If the journalist has already been paid for their writing, who needs to pay the manufacturer and distributor of copies of their writings?

Does the public really need to continue paying the publisher a hundred times the revenue that they`d pay the journalist?

If the publisher truly does add 99% of the value of a published copy, then with a free market in copies, there`s no copyright monopoly to prevent the publisher producing a copy of the author`s work (at $0.0001), adding their value ($0.0099), and then selling it at $0.01 a copy.

I have a sneaking suspicion the publisher adds very little. We`ll find out what happens when the audience commissions the artist directly.

• Micropatronage = Disintermediation

It`s about time.

Traditional (Copyright+Publisher)

1,000,000 readers pay a publisher $1 for a journal comprising articles from 100 journalists. Each journalist gets $100 for their article. The publisher takes $990,000 from which they cover their modest costs.

Micropatronage (Copyleft/Abolition+Disintermediation)

Each blogger has 1,000 keen readers paying them a penny for each blog item they publish. That nets them $100 every ten blog items (for argument`s sake qualitatively equivalent to a single journal article).

An online journal, being free to copy the work of 1,000 bloggers (copyleft) and republish them, erects a paywall charging punters $1 to download a PDF containing 1,000 of the best blog items. Now each blogger has already been paid $10 for each item by their keen readership. The $10,000 it would normally have cost the journal to pay their writers has already been paid. They now get their writing free. The journal can also make and distribute copies at a fraction of a penny. So the $1 is now closer to 99.99% added value.

If the publisher sells a million copies they take $999,900 with negligible costs. Laughing all the way to the bank eh? That is, of course, assuming the market for copies hasn`t ended

If it has ended there will still be a market for selectors. I suggest the selector is going to enjoy micropatronage as much as each writer. Thus the online journal (sans paywall) will actually get a penny from each of their 10,000 keen readers for each issue ($100). That journal may even state that it gives a 50% commission to each blogger it publishes after all, it needs to encourage the production of good writing in order to be able to select it.

Crosbie Fitch – Digital Productions
[Fitch says he's researching and developing revenue mechanisms and business models for producers of digital art and in the process, 'has discovered that copyright is not only an ineffective anachronism, but is unethical and unconstitutional'.]