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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Tom Sciortino wrote:
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This sounded like something I wouldn’t mind seeing happen in real life at
first, but Richard brought up some good points. Money has to flow into the
system somewhere, else artists don’t get paid. And if artists don’t get
paid (at all), many may stop being artists.
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Well, there’s even more to it than that. Whether retail outlet or library, real
world buildings as stores of information provide jobs for a whole plethora of
other people: salesclerks, maintenance persons, cashiers, librarians,
contractors, construction workers, etc. These locations also serve as social
centers of the community, much like the marketplace of old. Dispensing with
some of those positive ‘side-effects’ is probably NOT desirable at all, and
people do need their excuses to get out and meet each other do they not?
Talking about money going in and money going out again for a moment, whenever I
read Slashdot much is always made of how money is distributed by the publishers,
with an obviously tiny portion going to the artists themselves (often music is
the example, but I am not sure that it matters that much what we are
discussing). These ‘gatekeepers’ are good only inasmuch as they might serve to
control the quality of the things published, and that is probably their only
useful purpose and which could be obtained by other means. (Digression: I’m
reading LOTR, and not only am I hard pressed to note any meaningful editing of
the work in question -- and which it sorely needs -- but IIRC the intro even
brags about a hands-off approach when it came to Tolkien because he was a
linguist!!!) Anyway, while some people may use discussion about the paltry
sums going back to the artists to justify copyright violations -- that’s not all
that is at work in those discussions. The issue is that patent and copyrights
are supposed to protect the creators of various works and thereby encourage
progress in all things useful. The minute you allow ‘gatekeepers’ to abscond
with the heavier profits you’ve just starved most of the creators. When we
absolutely needed the means of distribution that publishers provided the
situation was tolerated, now that we are on the threshold of a world where the
means of distribution can be vastly streamlined we may no longer need the
publishers almost at all. To compound matters, that argument would be far
different if you were saying “With P2P file-sharing you are stealing directly
from the band members of Adam and the Ants.” What people know to be true instead
is more like: “With P2P file-sharing you are stealing directly from EMI (some
paltry some also from the band).” I could be wrong here but I am guessing that
most people don’t give a damn about mainly robbing some multi-national bloated
corporation, but they might actually cringe at withholding wealth from artists
they admire. Hence the govt. may soon involve itself in increasingly outlandish
ways to protect the financial interests of their masters, by which I mean the
corporations (and not the people of the U.S. -- what else did you expect? What
else is more obvious?).
-- Hop-Frog
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Possession
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| "Christopher Weeks" <clweeks@eclipse.net> wrote in message news:HGvwK1.wIv@lugnet.com... (...) library (...) media to (...) charge (...) licensed (...) case. (...) were (...) and into (...) not (...) could (...) user) (...) works (...) would (...) (...) (21 years ago, 22-Jun-03, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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