamental Mismatch: N artists per taxpayer? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @06:03PM (#7425711)
    The AFV program makes horribly naive assumptions about the numbers of artists that a given consumer enjoys. Between books, CDs, movies, magazines, and art, I probably enjoy the artistic output of at least 1000 "artists" per year (especially when you consider the multiple artists involved in producing a CD or movie). How am I to allocate my $100 voucher among these numerous artists?

    I consume media across formats and genres, so no intermediary is likely to represent even a small fraction of my interests (and the intermediary is likely to support artists that I don't like). And listing all these artists on my tax form would be a major pain. Instead, I'd rather make a small payment to the artist when I actually buy or consume their work. Sounds like the current system to me.
  • Why is Mickey Mouse, The Beatles, and Aerosmith still under copyright in the usa? Because copyright lasts for 97 years last I checked, and has been extended 11 times in the past century. Anyone who has looked at this pattern will understand that when copyright lives forever, large corperations will simply aquire more and more and more copyrights until they own all the music and once they have extablished a monopoly, they then own the culture, as the RIAA does for example, and we're in a bad situation as w
  • This isn't exactly the same thing, but an essay of mine proposed a voluntary compensation model [sharethemusicday.com] for artists.

    The voucher proposal is much more radical. The problem lies in who makes the decision to fund individual artists. If it is a government board of some sort, then you have the problem of government entanglement (as well as the requisite backlash from know-nothing conservatives). Interestingly, this kind of idea might swing in Europe, which already provides public support for artists. But in USA, this
  • the Digital Copyright Millenium Act.

    Things weren't quite so messed up ten years ago.

    In my ideal world. . . People and people's families would be allowed to hold a copyright for, say, 60 years, after which the material would go into the public domain.

    Corporations, because they are souless entities and not people, should be only be allowed to hold copyright for say, 40 years, (the approximate length of time the original people who worked on the project can be expected to remain employed at the company.)
  • I don't think this is going against copywrite (the rights to owning your work and being able to protect it from redistribution, ie, "A Good Thing"), but rather against the publishers. Publishers in a lot of entertainment groups wield a lot of control, just as much in music as in video games. I think this is a good idea as I wouldnt have such a problem with giving money to the RIAA to give to artists if I actually knew they were getting the money. Not to mention, the RIAA's accounting within its parent compa
  • I've written a much longer article about a similar scheme. Rather than using "vouchers", each participant (a taxpayer or a tax creditee) gets electronic votes that they can use to reward artists.

    There are lots of hurdles to be overcome -- computer security, "gaming the system", etc. But it still seems quite possible that these models would work better than DRM-based copyright.

    See the article, Virtual Markets for Virtual Goods [mu.oz.au] for more details. It's rather long, and aimed at an academic audience which

  • Artists become 501c3s? (Score:3, Informative)

    by WillWare ( 11935 ) on Saturday November 08, 2003 @09:54PM (#7426697) Homepage Journal
    AFAICT, this proposal is equivalent to the idea that an artist becomes a tax-exempt charity (a 501c3) provided they release their work into the public domain. The vouchers themselves don't seem pivotal to the proposal (other than to limit the amount of money that gets moved around to $100 per adult). As a taxpayer, I wouldn't feel too bad about giving artists tax-exempt status in exchange for putting their work in the public domain.

    If we dispense with the vouchers and think of it as a change in the laws about what's allowed to call itself a charity. The IRS publishes some guidelines [irs.gov], the official rules aren't so easy to find. Currently you need to be an "organization" (so maybe artists would need to group together) and one of the allowed types is "literary", so this isn't entirely without precedent.

    Would people collude with their friends, and declare themselves artists, cheating the system with 5-minute finger-painting exercises done in macaroni and cheese? This kind of thing doesn't happen very much now with ordinary charities. That might mean that the government would insist on some criterion of artistic quality before giving out tax-exempt status. In any event it's an interesting idea.

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