[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Just want to point out that with no copyright, there's no need for DRM . Can't Manage Digital Rights if there are no Digital Rights.

It wouldn't be called DRM, but it would work the same way: "here's some impediments to use to allow us to sell the same thing to someone else." Maybe it'd be called Digital Usage Restrictions or Digital Sales Restrictions. With no copyright, it'd be legal to crack--unless purchasing came with a contract that said you agreed not to, in which case the company could sue you for cracking it, but couldn't prevent other people from sharing the file after you'd handed it around.

Woops , recorded music-what's that? No I take that back. There will be old recorded music in people's record collections-that's it.CDs- for what? Since there won't be record companies, the only CDs produced will be blank CDs.

Would still be record companies. Musicians still won't want the hassle of arranging studio time, learning the technical side of cutting tracks, contacting radio stations, arranging tours and so on. And CDs can be fairly cheap to produce, so $5-10 CDs with specialized jewel-case inserts or hard-to-reproduce artwork on the CDs would be common.

Pre-recorded music CDs will be pointless. Radio and streaming music might continue- but musicians cant make much money out of them, so fewer musicians.

If you think "can't make money" would cut down on the number of musicians, you have a warped idea of why people learn to play. There'd be no (or less) mega-star bands, but there'd be no shortage of musicians, because people would still pay for access to live performances.

Don't think movie theaters could survive on that model-you need a minimum number of patrons, so they're done, along with cable TV.

Why couldn't theatres survive? They'd just need to pick movies that appeal to their local patrons--and without copyright getting in the way, that's a lot easier. They'd be able to show a lot more movies for shorter times, and schedule one-day movies to match local events. (The college is having Pride Week? We'll have a weekend marathon festival showing Milk, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Victor/Victoria, and Rocky Horror Picture Show. $8 per person per movie, and the ushers will check tickets between each showing.)

Movie theatres have something unaffected by copyright: expensive physical equipment. It doesn't matter whether the movies get copied; you can't show them at home on a 50' screen. You probably can't pack 75 friends into your living room, either--theatres would be free to offer private event movies.

I think a typical problem of the no-copyright set is that they take creators for granted. They think creators are our bitches, who MUST continue putting out for us, no matter how much we beat them .They'll work for art, or for free, or for charity, but they'll just keep performing, no matter what. WRONG.

They won't, in general, perform for nothing. But some will happily limit their income to that available from live-action performance (musicians especially), and other revenue options, not very feasible in the current system, would show up.

Overall, I agree that abolishing copyright would be a stupid move; it's got problems, but it's better than the alternatives. However, the alternatives aren't "all artistic creation and scientific research would collapse." Academics, paid in esteem and employment offers, may not care how much their works are copied; prolific authors who can blog daily and still produce stories may sell subscriptions to their site instead of ebooks (and yeah, other people could copy the site elsewhere--but you couldn't join in the chats that way); artists who can customize pictures may take commissions.

"The best system currently available" is not the same as "the only system that could allow society to work." There are nations with no copyright laws... and yet they have books, music, art, and research.