kdf Wrote: > Why does music or text garner some special status where simple hardware > design does not? A good question. For which I have no good answer.
But I have another question. Why are you paid less than a supermodel or a baseball player? (or are you?) :-) > The point is, pay for work. Change the word work to "hours", and it sounds a lot like socialism. One persons hours work is as good as the next. I'm not sure I agree with that. So if a talented musician's time and talent (say, Santana) is worth more than my inferious and indifferent coding, should we be paid the same? Or I'm a musician and so is he. I play the violin (poorly). He plays guitar (better). The local radio station plays my record once and breaks it. Santana gets a few more plays than me :-) Should we be paid the same? Or should he get credit for the fact that they liked his playing more than mine? Or let's put it another way. Say you write code that goes into an ATM. For every successful transation that your code processes, you get paid .1 cents stipend. Just to keep it interesting, for every transaction that fails and is traced back to your code, they ding you a buck. That's the basis that you agree to do the coding. Now I come along and say, I'm the new owner of the ATM, I don't agree to pay you your stipend any more. You've been paid enough (according to me). Is that right? > A musician is paid for the recording, paid for performing. The music > industry has created a pay for play > mechanism, no one else. This is so incorrect, on so many levels, I don't know where to start. Let's start with the musicians strike of 1942. I'm a swing dancer and occasional DJ, so this is near to my heart. The musicians strike was one of the things which (inadvertedly) brought the (first) swing era to a close. From: http://www.swingmusic.net/getready.html > Several factors caused the Big Band Era to come to an early close. Among > them, the 1942 American Federation Of Musicians strike The musicians went on strike because the recording industry felt, as you do, "get paid for the recording, end of story". The *musicians* went on strike because *they* wanted residuals from (broadcast) plays. They went on strike *against* the recording studios. The idea was, the more popular my music, the more plays, the more I should get paid. A lot like baseball players today. From: http://www.jazzstandards.com/history/history-4.htm > In March, 1940, ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Artists and > Producers), proposed a new contract increasing by 100 percent the > royalties they received from broadcast use. In retaliation broadcasters > created their own organization, BMI (Broadcast Music Incorporated) > [...] > Then in August, 1942, American Federation of Musicians president James > C. Petrillo initiated a ban on recording, in hopes of coercing record > companies into returning part of their profits to the union to be used > for special concerts and projects. This forced the record companies to > focus on recording singers and singing groups and reissuing previously > recorded material. The ban lasted until Decca Records capitulated in > September, 1943, but it would be another 14 months before RCA and > Columbia would give in. So, really, I'm not sure much has changed. The record companies were greedy then, they're greedy now. And, like now, little musicians (like the guys in the little R&B bands that I buy CDs off the stage from) still aren't getting a fair shake from the record companies. BTW, my musician friends tell me that Canadian broadcast law gives them more residual income per play than US broadcast law does. I'm not sure why that is. > The music industry has created a pay for play mechanism, no one else. Not true. Playwrights are paid for every performance of their play (until the rights run out). Choreographers (I think) are paid for every performance of their dance. Musicians pay the songwriters (not the recording industry) when a performer covers a tune. > I'm free enough of mind to realise that the law is not the same as > ethics. I won't disagree with this. Except I'd probably say that many things are within the letter of the law but still unethical. And ... In the back of my mind, there's this nagging "two wrongs don't make a right" arguement my parents always used to say to me. The recording companies are jerks. Their greed is obscene. There needs to be a legal process to put them back in their place. Especially after the rootkit thing. But ... I'm not sure that gives me the right to be a jerk too. Another way to look at it: lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. (or in the case of (old) Napster, viruses). -- Michaelwagner ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Michaelwagner's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=428 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18642 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
