Fame and Fortune plus Compensation
After reading Clay Shirky’s article, Fame versus Fortune, and Scott McCloud’s response, I couldn’t help but to be reminded by this question: should an artist gain compensation for his or her work? That seems to be the underlying issue here. Micropayments are an attempt to give artists, or whoever is providing the content on BitPass in this case, proper compensation, albeit in a somewhat under the radar manner (the payments are so small that the consumer won’t notice). This, to me, seems to just sidestep the issue. Shirky is certain micropayments won’t work, while McCloud believes Shirky is just on another witch-hunt.
However, the real question, as stated above, is what is the proper compensation for a content provider. Looking at it from the point of view of an artist, I believe that question is almost unanswerable. There is no way to truly determine what is the value of art. Indeed, there may not be a way to determine what a piece of information is worth as well. The reason is simply because art and information mean different things to different people and thus are worth more or less depending on the consumer. Since human beings are unique individuals, there is no way to come up with a system of compensation that is accurate.
Such is the case in a capitalist society where money is, in the end, more important than anything else. In a utopian world, money would not be a factor in the production of art. Art would be created for it’s own ends, hopefully for something more meaningful than dollars and cents. Of course there is the popularity factor, which is the “Fame” aspect of Shirky’s “Fame and Fortune” idea. However, I don’t feel qualified to speak about that. As an artist myself, I’ve never been concerned with popularity. I produce art because I enjoy it. If someone else also enjoys it that’s fine, but if they don’t, I don’t care. In the end, unlike many people, my art is for me, and no one else.