Merci for this excellent and interesting analysis...
Montois de Détroit and thus a neighbor Michigander...
On 11/13/09 11:54 AM, "gsp.schoo@MOT.com" <gsp.schoo@murderoutthere.com>
wrote:
> Warning! Warning! I'm going to meander even more than I usually do on this
> list, where I constantly endeavour to take a view from so far outside the
> thread topic that I suspect many of you don't get what I'm on about, ever.
>
> As a published but not especially successful author I find this
> woes-of-technolgoy thread somewhat amusing, having gone through so many of the
> arguments five, ten, even fifteen years ago up here in Canuckville. I recall
> mostly the blank looks on occassional mid-list American authors and fans at
> crime-writing cons when locals addressed the impact that changing technologies
> were having on a fragile industry in an already small marketplace. Visitors
> from just across the border could not seem to grasp that even their much
> bigger markets could be fractured by the proliferation of media. It's
> difficult to understand from within such situations, that we are reacting to
> an already accomplished fact, and that as destructive as it may be perceived
> to be, especially personally, the change is consistent with much longer termed
> trends.
>
> We forget that consumers have not directly paid for popular culture content
> for a very long time, and that the primary medium for content such as popular
> crime fiction shifted away from print decades ago, to television where
> advertisers directly footed the bill (consumers indirectly picking up the tab
> with their Wheaties- it's a bit like "free" parking at the shopping mall.)
> Advertisers needed content that drew mass audiences (to support industrial era
> mass consumption and mass production) and that meant popular culture ran on
> the star system that even back in the '50s and '60s, and I suspect though
> perhaps to a lesser degree much earlier than that, many writers and other
> creative types toiled with little liklihood of achieving the significant
> financial success achieved by a very few. But they persisted nevertheless, and
> the sheer volume of free content (good, bad or indifferent) available through
> the now much broader range of digital media (from POD to YouTube) puts to rest
> any concerns that cultural production will decrease, let alone cease, without
> the promise of financial reward.
>
> Not that this doesn't come with its own set of problems, but I think
> perspective is gained when we remember that it is probable that through the
> last fifty years at least, however many people earned their livings from
> writing fiction for popular media consumption, they were still the tip of the
> writing iceberg. Most had second jobs, if they were lucky in related fields
> such as academia, advertising and arts administration, or even more often in
> entirely unrelated fields. Ross Macdonald was a teacher. Hammet, Chandler and
> others even tried, with varied success, writing Hollywood screenplays to
> supplement drinking habits that short stories and novels could barely keep
> afloat.
>
> This situation should renew our appreciation for the intelligence of Henry
> Ford, whose vital contribution to the industrial/consumer economy was to
> harness mass production so that even his assembly-line employees could afford
> the products they were producing. Our problem in the creative, digital
> information economy is that by and large we cannot, and mostly haven't for a
> long time. This becomes a bigger problem when the availability of those second
> supportive jobs are threatened by shrinkage in the industrial-based economy.
> But there do appear to be some practical steps, again not entirely new, that
> point a way forward.
>
> I don't think that restricting access to creative product through copyright
> legislation will significantly enhance financial reward, even for those at the
> top of the old star system, let alone mid-list writers and even lowly wannabes
> such as myself. Enhanced distribution is a boon, not a threat to culture.
> Musicians encounted this problem long ago when radio played their records for
> listeners to hear free, and again when tape cassettes allowed fans to copy and
> share recordings without paying the original artists. The "solution", limited
> as it was, was to collect small fees from radio stations and the producers of
> blank tape cartridges and based on representative surveys of whose music was
> being consumed and copied, send cheques to registered, qualifying musicians.
> This isn't perfect, perhaps not even just, but it focused on providing
> financial incentive for creativity through the expansion of cultural
> participation, rather than trying to squeeze more bucks by limiting access.
> It's better than most alternatives considered, in other words.
>
> I'm not sure what's happening stateside, but up here in South Ont. I get a
> couple of cheques, happily around Christmastime, one from Access Canada based
> on the possibility/probability that some of my work has been photocopied in
> the past year, and one based on a similar possibility/probability that my
> books may have been borrowed from a public or institutional library. They
> aren't big cheques, but they are more than I earn in direct royalties. A
> similar system could be established for work copied via the internet, the
> money collected from the manufacturers of digital media capturing devices
> (computers basically) and/or the providers of internet connection services.
> Trying to collect fees from end users is tough. They're small, nimble, mobile,
> elusive. Computer manufacturers and internet service providers tend to be
> larger and advertise their whereabouts and activities in local media and
> telephone directories.
>
> In addition to providing the means for individual consumers to skirt paying
> directly for creative content, computers and digital software make it much
> easier to keep track of consumption trends and to registered creators. It's
> just a matter of determining at what point the dollars can be accessed. I
> don't even get a cheque for one of my annual payments. The cash (can I still
> call it that?) goes directly to my bank account, or rather, is registered
> directly under my account number on my bank's computer. I just love how money,
> which is increasingly important in our daily lives, is not even worth the
> paper it is no longer printed on. Money is a blip, an electronic + or - on my
> computer screen. Do I digress?
>
> Well, here's another benefit of this reward system: the more I use digital
> technology to adapt my content for multi-media distribution (POD print,
> YouTube shorts, recorded readings, cell-phone ringtones, the mind boggles) the
> more such payments I might/should qualify for. Oh what a happy, happy, perfect
> world it turns out to be afterall!
>
> My point, I think, if I have one, is that the challenges of changing
> technology are not especially new, and certainly not unique to the creative
> community. In fact, what I think has happened is that the decline of
> industrial manufacturing in North America has produced a need to focus on the
> long-lacking importance of developing economic models that will support the
> growing production of creative content in the information economy. This shift
> in employment from manufacturing things to manufacturing information is fully
> underway regardless of the limitations in financial support for creative
> producers, and won't be turned back. Unlike Henry Ford's workers, we don't
> need to make the products they make more or less affordable. Cheap and free
> creative product is all over the internet, television, radio etc. But we do
> need to make it possible for the producers of creative product to buy
> groceries and pay rent, now they've lost their assembly-line jobs and/or
> pensions. The expansion, in both reach and value, of fee-related services such
> as those I've described would at least be heading in that direction.
>
> Oh, and here's another thought, the result of a comment dropped on a local TV
> show during a discussion about the recent anniversary of Sesame Street.
> Apparently the cost of producing most children's television programming is not
> met directly through sales of broadcast rights. This creative production is
> also supported by merchandising. This is interesting to me because I'd have to
> say that of all the free content available on multi-channel telly, kids
> programming is the best in terms of quality in both production and content.
> Much better than the endless Popeye and Betty Boop cartoon re-runs that made
> me the man I am today. So to get more bucks from your creative endeavours,
> trying thinking of the dick in your latest work-in-progress as an
> action-figure doll. Or maybe as an avitar (is that the right word?) you can
> sell on a fantasy-world website.
>
> There. That should bore the piss out of you, and I think it's worth a nickel
> at least, especially as I've had to look up the spelling of "nickel."
> Kerry
>
-
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 13 Nov 2009 EST