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Three Models
101
- copyright, market development is limited at least twice: first, by direct publisher regulation, and second, by monopolistic pricing.
- Within Self-tuning and Authoright, a work is promoted by any publisher willing to make money from it. It is exposed regardless of the financial or other abilities of specific publishers. Within copyright, however, exposure of a work depends on only one publisher. Hence, the author is naturally forced to look for a big publisher, which means that copyright also enforces regular monopolies. This trend once again back-fires on the author, forcing him to bow down to the tastes of a big publisher in order to be published, promoted, and paid. Thus, the author’s dilemma in the copyright-driven environment is in fact: “more money means less creativity.”
- Under Self-tuning, as with Authoright, an author is discouraged from committing plagiarism, while he is encouraged to do so under copyright. Where there is no publishing monopoly and all works are accessible to all publishers, publishers are naturally driven to go after the best and acquire them by all means necessary. Conversely, under copyright a publisher retains his portfolio for a prolonged amount of time. This portfolio is at the heart of the copyright business. Here, a big publisher may invest big money into the promotion of a work. Others are tempted to follow; they will try to buy something similar to gain some profit. There is no sense of urgency by publishers to find the “best.” The only urgent need is to get something sufficiently different from a best seller and monopolize it. Plagiarism is encouraged and reveals itself in false diversity when the market is flooded by imitations that mimic greatly promoted works. We should emphasize that under copyright, only well-promoted works, not the best ones, are imitated.
- Under Authoright and Self-tuning, derivatives are allowed without restriction as a natural way for culture to develop. On the contrary, a creator’s freedom to build upon earlier works is suppressed under copyright, while a plagiarist can easily measure the level of formal difference and follow all necessary formalities to be published.
