Michael, as usual your reply was both illuminating and provocative, and as
is often the case, set my mind reeling in several different directions.
It will take me a little time, I think, to digest all you said, but some
things emerged quite clearly for me, and I would like to share them:
I stand by my comment regarding "assignable" value. I said:
>> This transformation - which is the basis of wealth in a true economy - has
>> no assignable value in the marketplace of Notes (read here any groupware),
>> any more than public monuments do in the city square.
Your response, in which you declare that you can assign value to public
monuments:
>I think that you are wrong about "assignable value". I assign value
>to text, participation in this list and the public monuments. That's
>the point of a marketplace. To work out these individual and
>changing value assignments on a continually changing basis.
requires a marketplace where exchanges can take place. Thus, a public
monument has to be "for sale" before any economic value you attach to it
has any meaning. Yes, there is secondary economic value (such as how much
more tax would you pay to preserve Marble Arch, or would you subscribe to
a consortium aimed at keeping some manuscripts or other national artifacts
- currently in private hands and up for sale - from leaving the country?)
but by and large these are generalized to a social venue. The Roosevelt
administration did not conduct a referendum to determine the amount to be
spent on the Jefferson Memorial, nor did anyone protest.
But what I was saying was aimed at another idea, namely that the value
added in the collaborative creation of "intellectual property" can not
readily be parsed according to each person's contribution. In the 60s I
worked on a feature film where all of the labor was donated, and the very
small budget was used exclusively to pay vendors who supplied hardware and
raw stock. In a very idealistic way, the writer/producer/director gave
each person a share in the film. These shares varied in value
(percentage) not on the basis of each person's contribution, but some
arbitrary formula based on role (thus, performers so much, crew so much,
etc.) Since the film never made money, and no one ever expected that it
would, I cannot tell you how this worked out.
Another example that comes to mind: I lived and worked for a while at a
"Bruderhof", a commune which produced wooden toys for children. There was
no wage scale - all were expected to work, and those who did not work in
the factory worked at other labors - laundry, kitchen, etc. The toy
designs were imported from an earlier communal formation - Koinonia - and
there was no "design and engineering department". If somebody came up
with a new design for a toy, there was a process for group decision making
regarding adoption, but there was never any question of compensation,
either in goods or privileges.
I suppose where I'm going with all this is to suggest that their has been
a long history of communitarian economics, and there are plenty of models
which will work for any "product" emerging from intellectual
collaboration. That suggests how you might want to deal with text as a
commodity, and how you might want to organize sharing the rewards of
publication, if there are any.
But I don't believe for a minute that very many of the people who write to
this list (I can't speak for the many hundreds of silent readers) will
contribute to your collaborative book in the hope of economic gain. The
idea has been repeated in this space again and again that there is
something ineffable which emerges from these conversations which people
know to be of great value, but priceless.
Finally, I question your statement that:
>The present situation is that property rights in a text *for printing
>or some extended physical form* reside in copyright law. The
>marketplace principles embodied there is something like "without
>protection of physical reproduction rights the author can't make
>money in making (text) available and therefore won't unless these
>rights are granted." There are other possible principles but this
>one seems close enough to the marketplace formulation distinct, say,
>from controlled, adminstered or bureacratic ones.
Anyone whose livelihood depends on the production of "intellectual
property" can tell you that copyright law is designed to protect property
rights independent of the creator. Authors, songwriters, filmakers, etc.
are not "market makers" and those who are - that is, those whose
livelihood depends on the buying and selling of copyright and copyrighted
material - are interested not in the protection of the rights of creators,
but in protection of the marketplace. Software, as you know, occupies a
special place in the world of intellectual property because its value
extends far beyond its reproduction. Your view that without compensation
creators will not create has received stiff and eloquent opposition from
Richard Stallman and others who maintain that software should be free and
argue that people will create it whether it can be protected by copyright
or not.
-- jack@his.com (jack hirschfeld)