[moz]

Originally Posted by HarryT

How very sad that you consider the viewpoint that "it's wrong not to pay authors for the books that you read" to be "nonsense" .

I'll say it again: paying the author every time I come into contact with their work is nonsense. I gave you a little list of things that you seem to think are stealing, and you seem to think that's an accurate picture. I'm sorry, I was trying to be sarcastic. You're right, i do think it's nonsense. Libraries especially are a huge resource and requiring that readers rent books from them would be IMO insane. It would, however, reward the authors in a way that you seem to think is appropriate.

Do you get paid for the work that you do or do you rely on voluntary contributions?

No, I get paid for the work that I do. At least sometimes, anyway. Once. After that the work belongs to whoever bought it, and they don't have to pay me when they profit from it. They don't have to pay me when they use it, whether they profit from that use or not.

To give you some tiny glimmer of a suggestion of what I do, almost nothing that I produce is physical. Almost all the value can be copied for very little cost, and I do almost nothing to prevent that (in fact I encourage it).

So if your question was "does Moz depend on copyright law to make a living?" the answer is "no". But if you meant "do I produce intellectual property that is covered by copyright law" the answer is most definitely yes. Do I sell that copyright? No. Would people pay me without copyright law? Yes, of course, otherwise I wouldn't do the work for them. They pay for the "right to direct", not the "right to own".

Here's a question for you: is the value in my work on www.moz.geek.nz/mozbike physical or intangible? What makes that site valuable in a way that (say) www.trisled.com.au is not?