Quote:
Originally Posted by Good Old Neon
Possibly, but it’s just as likely that before he could simply hop online and download enough free music to fill the Grand Canyon, he would have purchased at least a portion, the way we all once did before most media became freely available.
How and why is compensating a musician or a writer or an artist a “silly restriction”? You speak as though, just because you don’t like the way publishers and labels behave (how dare they ask that you actually pay for what they provide?), the next logical step is to simply take it.
And where does the “sharing” come in – you cannot truly “share” something you do not own? You may own the physical CD or the paper the book is published on, you do not, however, own the contents. Shouldn’t the decision to share be left up to the originator of the art?
You can defend file sharing in all its forms, and that’s fine, but don’t for a minute think that you’re not hurting the artist. As I mentioned, say we do cut out the middleman entirely, the next time someone uploads files purchased directly from an artist – who is being hurt?
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And you're working under the assumption that those who download don't purchase a 'portion' of the content. It's been proven over and over again that filesharers are actually quite good customers and on average buy a lot more than their non-filesharing counterparts. This is an audience you don't want to ignore if you're a creator. I myself will be releasing my novels on the Piratebay, Mininova and Demonoid (to name just a few), along with more traditional channels like Feedbooks and Manybooks etc.
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but art, especially in a digital format, doesn't belong to the creator after he's finished the work and set it out there in the world. It becomes a cultural artefact, shared and given meaning by those who interact. In the case of a physical object, this then could be restricted, kept back - like a sculpture or a painting, or even a book, or the contents of a book. But the digital world means that any 'art' produced in that format then becomes part of the greater culture, a series of Zeros and Ones that are infinitely copyable. The actual illusion of control by the creator is just that, an illusion. It won't be long now before we see remixes of classic works, re-edited and posted. The best I, or any creator for that matter, can ask for is that those who receive our work do not mess with it too much, and if they do, that they keep our name on it and don't try to profit from the work. Still, that's no guarantee, and I'm under no illusions that whatever I produce won't have a life beyond my creation. That is the true nature of art. A domino run of influence from one to the next, copied, changed, to make something new.
The silly restrictions I was talking about was DRM, should have been clearer. Although I would have thought silly and restrictions together would have instantly pointed toward DRM as the subject of my attack.