Hey Damo

[FUCK THE POLICE]

You know that they you said they did with home taping? Artists get a portion of the profits from every blank CD sold?

Why can't we do that with the internet? You aren't ever going to stomp out filesharing. All your really doing is pushing people into encrypted and pseudononymous networks. And face it, if the internet wants to be the source of almost all human knowledge permanently, it can't just be uncopyrighted knowledge. So, why don't we just open up the internet to sharing copyrighted files without profit, and levy a tax on the internet and pay copyright holders back?

Being that information is non-rivalrous, the concept of a copyright doesn't really work well in the modern world anyway. If I walk into a store and take a chair, no one else can use that chair. But by copying information I don't deprive anyone else of it. Yet we also want to reward artists for making a valuable contribution to society. But is granting them a monopoly over copying the information really the best way to go about it? If we gave the artists the same amount of money back, it wouldn't matter how many people the information was given to or how much it was copied.

Restricting copying isn't good in that regard - it keeps people from sampling and finding out what they like, and it restricts the information to a limited set of people. If we could just open up the internet to all information, and pay the artists and writers back using some method of taxation on the internet, wouldn't that be the most benificial to society?

 

[Damocles]

You know that they you said they did with home taping? Artists get a portion of the profits from every blank CD sold?

Why can't we do that with the internet? You aren't ever going to stomp out filesharing. All your really doing is pushing people into encrypted and pseudononymous networks. And face it, if the internet wants to be the source of almost all human knowledge permanently, it can't just be uncopyrighted knowledge. So, why don't we just open up the internet to sharing copyrighted files without profit, and levy a tax on the internet and pay copyright holders back?

Being that information is non-rivalrous, the concept of a copyright doesn't really work well in the modern world anyway. If I walk into a store and take a chair, no one else can use that chair. But by copying information I don't deprive anyone else of it. Yet we also want to reward artists for making a valuable contribution to society. But is granting them a monopoly over copying the information really the best way to go about it? If we gave the artists the same amount of money back, it wouldn't matter how many people the information was given to or how much it was copied.

Restricting copying isn't good in that regard - it keeps people from sampling and finding out what they like, and it restricts the information to a limited set of people. If we could just open up the internet to all information, and pay the artists and writers back using some method of taxation on the internet, wouldn't that be the most benificial to society?

Not artists. The record companies. Don't confuse the two. Artists make most of their money from concerts, not record deals.

 

[FUCK THE POLICE]

Well, it's not really a new idea. A few countries discussed giving out "general licenses" for P2P networks. It's also discussed in the Berne convention, which established our modern copyright law system. But it's never really gained widespread acceptance.

And singer/songwriters may make most of their money from concerts, but still, Damo, if we just allowed unlimited distribution of things like e-books, then authors just wouldn't make any money at all. I'm sure people would still write, but it's not much of a way for our society to show support for them.

Also, performers like Britney Spears make the money from the concerts. The ARISTS who write her songs make money from the pennance the record companies give out. (Sorry, it always just pisses me off whenever people refer to Britney Spears as an "artist", whenever she has no creativity at all. She's a performer, a gimmick, a used to be pretty face with a passable voice set to sell an artists tunes)