From: "Patrick Oscar Boykin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >I think there is obviously a difference non-commercial p2p copying, >and a commercial entity springing up to profit off of it. Big difference.
A big part of my inspiration for investing my time and money on the Freenet project is a personal vision - I dare to imagine a day when the whole mass marketing fuck machine comes crashing down harder than the World Trade Centre towers, and people once again have to make recourse to their own judgement, tastes, values and creativity, rather than queueing up sheep-like to throw their money into the coffers of their consciousness-numbing exploiters. I often try to imagine a society where property rights exist only for tangible resources, including physical objects, even companies and their trademarks, but *not* for 'copyrights', 'software patents' etc. In my opinion, copyright has brought about a state of affairs completely opposite to what it indended. As I understand the original intention of copyright, its purpose was to provide incentive for creativity, by allowing people to profit from the fruits of their inspiration. But during 14 years in the music industry, I saw countless *excellent* bands and artists fail; artists far better than I and far better than the mainstream chart-toppers. They failed simply because their works didn't fit the formulas of the largely closed-shop markets. I even had a ridiculous argument one time with a recording engineer who insisted that a song's quality is measured by its popularity alone!! The enforced copyright laws provided a massive cashflow to record publishers, who have used these funds over the decades to create a closed-shop, applying known laws of marketing and psychology to sew up the mass audience, and gradually condition them to accept the RIAA's prescribed musical 'medication'. Yes - artists do profit from copyright - about 0.1% of them, that is. The rest survive on low incomes, even welfare, or day jobs. Most of those who do hit the charts find most of their earnings gobbled up by the machine - a $1million record deal, after expenses, leaves a band with perhaps a year's rent, but years of contractual obligation. Nothing like $1million for them unless they tour their asses off. Same for writers. Of all the manuscripts sent to publishers, only about 10% get read past the cover and maybe a paragraph or two. Only about 1% go to print, with the vast majority of those being 'remaindered' and hitting the bargain bins. At book fairs, only the books' covers are on display - purchasers for retail companies choose purely on that basis. Yes, a lot of shit gets written, but commercial failure of books is not always because the quality is lacking - often it's because the books don't fit the conditioned mass-market formula and the fashion of the day. For a whole perspective, we must take into account the volume of talented musicians, authors, other creators who will never find a mass audience. From this, we see that copyright laws are actually creating a disincentive for creativity - contrary to original intention. The masses are largely uninterested in independent creation, since they've been conditioned to blindly subscribe to the mainstream product. IMO, the entire system of copyright needs to be replaced by a system of voluntary micropayments. That way, artists and other content-creators will, on average, earn *much* more than they earn now. David _______________________________________________ Chat mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.freenetproject.org/mailman/listinfo/chat
