this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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The point is that all media is transient. Whether it is a book you own (that may have yellowed because even the hardcovers used the shitty paper) or a movie you are watching.
To put it more personally: Let's pretend that you get paid for journal publications (because it is the easiest to abstract. For something more realistic imagine I am talking about your field's equivalent of processes, equipment, etc). Your employer paid you to get four papers published last year, and you did. Awesome. Except now we are ten years in the future, you work somewhere else, and that same boss wants you to futz with the latex to change the format for a book someone is writing or update them to the web format for the journal or whatever.
You, rightfully, tell your former boss to go fuck himself and that if he wants you to do it he can pay you for it.
Except... if there is no expectation that you are going to provide lifetime support for those papers, why would he have paid you in the first place? Should have just stolen your work and stiffed you on the bill.
Same here. There is this expectation of a lifetime license of something that we have more or less never had. Even when it was just fat white dudes in wigs using a printing press.
Your analogy is not entirely correct.
As a viewer, I do not demand producers to create remakes or enhanced versions. They do it themselves - to take profits off relatively easy work, compared to, you know, producing a new great film or whatnot.
The correct comparison would be me writing a book and selling it, and then writing an appendix to this book and selling it separately with a solid price tag.
If I'm an honest author, I'd post updates freely, so that people who already own the book would have important data and wouldn't use incorrect results from there. It would affect my reputation if I'd do otherwise, too.
In my real case, I can publish an update, and yes, it will be free. This is a standard for scientific articles, open or not, and many even have easy links for version updates, containing all corrections.
And my boss pays me because otherwise I wouldn't be able to produce the first result to begin with.
Also, the very idea of digital media is to be accessible and not transient. You can save and backup data and it will be there, in its original form, forever. Updates in art are entirely optional and often unasked for.
Sorry dude, your analogy makes no sense. You're the one saying you owe lifetime support.
Sorry dude, your analogy makes no sense. You're the one saying you owe lifetime support.