[LAU] ASCAP Assails Free-Culture, Digital-Rights Groups

[Rob]

On Tuesday 29 June 2010 03:18 pm, Mark Knecht wrote:
> I actually think it's very
> important that artists be paid a living wage. 

I think it's important to distinguish the importance of the continued 
viability of artistic careers from the assertion that their viability must 
continue in the same form it's taken for the century or so that the 
recording industry has existed.

There were plenty of artists around before it became possible to perform a 
song once and sell it thousands of times over on pieces of plastic.  
There'll be plenty of artists still around once they've realized that 
pieces of plastic are no longer necessary and an intangible copy of a 
performance does not inherit the value of that performance.  It's just the 
industries exploiting them that'll go away, and the artists who can't adapt 
will be replaced by artists who can.  

Proponents of "intellectual property" call free culture proponents anti-
free-market, but it's they, not us, who are pushing for more and more 
regulation.  All these lopsided, DMCA-type laws, all the perpetual 
copyright term extensions and treaties, they're just more and more sandbags 
piled up in the face of a tsunami of market forces.  

Rob