Obviously Cory was refering to THAT time as the time when the “cost of [the copying] apparatus was significant”.

> computers make copying even cheaper. This does not,
> logically, mean copyright is no longer valuable.

That’s not the point Cory’s making. He’s saying that mass copying has shifted from being done only by the industry to being done by everyone. It’s easy to regulate some industry, but to try to regulate what normal people communicate between themselves is pretty much impossible.

> it takes time and effort to create and edit digital
> content. Creators (and editors) who create value
> should reasonably expect some reward if the content
> they generate is used and enjoyed by others

Sure, but the government should not give the “creators (and editors)” the authority to forbid me to share whatever content I have with anyone I want to share it with in private. Such a law is ineffective when we have the level of communication technology we have today, and trying to enforce such a law would require the abolishment of all private communication. That cost is simply too high for the government supporting a group of professions.

> Since it’s unlikely that we’ll ever have socialized
> writers, some other revenue model is needed.

Huh? There are millions of people creating content nowadays without getting paid for it (at least not directly). I’m sure you can find some narrow field where there are no, or only a few, people creating content for free, but so what?

When Gutenberg introduced movable type to Europe, copying got dramatically cheaper. It was at THAT point where the right to copy became valuable–because copying itself was cheap. As Cory points out, computers make copying even cheaper. This does not, logically, mean copyright is no longer valuable. Although it probably isn’t automatic to extend the argument to say copyright is even more important now, I think the point could be made.

Bottom line it–it takes time and effort to create and edit digital content. Creators (and editors) who create value should reasonably expect some reward if the content they generate is used and enjoyed by others. Since it’s unlikely that we’ll ever have socialized writers, some other revenue model is needed. Copyright is the basis for the current revenue model. While alternative revenue models have been proposed, and even experimented with (including my own attempt at a ‘shareware’ model, none has yet developed to replace the ‘reader pays’ model–at least in the world of written fiction.

Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com