On Thursday, October 4, 2012, Rob wrote: > Bottom line for me on the issue of pricing and distribution: > > Since origami is not required for survival or meeting basic needs, there > should be absolutely no sense of entitlement that gives the consumer any > right to dictate price,licence , or distribution. > > Entitlement? Dictation? It really is amazing that questioning the price of a product leads to such emotional misrepresentations.
Is it also a sense of "entitlement" that drives an artist to "dictate" the price of his work, with such processes apparently sacred and not open to question or discussion? I won't argue that there aren't consumers with a sense of entitlement. But it doesn't stop (or necessarily even start) with them, and this is the fact at the heart of the malignancy that is copyright law in the United States. Origamist X can price his or her models at $10,000 apiece if he or she wants to. No one I've heard has made any proposal to "dictate" otherwise. And in the end, the consumers will, except in exceedingly rare cases, determine the price anyway, but not because they are dictating or entitled, but because there is no inalienable right to make a living from one's art and very few will do so. c -- Chris Lott
