Welcome back to my conversation with William Aicher, author of “Starving the Artist.” In yesterday’s post, Mr. Aicher shared his thoughts on how his work in the online music business led him to feel artists were not getting sufficient respect online. He also spoke about how copyright serves as an incentive to create, and that costs of producing art are overlooked by those who think creative works should be priced at the cost of delivery only (i.e., near zero). Here’s the rest of the interview.

Q: You note in your book that you are not saying free is “bad.” What do you mean by that?

There are a lot of people who consider “free” a dirty word. It’s not – but it can be damaging. It’s easy to compete on price, and a lot of people are doing that by going with a price point of free. The problem is that a lot of people also don’t have a plan in place for how to monetize beyond that. They fight to get people to pay attention to them, but then are upset when they don’t make any money. What they don’t get is that by embracing this “free” model they’re just exacerbating the problem. Free can be dangerous, if used without some sort of plan.

If you want further explanation, I recommend checking out this blog post.

Q: You refer to artists as a unique class of individuals, at one point saying they each have a “gift.” Yet many argue that modern technology makes us all creators, and that rights should apply to us as consumers of art, not to creators of art. Share why we need to continue to support those who are not just making creative use of others’ creative output, but are creating original works through an art-committed life?

This really is an argument of aesthetics. I’m a believer that not all works are created equal, and that those who have a gift and are given the opportunity to focus on mastering it will produce more aesthetically pleasing works. Others may disagree with me.

If you want a more in-depth argument, I recommend reading Andrew Keen’s book The Cult of the Amateur. He explains it much more eloquently than I can.

Q: You say that copyright infringement is “stealing,” yet a semantic argument exists that one doesn’t “steal” a creative work if the original possessor of the digital file still has that file. Why is it important to emphasize that infringement is in fact a form of “stealing”?

As far as I’m concerned, this argument over semantics is quite silly. If you take something that doesn’t belong to you, without permission, you’re stealing. If someone says you can have their work without paying for it, that’s their decision. But to take it without permission is a lack of respect for the work put in to the creation.

If you apply Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative to the situation, and everyone were to take everything whenever they wanted it, there would be little incentive to create – unless we lived in a fully participatory socialist society, which we of course do not.

Q: You take aim at some of the grand visions of the Web 2.0 world. What kind of future would you like to see online?

Mostly I just want people to respect each other. Yes, we need better licensing systems in place, but that doesn’t mean people can just do whatever they want.

There are a lot of individuals out there who are strong supporters of things like Creative Commons, and if this is what people want to use, that movement will continue to grow (most of my Flickr photos are up via Creative Commons).

As Web 2.0 culture continues to expand, more and more content will be available for people to do with as they please. Still, those individuals who do not want to be part of that community also deserve respect. If the old ways of doing business are going to fail, they’re going to fail – but they should do so on their own.

I, however, think there’s room for both.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 1st, 2010 at 4:18 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under copyright opponents, creators, culture, economy, licensing, market forces, piracy, property rights, q&a, web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.