A Ter, 2004-05-11 às 20:01, Niall Douglas escreveu:
What about a system whereby all zero-copy cost human output is recompensed via general taxation? I include books, music, video (all television), software, blueprints, designs etc.
I've never seen such a system work. They're always pieces of art that are ignored by such systems and it usually puts to much power in the hands of those deciding what is a work under copyrgiht.
Everyone puts their work on some high capacity central servers which are available to all citizens who create an account on the servers. Each copy downloaded increments a counter for the thing downloaded.
Technically impossible to do. This conclusion is a result of my work with the National Library of Portugal. We don't have the resources to manage that.
1% of income tax in all countries goes into a pot. After operating expenses, the pot is divided up based on the relative proportions of copies downloaded. The artists get recompensed fairly, people get their entertainment and there's a strong competitive element for producing the best quality of output. There are no entry barriers and it's highly efficient as it's virtually entirely automated.
While people can pass around copies to each other freely, chances are you'd use the central servers as they're always there, fast to download from and it's simply more convenient. There may be problems with gangs orchestrating mass votes for crap products in order to get an illict share of the pie so some human oversight would be needed but I don't think it would be too bad (having each user register enables various statistics-based automatic red flagging).
Best of all, such a system is vastly superior to any copyright based system for all involved. Of course it means dismantling of powerful existing corporate interests and a level of international cooperation never before seen globally, but after we emerge from the Bretton Woods system collapse the environment would be right. Certainly when it collapses corporate enterprise will simply cease to exist, being replaced by highly diverse cooperatives and SME's (eg; like in Argentina).
I doubt free software as the FSF defines it will last the course. It depends too highly on there being a large body of affluent people with other sources of income. However, its cooperative mode of production is VERY interesting and strongly hints at how all future production shall be achieved especially in the non-hierarchical structure required by the likely post-collapse economy. After all if companies are never bigger than a few hundred people, the correct way to do large distributed projects is how free software currently does it.
My bank account disagrees with you when you say free software is not sustainable, but who cares?