> People paint, write, sing and act all the time without compensation of any kind.

Because they choose not to exercise their right to profit from it?

Who ever said they have the right to profit from it? There was a century or two there where they had the ability to profit from it. Now? Looks like we might be done with that. Kinda sad, but these things happen.

If you believe people have no right to recoup the time you invest in writing code (or whatever it is you do for a living), then you would continue to show up for work every morning if your paycheck stopped?

I'm saying it's not a 'right' to expect profit from something. The right to pursue a profit exists as long as the law of the land allows it.

Markets already provide a "pay-what-you-want" model, it just happens that not everyone is willing to accept what you want to pay.

Selling capital goods is very different than selling digital copies of something. There is a limited amount of corn in the world, you can purchase it at the going rate generally set by the supply and demand. In digital goods, the supply is unlimited, there are no natural market forces.

Apple heavily protects its products with patents and copyright where it can. You cannot take an ipad design and improve upon that design without cutting a deal with Apple. I think that strongly supports the case that the few (Apple) benefit from the current system while the many (anyone who thinks they could enhance the design of ipad) do not.

There are, however, a few open and free items of software, Linux, MySQL, Apache, Firefox to name a few. Arguably, depending on what you want to do, there isn't even a better closed alternative (yes, yes, substitute whatever SQL package you prefer for MySQL).

I personally have a cable provider (so I pay for the minimal tv package to get internet), a netflix account, Amazon Prime, see the occasional movie in the theater, etc.

When people talk about copyright though, I generally see some stuffed suit making a bonus, not a bunch of creative people.

Except Apple is a bunch of creative people. So is Kurzweil and O'Reilly and, heck, even Starbucks.

Markets are not pay-what-you-want, because pay-what-you-want implies $0 is an acceptable price. At least that's how I was using the term. Apple will not accept $0 for an iPad. If you don't accept their price, you don't get the iPad. That's why people buy it.

Copying media lets you get it even if you don't accept the price. Which means the only reason to pay is because you want to.

My contention is that making people pay in order to enjoy a product is often what provides the money necessary to exercise creativity. The iPad could be improved by an individual working alone with their own funds, but it never could have been created that way. Without profits from previous products, the creative people at Apple who designed the iPad never would have had the resources to do so. We have iPads today precisely because Apple is closed.

What is the next innovation in personal computing? Who will come up with it? Will it be Apple or someone on Kickstarter? My money is on Apple. Even if it is someone on Kickstarter, will they be able to raise the probably millions of dollars necessary to make a viable consumer product? Unlikely.

A system in which producers pay upfront and then recoup costs is actually better for consumers. You get to see the finished product before deciding whether or not to spend your money. If the finished product sucks, only the producer loses. If the finished product of a Kickstarter project sucks, everyone who contributed loses.

How many iterations do you think it took Apple to perfect the iPad? Each of those would have to have been separately funded on Kickstarter for that system to produce the iPad. I doubt even the costs of one iteration could be raised.

But when you cut off the ability to recoup production costs, you cut off the incentive to pay upfront production costs. Which cuts off the funding to creative people who are doing important work.

The problem with only being able to collect voluntary payments (pay-what-you-want, Kickstarter, etc.) is that people don't necessary know they want something until it's done. The 1st iteration iPad probably sucked. So why would people fund it? If Apple builds an iPad, it only takes a few people's shared vision to make it happen. If a Kickstarter project wants to build something as innovative, it will required the shared vision of everyone contributing. You'll have to convince thousands of people that it's worth funding numerous iterations at thousands, or possibly even millions, of dollars, in the hopes that the final product will be good. I just don't see this happening.

It did happen quite often in the past. See much of the research done over the last hundred or so years in public universities.

I didn't say we should arbitrarily limit the amount of profit one can make by investing capital, but the current copyright law and patent law is very stifling to innovation.

Apple employs some people, sure. Monopolies (not implying apple is a monopoly to be hit by anti-trust laws, btw, but copyright and patent are monopoly powers) are very, very profitable for the few people that hold them.

I don't have my copy of Wealth of Nations in front of me (out of copyright, but I purchased the penguin classics paperback anyways, go figure), but Adam Smith made a very compelling argument that things like entertainment are not acretive to the capital of a country. At the time of publication (1776), Smith noted actors and musicians expected no more compensation than what they received for peformances. They produced no lasting product that could be added to the 'capital' of the company. Recordings you might say add this value because of copyright, but if you cannot sell your copy that would mean it's not a capital good.

So, yes, creative works existed before the current distribution model.

I'm not arguing people cannot profit from their works, far be it. I'm arguing that the current model for profit favors a very few at the expense of very many, and does not meet the needs of either creators or consumers as well as it does the distributors!

Movies are perhaps the most dependent on the current model, as yes, it takes significant capital to make most movies. However, is it truly more creative to see the 3D version of Star Wars Episode I? Or would it be better to see "Star Wars Episode I: As written By Kickstarter Member XYZ". I'm fairly certain Option B would be more creative at this point. Lucas and everyone involved with Star Wars has already made plenty of money, but you can't expand on those works just because you have a great idea, you'd need Lucas' permission.

Anyways, copyright/patents are a very complex thing right now. I can't tell you exactly how the Ipad came to be (although it wasn't the first tablet), so I can't really say if Apple had the best idea, or just the right polish at the right time. All the patent infringement lawsuits surrounding the ipad seem to support my view that they stifle innovation more than they support the "It required this closed model" argument, if you ask me. Apple is almost assuredly infringing a lot of patents (which many may be invalid), and I would argue they are really so successful because they have deep enough pockets to fight all those legal wars.

I could write a lot and end up saying very little, it is very hard for me to boil down all my thoughts on copyright and patents into a HN comment.

So the right to pursue an old business model is dead. Good riddance.

What is the new business model?

Is it just pay-what-you-want? Because I'm not sure that's any more "alive".