>
>hits come from debut albums. Those folks are not making much, if any money
>per disc. The bottom line is YOU don't have the right to say who does and
>who doesn't deserve to be paid for their work. Do I have the right to tell
>you you don't deserve to be paid for your computer work? No. Why do you
>have the right to say who should get paid for their MUSIC work? It's a job.
>It's a shit paying job.
>
While I would prefer that artists get paid for their work...
To be the devil's advocate... As the consumer I often do
have a right to decide whether I pay someone for his or her work.
If you are a contractor and do a crappy job building my house, I can
take you to court and avoid paying you. Certainly if I create a
program that isn't what the customer expected or wanted, then they
will not pay me. This option doesn't really exist when buying CDs,
but it is arguable that it should. :-)
Also, technically I do have a voice about who should or
should not be paid for their work. The government enforces copyright
which is why I'm legally required to pay for the contents of a CD (even
if it's just an MP3). Since I vote for who gets elected to government
(and thereby affect what laws are passed) I do have a voice (albeit a very
small one) concerning whether musicians or programmers should be paid
for their work. The constitution of the US grants me that voice and
that right. If enough people who don't believe that intellectual
property should be copyrighted get organized they could (in theory)
affect whether musicians get paid for their work and for how long.
However, the government fairly recently passed a law to extend the
duration of copyrighted works by another 20 years so it doesn't look
like copyrights are going away any time soon.
On the other hand, as intellectual property (IP) becomes more
easily copyable (via the internet, MP3s and other digital representations
of IP) I think that the attitudes toward IP will begin to change.
Since I can copy your MP3 without depriving you of your MP3 (unlike
if I borrowed your lawn mower) it is hard to compare this directly
to stealing. I think this is part of the psychological reason why
people see little harm in copying MP3s. In many ways it is a benefit
to society to have instant access to intellectual property via that
copying (you could imagine this for things like medical software, etc).
The person who loses is the inventor of the IP who in the copyright
system stands to gain through his creativity. I think that most people
want the inventor to gain for his creativity, so perhaps in the future
there will be alternative ways for the inventors to be compensated
without having to pay for every copy made. It will be interesting
to watch...
Steve
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Apr 01 2004 - 19:10:52 EST