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Originally Posted by DawnFalcon
The vast majority of them can't do it right now. And the major enemy of lesser-known artists is obscurity, not unauthorised copying.
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Yes, the vast majority of artists never make a living off of there work. But some do and most importantly, the artists who become most significant to our culture often do. And the hope for success (both recognition and financial) encourage artists to continue their efforts.
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Why don't you ask the open source movement? There's an awful lot of software engineers out there working on software which, when released, anyone can copy for their friends. Legally.
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I am quite well aware of GNU and the GPL and the like. I also know that there are an awful lot of orphaned GPL works out there. There are some great projects that work really well because they hold the interest of enough developers to see them through. At the same time, there are a lot of software products produced under the GPL that are left in a half finished state when the author looses interest in them. Products that would likely be finished if there was a potential for profit.
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There's a simply choice - either business models can adapt, or the book industry can end up in the same situation as the music industry where regardless of the threats made, a third of a generation has no intention of ever compensating them for their products.
Microsoft have talked about how you can't realistically hope to contain darknets.
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I think the basic problem here is that that generation (and I believe it will end up being much larger than a third) has decided that all of their entertainment should be free... they download music and videos and the only thing that is keeping them from downloading more books is that by and large they are not that interested in reading novels for fun.
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Also, iTunes is responsible directly for some of the decline of the music industry. How? It's broken the concept of "album". Filler tunes no longer sell.
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This is actually something of a virtue in my mind. The music industry made a big mistake when they basically stopped selling singles. They could have been getting $4-5 for a CD with a two songs on it but instead they decided that they were pretty much only going to sell albums which they could sell for a lot more because there was 12-15 songs on it... it didn't matter that most people only wanted one or two songs on the album. Now they are selling those songs for $1.
The virtue is that it now forces artists to make sure that every song is a good one...
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HansTWM - Eh. The BBC's products tend to do pretty well here (and indeed, worldwide). I'm going to suggest poor production values for Government-owned German TV rather than anything inherent in the concept.
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I enjoy quite a few BBC products, but then quite a few BBC programs pander to popular tastes (In no way shape or form can Dr. Who or Coupling be considered anything other than popular entertainment).