[pp.int.general] Some parting thoughts

[Reinier Bakels]

You are simply reinventing copyright. Well, somehow it is reasonable. But 
often it is very unreasonable. If you believe that present copyright is OK, 
don't pollute the Pirate Party mailing list. Incidentally, the process you 
are going through is not uncommon. I heard the copyright reform guru Laurens 
Lessig thinking aloud about some injustices that do call for old-fashioned 
copyright. Like someone making a piece of art available under a creative 
commons licence, finding that it is subsequently used by Benetton for a 
multibillion dollar advertiusement campaign (why is benneton the first 
example I think of)?

I don't understand why you are so upset from by ideas about journalists. I 
don't see the problem if a freelance journalist is paid *ONCE* if he 
delivers an article, if only it is a decent compensation, in view of the 
number of hours he probably spent writing the piece. Several hundred posts 
ago in this thread, the argument started because journalists usually *don't* 
get decently paid initially, so they *depend* on the additional money they 
claim for republication. And that is the kind of deterioration of copyright 
I hate. And RMS hates, I guess.

There is no fundamental difference between a journalist working on a 
freelance basis or an journalist employed by a newspaper in this respect. 
The one is paid by the hour, the other by the month.

My comments on education were completely misunderstood. I only argued that a 
"decent" hourly fee is easily found by looking at people of a comparable 
education. Again, there is an open labour market. If journalists are really 
badly paid, they will look for other jobs. Like becoming a press liaison 
officier at a ministery. Which happens often. BTW, I recall the story that 
newspapers turned down requests for higher wages with the argument that the 
work is so attractive that journalists get compensated not just by money but 
also - perhaps even more - by job satisfaction! Which is another reason why 
they should not be overly greedy in exploiting copyright.

reinier


> 2009/10/23 Reinier Bakels <r.bakels at planet.nl>:
>>
>> I don't think we can dispense of the last category. The model I would 
>> prefer
>> is to pay them as employees.
>
> Employees of whom? The state?
>
>> If they prefer to work on a freelance basis,
>> pay them for each unit of text they produce (word, page, etc.). But do it
>> *once*, commensurate with the effort, e.g. based on (an estimate of) the
>> time actually spent in writing.
>
> It's the quality of the output that counts, not how much effort went into 
> it.
>
>> [...] If sales are
>> disappointing, they should not suffer, and if sales are high, they should
>> not become outrageously rich - like BIll Gates.
>
> If a work is enjoyed by more people then presumably it has given
> greater value to society than a work that's enjoyed by only a few
> people. Therefore it seems reasonable that the person who produced the
> work be more highly rewarded.
>
> -- 
> Philip Hunt, <cabalamat at googlemail.com>
> Campaigns Officer / Press Officer, Pirate Party UK
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