In the long term the price of any reproducible item is limited to it’s reporduction cost, including wages. Thus all else being equal A and B’s product should be similar in price. However, in any individual transaction there are other factors, A will be able to charge a little more than B because of the value of being the “official” version, which time and time again has been shown to be a factor, A will also be able to bring new product to market first, this again gives A the ability to earn a “quasi-rent” until supply and demand even out. In some cases, such as markets A has not reached, B will be able to earn more, but since A’s product is not available, A is not losing anything, in fact it can be said that B is extending A’s potential future market.

Thus, in every case the contributor of artistic effort has a strong competitive advantage overall all simple reproducers, who will usually happily share their earnings with A if they can, in order to benefit from an “official” status with fans, early access to new works, to have A participate in promotional events, etc.

The only case in which A is at a disadvantage is when B has unequal access to productive assets and wage labour to produce work with several orders of magnitude more volume than A, and when B can squeeze A out of circulation and promotional channels, and thus A must sell their “copyrights” to B or be denied the ability to produce at all. This is the situation Copyfarleft is part of the solution for, and as mentioned, requires organisations like “Anarchist Collection Societies” to make viable.

What would happen in the situation where commons producer (a) releases a new work and asks €5 a copy to cover her artistic effort, production and distribution costs and then commons producer (b) just takes the work and starts distributing it for €2. Would this not unfairly eat into (a)’s living?

Let me know if this still is not clear.

Thanks for the link. I think it has helped me clarify what you are proposing and answered my question. The license you are proposing is aimed at any member of a collective that is collectively producing new works. The license is not for the general public and this was my misunderstanding. I had it in my mine that it was like a CC license that was granted to anyone.

http://knowfuture.wordpress.com/2007/11/22/copyfarleft-an-anarchist-gema/

Regarding your question, the consumer acquires the product from somewhere, and it is that somewhere that must have access according to the terms. Once the consumer has it, if they want to become a producer, then whether they have free or non free terms to distribute depends on how they produce.

Do you have an example in mind?

I found Stefan Meretz critique difficult to follow and hence I have not drawn any firm conclusions from it yet but Dmytri Kleiner’s original essay was very interesting. What a cliffhanger though, I was hoping Dmytri was going to produce his copyfarleft license system for us although he did a good job defining its requirements.

The argument that ‘Non Commercial’ is not a suitable way to describe the required endogenic / exogenic boundary.’ is most helpful to my thinking as I had been struggling with the commercial / non-commercial issue for some time. I also found the idea for different license rules between commons based workers and those employing private labour production had some parallels to my Common Rights thinking which was also useful.

One question for Dmytri – Is a simple consumer, one not producing in the commons just buying content, considered as one drawing on paid production and therefore would not be licensed to make money from the product? Not allowed to sell it on for example?

http://oekonux.org/list-en/archive/msg04129.html

Hi Michel, you seem to have it backwards.

The point of copyfarleft, is not to create an “exclusive economy,” but rather to differentiate between exogenic and endogenic usage and differentiate usage terms. This can create a way for artists to participate in the actually existing economy, while at the same allow for a parallel commons-based economy to develop. Similar to the general approach taken by venture communism, and endorsed by the preamble to the IWW constitution; “buildinmg the new society in the shell of the old.”

There is no reason for artists, as a group, to give free terms to private capital finance media institutions, the institutions don’t even expect or want free terms. And giving them free terms means that commons producers will be at a stiff disadvantage as a result of unequal access to productive assets.

Copyfarleft improves on the current Copyleft Non-commercial approach, which is very problematic, buy not restricting peer producers from having free access for commons based commercial production-

Copyfarleft is not intended as a replacement for Copyleft, but rather for Copyleft Non-commercial (and “copyjustright” broadly). Copyfarleft addresses the economic relations of artists, which are different from those of software developers, as explained in the essay.

http://socialsynergyweb.net/cgi-bin/wiki/UserOwner

I think he is coming close to a reasonable system that can be applied in real-world conditions, right now, today.

This is still in the “debate” stage, and it would be great to see others jump in there is and give opinion as well. Eventually, we’ll rework it into a cleaner set of pages.

One of the positions and arguments I added there today is that equity based licenses will work better in “commons” based economies. That is: collective business ventures who’s model is based around CPR, or Common Pool Resources, like open knowledge, Knowledge commons, open design, Open Source Software