Do you think Will Ferrell movies are downloaded at a lower or higher rate than Shakespeare?
Heh. I don’t see any feasible way to measure that!
Now maybe we think the reason for this is that Will Ferrell comedies are only available for free on the internet whereas Shakespeare is copyright free everywhere. But we can compare Will Ferrell movies to older movies that are still under copyright and they’ll still do better—maybe not always over the long term, but certainly in the period in which they are timely and relevant.
Is it fair to simply ignore the long term? It’d be kind of strange to hear advice that bonds are the best investment around ‘because stocks aren’t paying you anything right now’.
The fact that there is a thriving culture industry despite the existence of copyright termination should count as a reason to think there is a real desire for new production. We might think that the desire is just constructed by the industry through advertising—but the culture industry wouldn’t be different in this regard from any other industry.
A local but not global optima? I just read Ainslie’s Breakdown of Will, and it really seems to me like hyperbolic discounting might explain why people go ‘ooh, shiny!’ about new works though they shouldn’t want to pay the copyright tax.
If the quality of new works decreased I probably would read old works more but only because of the quality disparity not because I would no longer have a desire to read good, new works.
Would you really? In your life, there has surely been a year or two where quality of production has dropped (art isn’t so reliable & consistent as to only improve every year); did you shift your reading habits?
Is it fair to simply ignore the long term? It’d be kind of strange to hear advice that bonds are the best investment around ‘because stocks aren’t paying you anything right now’.
I’m only ignoring the long term because I’m looking for evidence that the rate at which the market produces new, timely works is reasonably close to what the demand for such works is.
Would you really? In your life, there has surely been a year or two where quality of production has dropped (art isn’t so reliable & consistent as to only improve every year); did you shift your reading habits?
My fiction reading habits have very little to do with timeliness concerns. I read new fiction when an author I like produces it. Otherwise my reading is focused on genre books (science fiction like everyone else here) and classics. The only temporal criteria in my reading involves preferring books written recently enough that the style isn’t so dated it slows me down. There are some occasions for preferring timely topics, for sure. But the frame for timely in these cases tends to be about 5-10 years so my reading habits won’t actually vary from year to year. I don’t even have enough information about books to even make good selections until end-of-the year lists come out. And that is part of the problem. There is very little information around that lets one compare books (and music and movies) in any systematic way except in relation to other works that came out that year. Once in a while there is an instant classic but it is had to know what the choice works of year are until a couple years later.
In short, reading habits don’t correspond to quality of output by year b/c 1) I lack the information to adjust habits accordingly and 2) the time frame for recent is quite a bit more than a year so there is no need to adjust habits accordingly.
I’m only ignoring the long term because I’m looking for evidence that the rate at which the market produces new, timely works is reasonably close to what the demand for such works is.
Indeed, the publishing industry thinks nothing of pulping millions of unsold (or libelous) books each year. And there was no outcry in 2003 when 2.5 million romance novels from the publisher Mills & Boon were buried to form the noise-reducing foundation of a motorway extension in Manchester, England.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/books/review/Schott.t.html
Even the Library of Congress doesn’t want to keep copies of everything:
Heh. I don’t see any feasible way to measure that!
Is it fair to simply ignore the long term? It’d be kind of strange to hear advice that bonds are the best investment around ‘because stocks aren’t paying you anything right now’.
A local but not global optima? I just read Ainslie’s Breakdown of Will, and it really seems to me like hyperbolic discounting might explain why people go ‘ooh, shiny!’ about new works though they shouldn’t want to pay the copyright tax.
Would you really? In your life, there has surely been a year or two where quality of production has dropped (art isn’t so reliable & consistent as to only improve every year); did you shift your reading habits?
I’m only ignoring the long term because I’m looking for evidence that the rate at which the market produces new, timely works is reasonably close to what the demand for such works is.
My fiction reading habits have very little to do with timeliness concerns. I read new fiction when an author I like produces it. Otherwise my reading is focused on genre books (science fiction like everyone else here) and classics. The only temporal criteria in my reading involves preferring books written recently enough that the style isn’t so dated it slows me down. There are some occasions for preferring timely topics, for sure. But the frame for timely in these cases tends to be about 5-10 years so my reading habits won’t actually vary from year to year. I don’t even have enough information about books to even make good selections until end-of-the year lists come out. And that is part of the problem. There is very little information around that lets one compare books (and music and movies) in any systematic way except in relation to other works that came out that year. Once in a while there is an instant classic but it is had to know what the choice works of year are until a couple years later.
In short, reading habits don’t correspond to quality of output by year b/c 1) I lack the information to adjust habits accordingly and 2) the time frame for recent is quite a bit more than a year so there is no need to adjust habits accordingly.
Close enough for government work, I suppose:
Even the Library of Congress doesn’t want to keep copies of everything: