Keith, You make the best case for Communism that I've seen since they are the only ones who have come up with a way of paying intellects for their work. Just give them a salary and then they can invent, create etc. anything they want. Otherwise you get no expert cheap labor and little innovation. That is the American Dream. Come here and screw someone's else's children out of a job and work yourself to death only to have your children go the route of all 2nd generation Americans unless you happen to "strike it rich" and provide them with an opening into the "cultured class." Today you have corporate communism with the corporations owning the patents and copywrites which is just another version of the old small socialist state structure that I heard touted in the 1960s. Except nobody votes. At least you voted once in a while in the Soviet System even if it was pass/fail.
Four years ago on FW I predicted that this issue of Intellectual Capital would grow out of the climate of not paying people for their work. I used the movie company as an example of the future with its temporary structure founded around a particular job and I said that before they were through they would have copywrited the C Scale. I also said that there was a coming IC battle because the sleazy cheapness of the TNC's with their emphasis on profit over quality of product would eventually cause a Free Rider game that lowered quality in a battle to pay less and less for production costs. We saw it in the Movie business as they destroyed the big Studios and the quality of their products in favor of big distrubuters rather than producers. Product quality lowered until the Artists like Steven Spielburg and George Lucas brought technology to the rescue. They are now in the process of developing a cartoon actor while big businesses like Time Warner lower consummer expectation through the use of visual time delay products on TV that break up the information contained in synchronized visuals. You can find a corallary in the fact that people are imitating such art in the use of Toxic facial parlalysis products like Bo-Tox to freeze their faces "like on TV." Eventually you will lose the real actors and be satisfied with the cartoon. (Compare today's dumb sit-coms to the intelligent bedroom comedies of a century ago) Composers like the minimalists have done exactly that and sell modules of compositions in various amounts as a commodity to be used like wallpaper in advertisements, movies, on stage etc. They pay garbage to their labor and they stick it to the highly skilled labor glut they have to choose from. Meanwhile, today we have commodities but we cut the ability of the consummer to earn the money to buy then. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/16/national/16RURA.html?todaysheadlines Free Riding makes everyone join the game and ultimately destroys the society. The Soviet Union wasn't perfect but it was as perfect foil for such slime bags as we now have taking over the world. Are they all nuts? Who was their mother? What is their religion? We need a good devil to keep our own inner devils in check. There will always BE a devil but if you want it far away then you must appreciate it and keep it going. Something that the West was too stupid to realize. Where else would you believe an Altzheimer's victim running the country and now a former drug addict who loves wars. Six years ago Harry argued "for the market" and Keith "didn't understand." I'm up front about my bais for live performance and live performers, equality of opportunity, equal availability of resources, a beautiful environment and the development of communities that work. I would suggest that you Keith have an incentive to argue that music is dead for your own business. That's OK as as long as you are "up front" about it. You said art is dead. Well you have an investment in "shooting the horse" i.e. patent protection for Creative Capital. If it is dead then you can put anything on the internet for free that you wish. And you cut the expectations for real future creative work because it is, as you say, "no good". That is a very cynical argument But one you can make as long as you are honest about it. Harry loves music but would never encourage his children to do it considering the price. But its OK for those who are nutty enough to do it. That also garuantees Harry a nice CD. But the future is here and we still get arguments that ignore the common fact that the only system that will pay the average creative worker is a salaried system that gives them enough money to live and create without an 18 hour day like we do here for peanuts. This system is broken and no land, or any other quick fix will change it. You may think me a Socialist. Not a chance. I'm being given the choice of death by Fire or Snow but it's death no matter how you count it. Artists are the first and only Libertarians on the planet but we are not nuts and believe in pay for work done. I hate big organzations, and that includes the vulgarity of the Internet. But such short sided Free Riding as is advocated in the following post guarantees that truly creative Media folks will shape the world towards the Socialist alternative because they are not given any other option except to die or give up their work. It is truly horrific in our community at this time. I cannot tell you what it is like to make personal loans to fine, intelligent out of work fathers, mothers, etc. I've heard the sad stories about the pasts on FW and I will match those stories word for word but this is different. You MUST understand this. In our urban community here, we have good hardworking decent family people who for no wrong of their own are out of work and the free lance IC work that they do is being co-opted by the internet. Such cynical, sleazy attitudes on the part of the young, the wealthy and the self-serving in their free riding on the backs of the average person is unacceptable. If lists like this are so bankrupt of ideas then we are irrelevant. If that is the case then I will reconsider my time here. The system is broken and all I hear is whining and self-destructive ideas. Ray Evans Harrell ----- Original Message ----- From: Keith Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Harry Pollard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, February 18, 2002 4:01 AM Subject: Intellectual Property (was Re: Fish and Chips) > Hi Harry, > > At 01:56 16/02/02 -0800, you wrote: > (HP) > <<<< > I suppose everyone knows that I want to see the end of both patents and > copyrights -- the source of privileges costing us billions every year. > > Someone else has similar ideas! > >>>> > > Yes. And I think this view is slowly gaining ground among economists who, > hitherto, have not dwelt much upon the injustice of copyrights and patents. > Here, for example, is a sentence from a recent book (or, rather, it's about > to be published in April -- "Free Trade Today", Princeton University Press) > by Prof Jagdish Bhagwati, of Columbia University and a Special Advisor to > the UN, one of the world's leading experts on trade: > > "To many economiss, the demands for intellectual property protection are > not cnducive to advancing economic welfare worldwide, contrary to the > self-serving propaganda of our [American] industries and our [American] > campaign-contributions-purchased politicians. But they do amount to an > income transfer from the other, intellectual-property-using countries to us." > > A corollary of this that the individual inventor or small firm has no > chance of protecting innovation via the present system of expensive patents. > > Keith > > > __________________________________________________________ > "Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in > order to discover if they have something to say." John D. Barrow > _________________________________________________ > Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > _________________________________________________ >
