Jennifer Baek <[email protected]> writes: >I agree, I think Zac did a great job of saying what I'm sure many of >us would have said in a response. And, I really like his responses to >the two comments who tried to object to his article...
Same here. But there was one thing Zac didn't touch on in his response to "Rob", so I left a reply, which is now awaiting moderation. In case it never makes it through, I said: @Rob That "choice" argument doesn't hold up as solidly as you want it to. People can choose to charge anything they want for things they control -- but what copyright does is give one the right to take that choice away from others. If I invoke a state-supported monopoly to prevent *you* from sharing what you think deserves sharing, then phrasing that as "me choosing to charge for my music" is disingenuous. What it really would be is "me taking away your choice to share with other people". Defending people's right to take away others' freedom of choice is an odd place to invoke a freedom-of-choice argument. You for some reason regard that monopoly privilege, copyright, as some kind of law of nature. It's not. It's not even that old. It was a regulatory experiment designed specifically to support *distributors* (not artists), and it is increasingly out of place in a world where the greatest friction in distribution is now the regulation itself, rather than the physical limitations originally invoked (three hundred years ago) to justify the regulation. By the way, it's "copyrighted" not "copywritten". [Okay, I admit it, that last line was petty. I'm allowed now and then, right? :-) ] -K _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freeculture.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss
