Quote:
Originally Posted by tirsales
No, I acutally dont think that we will see a loss of content.
Different marketing models: Yes.
Loss of content: No.
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Problem is, copyright is often the only tool creators have to protect their content. There may be other marketing models... such as advertising or patron support, for instance... but without a way to protect your investment from being infringed upon, why would you bother to produce?
Think about it: iTunes has contracts with music producers to put certain songs/artists on iTunes, and on no other service. If any legitimate service could put those same artists/songs up for free download, pay the artists nothing, and not get taken to court over it... why should anyone go to iTunes to get exclusive contracts? Why should any consumer pay for a song at iTunes? Why should an artist expect to get any money from such a system? And if there's no money in it for them, why bother to produce?
Another example (hypothetical, since I don't know the real players involved): ABC's
Lost is being sponsored by Procter & Gamble, whose money is poured into the show in exchange for airing 6 of their commercials every hour. If the (imaginary) CBA network could co-opt Lost and broadcast it with commercials from someone other than P&G (who did not support
Lost), and not be taken to court, would P&G bother to support a show and not get their commercial broadcast end of the deal? How would
Lost get produced, without their sponsors and their monetary support?
Copyright is the glue that holds all of that together. Without copyright, supporters would have little or no reason to support an artistic work, because they can and do expect to have that work co-opted without any compensation to them. I could copy a book written by Michael Crichton, put my name on it, sell it, and not suffer any legal action.
In such a system, we
will lose content, from professional creators who will decide it's not worth their trouble to produce and get nothing from it. The content we'll have left might not all be c**p, but the quality of available content will be severely lessened with the loss of professional creators.
You tell me: Why would anyone want a system like that? Just because it's free? Is "free" worth the subsequent and guaranteed loss of quality?