Shakespeare, the paywall, and the benefits of copyright
By Celeste Ng
Image credit: Flickr - Calamity Meg
How did Shakespeare become so great? Economically speaking, it all had to do with market economies—at least according to the New York Times:
Those who paid could enter and see the play; those who didn’t, couldn’t.
By the time Shakespeare turned to writing, these “cultural paywalls” were abundant in London: workers holding moneyboxes (bearing the distinctive knobs found by the archaeologists) stood at the entrances of a growing number of outdoor playhouses, collecting a penny for admission.
At day’s end, actors and theater owners smashed open the earthenware moneyboxes and divided the daily take. From those proceeds dramatists were paid to write new plays. For the first time ever, it was possible to earn a living writing for the public. [...]
The stark findings of this experiment? As with much else, literary talent often remains undeveloped unless markets reward it.
The authors—Scott Turow, president of the Authors Guild; Paul Aiken, executive director of the guild; and James Shapiro, who teaches at Columbia—see parallels between Shakespeare’s time and today. The growing attitude that all information should be free online, and that copyright impedes innovation, they argue, ultimately hurts writers:
Their theory is that if we severely weaken copyright protections, innovation will truly flourish. It’s a seductive thought, but it ignores centuries of scientific and technological progress based on the principle that a creative person should have some assurance of being rewarded for his innovative work.
Certainly there’s a place for free creative work online, but that cannot be the end of it. A rich culture demands contributions from authors and artists who devote thousands of hours to a work and a lifetime to their craft. Since the Enlightenment, Western societies have been lulled into a belief that progress is inevitable. It never has been. It’s the result of abiding by rules that were carefully constructed and practices that were begun by people living in the long shadow of the Dark Ages. We tamper with those rules at our peril.
My students look at me in horror when I tell them that virtually no authors make a living from their writing. They desperately want to believe it’s possible, but like Turow, Allen, and Shapiro, I can’t believe that dispensing with copyright is helping. It’s a strange concept to me: do we expect painters to give away their paintings, or actors to perform at no charge? Why are words—and that other frequently pirated art, music—somehow different?
Incidentally, if all this talk of business has got you down—and you’d rather think about how Shakespeare became so great from a literary standpoint—here’s University of Michigan professor Ralph Williams on Shakespeare’s “appalling honesty” and why Shakespeare’s work continues to resonate today.
And for more thoughts on writing for free:
- Lee reflects on the recent sale of the Huffington Post to AOL and what it means for the site’s unpaid writers
- Steve Almond makes a case against “writing for karma”
As someone who believes in copyright reform, I’d like to explain what most of us believe. Number one, we don’t believe that writers shouldn’t get paid. That’s a terrible idea. What motivation would writers have to produce great product if they’re not getting bad. Writers should be paid. As a writer, I believe 100% that writers shouldn’t be working for free.
For most of us, the problem isn’t the idea of payment or copyright – the problem is the *length* of copyright. Because of extensions added by Congress (and the ability for them to add extensions again), copyright periods have gotten too long. This robs us of a vibrant public domain. Without a public domain, a commons to draw from, we end up with situations where people can’t use past material and build on it. The founding fathers set copyright at 14 years. That seems a reasonable period to me. I’m pretty sure that’s the length that patents last. Even double that period would be sufficient. Currently though, the copyright period is way too long.
As an aside: The NY Times has a vested interest in propping up the idea of pay walls since they plan to institute one. They have a major problem though: You can only put a site behind a pay wall if it provides unique content that is worth paying for. Despite the fact that the NY Times provides thoughtful news and analysis, it’s unlikely that many people will pay. You can’t compete with free, and companies like the LA Times and others will gladly take the traffic that the NY Times loses. By going behind a pay wall, the NY Times takes itself out of the conversation. Sure, they should get paid for their content, but a pay wall isn’t the way to do it. Most people aren’t willing to pay to access one news site (unless, like the Wall Street Journal, it provides a unique value). I think people will be willing to pay for an aggregation service that gives them access to every news site (or a large majority of them).
I think you bring up some really interesting points, J.E. I’ve been thinking quite a bit about copyright since I read some about COMMUNIA’s Public Domain Day for a blog post a while back. While F. Scott Fitzgerald and Leon Trotsky, RIP, entered public domain in parts of the world on January 1, 2011 – no such luck for the U.S. due to those copyright extensions you mention. I might even argue for copyright for “length of the writer’s life” or with a reasonable cap on those who publish and meet an untimely end. However, seeing as Trotsky and Fitzgerald have both not been with us since 1940, it seems reasonable to let their work enter the public domain. Who’s living off the royalties at that point anyway? The heirs, that’s who. I’m a firm believer every generation benefits from finding its own way, not to mention larger society.
On the point about the NYT: I’m sure they’ll find out soon if your suppositions are correct or not. The trouble with the pay-wall model is either everyone gets behind it somehow (your closing remark of an aggregation service might be one avenue), or you’re right – people just flock to free. Unique content is key if you want folks to pay, or a following so devoted they see you as an individual creating specific value as an artist – the Radiohead In Rainbows model, where you pay what its worth to you (I’m guessing they didn’t do so badly). If there are NYT columnists, or breaking stories, that can’t be found elsewhere – I could see people paying. Maybe it will bring a renaissance of in-the-field reporting instead of endlessly derived opinion pieces on one journalist’s eyewitness report (not directed at the Times, but contemporary news reporting more generally). One can only hope.