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Originally Posted by Dylan Tomorrow
I would. In fact, I already pay for stuff I can get for free. Amanda Palmer's latest album, for example. MP3s on Amazon because of the cloud storage. And especially stuff from artist where I know my money gets to them and they need it and they did it from their heart, without executives or committees sucking all the creative life out of it, as happens with far too many movies.
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Wouldn't you be paying for the cloud storage only though rather than also for the MP3's? With no copyright, Amazon could host mp3's for every track in existence and just charge you for cloud access. As could competing providers along with those who self host with their own home based cloud.
There'd be no need for payments directly to the musicians and for anyone using amazon's service there may be no indirect payments. Granted, Amazon may still reimburse musicians, but they'd be under no legal obligation to do so and if Amazon did, it'd push up the cost of their service leaving a competitor free to charge for bandwidth costs only and not pay royalties. Some may still go with Amazon or whoever does pay royalties knowing it's the only way to keep new music coming, but I would assume most will go with the cheaper service all other things been equal in terms of service quality.
I agree with you that some people will still realise that musicians/authors won't likely continue to create unless they make enough to live off, but if you're getting all your films from a netflix like service with no monthly subscription and the movie makers are getting nothing from the people watching it via that service, would they continue to make films?
Perhaps they could find alternative sources of income or rely on the cinema fees, but then, cinemas wouldn't have to pay to screen the film if they can get their hands on a copy. One cinema buys access to the film and could then give it away or sell it onto others for next to nothing or an employee runs off a copy and passes it on (things that currently happen occasionally now despite been illegal, but there'd be no stopping it if it wasn't illegal).
How much do people pay to download the free ebooks from the mobile read library, or pay to use the free mobile read forum? Does that money go to cover hosting/bandwidth costs or to the people who maintain the free library? If copyright didn't exist, would any of it go the original authors who's out of copyright books we're making use of?
When everyone can offer all books/music/movies for free, will enough people still pay for the stuff they can get for free? I'm sure some will donate to free sites now and then as they can see the value they're getting from it, but imo they're a minority and likely not enough to sustain an entire group of industries. I'd also expect in most cases that the donations would go to the people running the site or hosting costs and not to the people who's out of copyright content is been used.
Granted it'd be difficult in the current situation to pay the creators when copyright is life + X so my assertion is nothing more than a guess, I could be wrong
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If copyright was abolished, we could have the richness of adaptions we see with great PD characters and authors like Sherlock Holmes and Shakespeare for everything without having to wait a hundred years.
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I agree. Although we could enjoy that with reduced but not eliminated copyright terms too. Allowing creators a chance to profit from their creations first, then public access.