From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Wed Jul 17 2002 - 12:56:19 MDT
> (Brian D Williams <talon57@well.com>):
>
> People are buying fewer albums, record companies business was down
> over 10% last year.
Even if that's true, and even if it can be attributed to downloading
(neither of which I concede--though I'm quite willing to believe the
former), that would only affect artists if, in fact, artists made
money from album sales. The vast majority don't. Most musicians
make money from performing, and /lose/ money on album sales, with the
exception of a few mega-stars who are in no danger of going hungry
regardless of what technology throws at them.
> Now you justify the "actual musicians, whose incomes will increase
> tenfold". If this were true you think most musicians would be in
> favor of the idea...
Only the smart ones. It's no accident that the most financially
successful musical group in history is one that didn't sell many
albums through the normal industry channels, and explicity allowed
their fans to make bootleg tapes. It's because Barlow was a
visionary who saw beyond the tripe that the industry was feeding
them, and did things his way. Groups like Metallica and authors
like Harlan Ellison are shooting themselves in the foot by fighting
for stricter copyright law, because they are too short-sighted and
indoctrinated into the status quo to really see how things could be
different. The press tends to cover their side of the argument
more than that of folks like Barlow, Ian, and the authors at Baen,
because they too tend to favor the status quo and blindy accept the
given pretexts for laws such as copyright without bothering to find
out if they hold water.
> >A good, well-reasoned article on the issue from a good source:
> >http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html
>
> This article justifies the position of a single individual, nothing
> more. Because they are making more money, they reason without
> evidence every artist will. Album sales indicate otherwise.
The article contains 10 times the amount of real information,
examples, experience, reason, and thought than anything I've seen
from the other side. The other side just keeps parroting the tired
old pretexts for the present law as if the fact that things are
currently illegal makes them inherently wrong, or as if laws actually
have the effects the were intended to have just because legislators
say so. Well I demand more from an argument.
> Misuse technology, using technology to commit theft. Using force if
> necessary against those who break societies laws is part of the
> social contract.
It is a basic moral duty of every human being to defy, expose, and
help change laws that are unjust and stupid.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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