By Matthew Guerrieri<\/p>\n
Marc’s Lessig admits (p. I don’t In the physical –that rings true to me.)<\/p>\n New Growth Theory That includes artistic Our main conclusion is that the If you applied this model to music (as Romer By Matthew Guerrieri Marc’s post yesterday made the not insignificant point that Lessig’s argument is mostly focused on popular culture. I agree with Marc that “popular” is a bit of a fishy term–maybe it’s better to say that Lessig is concerned with culture that seems to be important in relation to its popularity. That’s another […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-bookclub","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\npost<\/a> yesterday made the not insignificant point that Lessig’s
\nargument is mostly focused on popular culture. I agree with Marc that
\n“popular” is a bit of a fishy term–maybe it’s better to say that
\nLessig is concerned with culture that seems to be important in
\nrelation to its popularity<\/i>. That’s another can of aesthetic worms,
\nbut it does hint at why the hardcore classical repertoire rates barely
\na passing mention, and why even someone like Andy Warhol doesn’t get
\nmentioned at all. In turn, that may be feeding into the other
\nimbalance in the book, which is towards amateurs, as opposed to
\nprofessionals. My initial sense was that Lessig was far more concerned
\nwith permissive space for amateur remixes than with economic space for
\nprofessionals. And, I realized, that includes professional remixers as
\nwell as professional RO culture creators.<\/p>\n
\n291) that some forms of creativity require a traditional copyright
\nregime to be properly incentivized. What he doesn’t consider, though,
\nis how his proposed regulatory shift towards amateur RW culture might
\naffect the ability of that copyright to economically function. If
\ncompanies are trending towards hybrid-style leveraging of
\nfreely-created content, and we’re altering the regulatory structure to
\nencourage that, then I can’t help thinking that professional
\ncreativity, both RO and RW and everything in between, becomes a less
\nviable option for those who might be considering it. Lessig’s
\nlicensing solution–electronically monitored royalty micropayments to
\nRO creators–shifts the economic incentive for RO creation to a
\nlong-tail back end. His spotlight economic model–leveraging amateur RW
\nculture–freezes out a market for professional remixers.<\/p>\n
\nthink this is a zero-sum game. But Lessig drives right by where his
\nargument should<\/i> be going right around page 230, when he briefly
\ndiscusses spillovers and externalities. A spillover, in economic
\nterms, is that part of the economic value of an innovation that
\naccrues to somebody besides the innovator. Lessig says, correctly,
\nthat spillovers create public value, and, less correctly, that we thus
\nshouldn’t worry so much about them. In fact, there’s an entire branch
\nof economics that is very<\/i> interested in spillovers from
\ninnovation–New Growth Theory. (I’ve been delving more and more into
\nNew Growth Theory because it seems to match up with my own experience
\nof how the market treats the arts: that is, with a certain amount of
\nbewilderment. When one of New Growth Theory’s leading lights,
\neconomist Paul Romer, says things like–<\/p>\n
\neconomy, with diminishing returns, there are perfect prices; in the
\nknowledge economy, with its increasing returns, there are no perfect
\nprices<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\ntraces its ancestry all the way back to noted apocalyptarian Joseph
\nSchumpeter<\/a>, but really took off in the 1990s when some economists
\nstarted getting their hands dirty with problems of technological
\ninnovation and human capital. The oft-cited jumping-off point was
\nRomer’s 1990 paper
\n“Endogenous Technological
\nChange” (JSTOR link<\/a>) which contains much of the point of the new
\ntheory in its title: classical and neo-classical economics regards
\ninnovation as exogenous, an externality that affects the economy from
\nthe outside, but New Growth Theory says no, innovation has to be a
\nvariable within the equation. The implications are commonsensical but
\neconomically novel–economic growth has more to do with the creativity
\nof human capital than with simple raw labor force, and spillovers are
\na bigger problem than previously thought, because excessive spillover
\ncan actually be a drag on the economy by discouraging the innovation
\nthat it needs to keep running.<\/p>\n
\ninnovation as well, which is why I think that Lessig’s
\nunder-incentivizing of both RO and RW creativity is a bigger deal than
\nit seems. While much of New Growth Theory is concerned with
\ntechnological innovation, there’s been some attention to
\nnon-technology IP and copyright as well: Romer himself took a look at
\nmusic and file-sharing in a 2002 paper (
\nJSTOR link<\/a>), in which
\nhe pointed to work done by Steven Shavell and Tanguy Van Ypersele (JSTOR link<\/a>) that
\nproposed a different sort of licensing scheme, an “optional reward”
\nsystem: a creator\/inventor could opt either for traditional copyright
\nprotection, or an up-front tax-funded reward payment (based on
\nestimated future royalties), in return for which the creation would
\nimmediately go into the public domain. In fact, according to Shavell
\nand Van Ypersele:<\/p>\n
\nintellectual property rights system does not enjoy any fundamental
\nadvantage over the reward system. Indeed, an optional reward
\nsystem–under which an innovator can choose between a reward and
\nintellectual property rights–is superior to the intellectual property
\nrights system in the model we examine. These findings derive from the
\nprimary virtues of reward systems: that incentives to innovate are
\nprovided without granting innovators monopoly power over price and
\nthat the magnitude of research incentives may be selected by the
\ngovernment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nrecommends) you can see how it would increase the upfront incentives
\nfor professional RO culture, while eliminating some
\ndis<\/i>incentive for professional RW culture (with more innovation
\nin the public domain, the burden of licensing samples decreases). It’s
\nnot perfect–professional remixers still lag in upfront financial
\nincentive–but it’s better than Lessig’s model, I think, and a sign
\nthat the economic possibilities are more varied, and, for
\nprofessionals and would-be professionals, more interesting than they
\nmight seem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"