On Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 08:08:41PM -0700, DJA wrote: > Ideally. But, for example, in practice at the present, allowing future > works to be built upon current work is the /last/ thing the music > industry (most professional musicians included) wants. Competition is > certainly very, very ill in the entertainment industry. I'm talking about people who release thier music under creative commons on websites like jamendo.com, possibly remixes or otherwise based on other similarly released media. And how many musicians actually make it into the music industry anyway? I would expect that to be a pretty small minority.
> And I personally get tired of hearing the implied argument that Artists > produce art only for money. When did I say that? >> The two are polar opposites, and >> its not surprising that its often hard to integrate the smaller >> cooporative communities into the competitive framework of our economic >> system, to make money with GPL'ed code, for example. > > Sure, if you have very narrow definitions of success. If a > freely-produced, freely-given product or service (e.g. GPL-licensed > software or creative commons-licensed literature) improves that state of > its respective industry or inspires similar work (Free or proprietary), > then I'd call that both cooperative, successful, and profitable. If it > improves some aspect of society as a whole, then where's the rub? How is it then commercially profitable? "improves... society as a whole" and "profitable" are often at odds, in my opinion. > That's certainly not a definition of profit that's recognized in any > conventional circles. By that definition, the barber down the street is > a crook because he has money left over after expenses. No, because the barber keeps all the value he produced. If that barber has a boss, then some of that value goes to the boss whether he did anything to earn it or not. > At the least, > that's definition that's anti-business in general. Your basic definition > is based on the false assumption that the owner of a business > necessarily contributes nothing to that business. His income is not proportional to the work he does to get it. He could work himself to death or just go on vacation, and, so long as his business is doing well, still have an incredible income. That money does not come from his efforts, but from the efforts of the employees of his business. >> Even if that value was not taken from the people who produced it, the >> objective of the corporation is not the benefit of the community, the >> sustainable production of its goods and ecological preservation, or any >> other lofty objective. > > Says who? All corporations, or just some? That's a pretty broad brush. > All of us could name at least several for which that is true. But those > examples don't make such a sweeping generalization any truer. Especially > when it's based on flawed "facts". See above. All corporations, at least as far as all corporations act in a capitalist manner (which they all do much/most of the time). Watch _The Corporation_[1] and _The Story of Stuff_[2] and tell me the system isn't screwed up. (They are free to download) > So, what is your antidote? What is your remedy? I haven't heard such > illogical nonsense since the '60's (when I was spouting the same thing > as I was being conscripted into fighting another > irrationally-justified, corporate-sponsored war). Anarchy--socialism organized not around a state, but around free associations of people and managed by democracy/consensus of its participants. apt-get install anarchism or read the anarchy faq online[3]. [1] www.thecorporation.org (~3 hrs) [2] www.storyofstuff.org (20 min) [3] www.infoshop.org/faq/ -- Martin Franco <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> OpenPGP Key ID: 2B01DD81 Keyserver: pgpkeys.mit.edu -- KPLUG-List@kernel-panic.org http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
