Quote:
Originally Posted by cian
Well yes, but so what? I don't see how that argument applies to the point being made by the person you were responding to [tortured sentence, I know], which is why I interpreted it the way I did. Once the work is released to the public, it exists independently of the author. Readers may read something completely different to what was intended to the author. It may be parodied in ways incredibly distasteful to the author, and indeed counter to the reasons he wrote it.
The author (or his heirs) are paid because of the ways the copyright laws are written. If written differently he might not be compensated, or compensated as well, or compensated differently.
I have no problems with authors being compensated for their work, but there's no natural right to this. Its an artificial legal right which was created (at least in the US) because it was felt this would encourage the production of more creative works. An "evil" (monopoly/restriction) would be compensated for by a good (more IP). It was seen as a tradeoff.
Or am I still missing some aspect of your argument?
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Yes you are.
My point was not about what happens after the work is created. My point was about why a work may be created in the first place.
Just because an author may seek to profit from his/her creation does not in any way imply the only reason for the creation of the work in the first place was for financial gain. Further, even if that is the sole reason for creating the work in the first place, that is entirely the prerogative of the author and does not give any legal right to the consumer to obtain copyright infringing copies of the work.
To suggest such is wrong. To use such a suggestion as an argument for why file sharing is the same as borrowing from a library is, in my opinion, completely invalid.
Cheers,
PKFFW