Robin Bowes;200531 Wrote: > > Basically, I think you are just plain wrong. > > Do you also think works of literature should be copyright free? And > photographs? How about paintings/drawings, and copies or prints of the > same ? > > Works of creative art (including music of all forms) are produced by > artists who deserve to be rewarded for their creativity and hard work. > > I don't know what you do for a living, but would you still turn up at > work if you weren't paid for it? > > Musicians work just like the rest of us and should be paid for their > work just like the rest of us. >
It doesn't sound like you read anything I wrote. I never said we should get rid of copyright. What I said was that the purpose of copyright is to provide a profit incentive to artists, at the cost of depriving the public of free access to their works. There is supposed to be a balance between the evident need by artists to be able to make a living and the public good that results from free access to art. This is made very clear in the US constitution and in the debates that surrounded its writing (I don't know anything about copyright in other countries and can't comment on it). Congress only has the power to pass a copyright law in order to promote the arts and sciences. Clearly if no artists can make a living, there will be less art in the world and everybody is worse off. Equally clearly an infinite term of copyright is bad, because it doesn't provide any extra incentive to artists and deprives the public of access. Therefore there should be an optimal term somwhere between zero and infinity. Now, for music it's not obvious the optimal term isn't zero. I say that because, of the musicians I know, only one makes any significant money from copyright. All the others make a living either teaching music, performing live, doing the music for movies etc., or some combination of those. So removing copyright would not directly affect any of the others, but would be of great benefit to the public. Therefore one has to weigh a limited benefit to a small number of musicians against a loss to everyone else. However I'm not saying now that zero term for music is the correct policy, and I never said so above - just that one needs to think carefully about it. As for writers, I agree it's very hard to see how they would survive without copyright. But there are other ideas - for example, an "art tax" that funds writers. I don't know how workable they are, I haven't thought carefully about it. -- opaqueice ------------------------------------------------------------------------ opaqueice's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4234 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34928 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
