Although it is probably something innocuous such as a recent need to moderate all comments by default, I am disappointed that my comment on the recent Wikimedia blog post which I belive should be at https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/01/06/rethinking-digital-property-yale-isp/#comment-124999 has still not appeared. So, I am copying it here:
This is a disturbingly simplistic analysis. "Copyright holders" are mentioned only four times, as if they are in opposition to the consumers of their products, and without acknowledging that they are creating the works that the consumers clearly value as evidenced by their desire to make, lend, and sell copies of the works. The reality of our modern information economy is that large corporate intermediaries like Apple (iTunes), Google (YouTube, Google Books and Music), Pandora, Spotify, and the like are given free rein to make, monetize, and sell as many copies of artists' and authors' works as they wish, while three federal judges on the Copyright Royalty Board very occasionally set "compulsory license" requirements whereby they must pay the copyright holders -- usually publishers instead of authors and artists -- for what would otherwise be considered rampant abuse of the constitutionally motivated copy right to advance the useful arts and sciences. But because these compulsory royalties rarely see the pockets of the original artists and authors, very little incentive to create outside the corporate top-40 and celebrity author hegemony is ever generated. When will the Wikimedia Foundation take a stand for a more equitable distribution of compulsory license royalties to artists and authors, who include thousands of their own volunteers who work commercially in addition to giving away their time which allows the Foundation's employees to take home their paychecks? According to Department of Labor, in the 1970s, before the advent of mass consumer copying, the U.S. economy supported three times as many small and emerging artists and performers. There is no reason that the Copyright Royalty Judges can not produce an intelligent, informed, progressive, and humane compulsory license distribution incidence schedule which will return our culture to its former glory. Where will the Wikimedia Foundation be on that question? _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
