This may be hard to hear, but: many artists who claim they just want to eat and pay rent are lying (perhaps to themselves). Most artists don't want a living wage — they want to win the lottery. Suggest to most filmmakers and musicians that "success" is about $75,000 a year, and they'll turn up their noses. You call that a jackpot? They're only in it for the millions, baby. If that means working a day job and remaining obscure, so be it. Millions need to be poor so that one can be rich; they're willing to do their time being poor, so that one day they can be rich at the expense of others. Their turn will come, they think.
I suggest playing a different game entirely, because the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math. But those kinds of artists want to play the lottery more than they want their art to reach people.
Dubber's line is better: Making music is not (usually) a job of work. It is a creative act. You don't have the RIGHT to make money from your music. You only have the opportunity.
Artists who copy-restrict their works are just as poor. Probably more poor. If copyright actually functioned to support artists financially, we'd all support it. Problem is, it doesn't.
Copyleft is so new and so rare, that there's a much tinier sample of artists who use it vs. artists who don't. However I can think of several who make more money with copyleft than copyright. Me, for example. Also my colleague Karl Fogel, who has published two books with O'Reilly. And Cory Doctorow.
I don't expect anyone to give up $$ to support copyleft. The problem is, copyright deprives artists of income, but STILL they cling to it, possibly because they fear change. I wouldn't expect Madonna or Sting to support copyleft, but almost all other artists have a financial as well as moral incentive to do so.
Are you going to do the right thing or the legal thing? Ideally, laws and morality would mesh but that won't always happen, especially when money and power come into play.
Yes. But doing the right thing takes courage; obeying bad laws does not. We are all indebted to those who chose the right thing over the legal thing. If people obeyed laws over their moral consciences, human slavery would still be legitimate in the US, and the Third Reich's "final solution" would have indeed been final.
(Of course there are people whose morality is opposite to mine, who disobey laws for their principles; these include terrorists like doctor-murdering anti-abortionists. I am appalled by them, but not because they break laws; rather, because their actions are so egregiously immoral to me. If only laws reflected a shared or "true" morality, we wouldn't have to grapple with moral questions. But because law is so inadequate at expressing morality, individuals really do need their own "moral compass.")
No matter which way you take the moral argument, for or against copyright, the result is that the discussion will resemble the theological arguments of the middle ages.
And no matter which way you make the economic argument, for or against copyright, the result is that the discussion will resemble the economic and political arguments of the 20th Century. It's still worth making the arguments, because they're true.
I am moved by both moral and economic arguments against copyright.
The first copyright law was a censorship law. It had nothing to do with protecting the rights of authors, or encouraging them to produce new works. Authors' rights were in no danger in sixteenth-century England, and the recent arrival of the printing press (the world's first copying machine) was if anything energizing to writers. So energizing, in fact, that the English government grew concerned about too many works being produced, not too few. The new technology was making seditious reading material widely available for the first time, and the government urgently needed to control the flood of printed matter, censorship being as legitimate an administrative function then as building roads. link
Copyright makes it a crime to copy works without permission; thus it acts as an incentive to NOT attribute sources. Were it not for copyright, Witrig could have made his bowls and safely cited Unger as inspiration/reference (if in fact Unger's bowls were - the similarity in the works could simply be parallel evolution, which happens all the time). Instead, thanks to copyright and other IP laws, attributing sources is just asking for more trouble.
As an artist and author I feel much better protected with an attribution copyLEFT license (CC-BY-SA). It allows everyone to cite my work without fear. They more copies are attributed to me, the more valuable my time, work, and signature become.
Media elites who rail against the proliferation of bad stuff are in fact more worried about the good stuff. It's the good stuff that poses a real threat to their livelihoods. It's easier to preserve their egos by insisting that competition isn't real, it's a mistake, it's crap - and the audience is stupid for even considering the competition.
...it was enough to sucker Mike into giving her more than that level of promotion on this site.
Please read Understanding Free Content to understand why thousands if not millions of people freely give works they enjoy "promotion." Suckers they ain't.
On the post: If You Want To Make Money As A Musician You Need To Be A Musical Entrepreneur
Speak of the devil!
On the post: If You Want To Make Money As A Musician You Need To Be A Musical Entrepreneur
I agree
http://questioncopyright.org/compensation
Dubber's line is better:
Making music is not (usually) a job of work. It is a creative act. You don't have the RIGHT to make money from your music. You only have the opportunity.
On the post: The Moral Argument In Favor Of File Sharing?
copyright deprives artists of income
Copyleft is so new and so rare, that there's a much tinier sample of artists who use it vs. artists who don't. However I can think of several who make more money with copyleft than copyright. Me, for example. Also my colleague Karl Fogel, who has published two books with O'Reilly. And Cory Doctorow.
I don't expect anyone to give up $$ to support copyleft. The problem is, copyright deprives artists of income, but STILL they cling to it, possibly because they fear change. I wouldn't expect Madonna or Sting to support copyleft, but almost all other artists have a financial as well as moral incentive to do so.
On the post: The Moral Argument In Favor Of File Sharing?
Re: GPL somewhat mitigates this
Yes. But doing the right thing takes courage; obeying bad laws does not. We are all indebted to those who chose the right thing over the legal thing. If people obeyed laws over their moral consciences, human slavery would still be legitimate in the US, and the Third Reich's "final solution" would have indeed been final.
(Of course there are people whose morality is opposite to mine, who disobey laws for their principles; these include terrorists like doctor-murdering anti-abortionists. I am appalled by them, but not because they break laws; rather, because their actions are so egregiously immoral to me. If only laws reflected a shared or "true" morality, we wouldn't have to grapple with moral questions. But because law is so inadequate at expressing morality, individuals really do need their own "moral compass.")
On the post: The Moral Argument In Favor Of File Sharing?
Good approach
And no matter which way you make the economic argument, for or against copyright, the result is that the discussion will resemble the economic and political arguments of the 20th Century. It's still worth making the arguments, because they're true.
I am moved by both moral and economic arguments against copyright.
On the post: The Moral Argument In Favor Of File Sharing?
Re: Re: why bother?
Wrong. Copyright was created for censorship. Please read some history:
On the post: Firebowls, Copyright And Crowdfunding (Oh My)
copyright damages attribution
As an artist and author I feel much better protected with an attribution copyLEFT license (CC-BY-SA). It allows everyone to cite my work without fear. They more copies are attributed to me, the more valuable my time, work, and signature become.
On the post: The Fact That Anyone Can Publish Means More Of The Good Stuff... And Yes, More Of The Bad Stuff
they're more worried about the good stuff
On the post: Nina Paley Releases Some Data On 'Sita Sings The Blues': The More She Shared, The More She Made
Re: Re:
Yes, Sita was released in March 2009. It played in film festivals before that, but was strictly verboten from any non-festival use.
On the post: Nina Paley Releases Some Data On 'Sita Sings The Blues': The More She Shared, The More She Made
Re: Re: Re: LOL @ THIS ENTIRE POST
It played in film festivals before that, but was strictly verboten from any non-festival use.
On the post: Nina Paley Releases Some Data On 'Sita Sings The Blues': The More She Shared, The More She Made
Re: promotion
Please read Understanding Free Content to understand why thousands if not millions of people freely give works they enjoy "promotion." Suckers they ain't.
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