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

[Dave Phillips]

Greetings,

<caffeinated_rant>
I have an observation re: this thread: People who don't hold copyrights 
or patents typically don't understand the full significance of copyright 
or patent laws because they never have to. Those of us who do hold them 
regard the issue differently. My advice, try making your living from 
royalties for a few years, then let me know how you feel about watching 
someone else appropriate your work. Copyright means literally that the 
holder owns the right to make copies, not you or anyone else.

I'm reminded of my mother's oft-repeated adage, "What part of 'NO' don't 
you understand ?".

The assertion that copyright is not an incentive to creativity is 
correct, of course, though its assurance of payment might function as a 
spur to take on a job and get it done. I wonder sometimes, how many 
members of this list actually make their living as creative artists ? 
Because unless that's what you're doing for your livelihood (i.e. buying 
groceries and clothes for your kids, paying the rent, paying the utility 
bills, etc) then I suggest that it's simply too easy to make blanket 
assumptions about  the processes by which an artist produces work for 
payment.

Btw, if anyone would like to get a more realistic sense of that Better 
World Without Copyright, I suggest you read the memoirs of Hector 
Berlioz. And let us not forget Disney's famous appropriation of 
Stravinsky's work. Yep, the same Disney who perverted the existing 
copyright law, aided & abetted by Sonny Bono. If international copyright 
law had covered Russia then Igor would have got a fair cut of the 
royalty pie from Disney's Fantasia. As it happened, Disney basically 
said "You're screwed" because he knew Stravinsky had no legal recourse. 
At least Stravinsky got in a last bite: When asked if he had any comment 
on the film he referred to it as an "imbecility". I'll guess that he 
wouldn't have liked Snow White either.

Yeh, yeh, yeh, artists made art before copyright. What they didn't make 
was as much money as they now stand to make because of it. Ezra Pound 
once wrote that knowing a little hunger isn't necessarily bad for an 
artist, but starvation is definitely not good. Or maybe we think someone 
makes "enough" or too much money, so we can justify the theft of 
copyrighted material. Okay, why stop there, why not steal rich people's 
cars ? They probably have enough of them , and they can certainly afford 
more, so why not steal their cars ? Oh that's right, cars are different 
from software. We can take a copy of the software and the original 
remains, so that makes the theft okay. No, it does not, and that is 
exactly why we have copyright law. The car *can't* be copied without 
undue effort, the software can. The ease of reproducibility calls for 
further protection *if* it is an agreed-upon principle that the maker of 
the work is due the rights to its copying. At this time that's the law, 
at least here in the US. You're welcome to try to change it, but you're 
not welcome to break it as though it doesn't exist or because you 
believe it's unjust. Of course we can go ahead and break whatever laws 
we feel like breaking, whether we understand and accept the consequences 
or not, but if we're serious about changing those conditions then we 
ought to engage in the proper process towards that end.

Btw, I'm not playing "holier than thou" here. I've downloaded my share 
of copyrighted material, but I don't illude myself about its ethicality. 
Nor do I flog myself over the deed.
</caffeinated_rant>

Best,

dp

"They were artists in their own right, Andrea said, intent on 
restructuring reality, and the New Jerusalem was a fine place indeed, 
free of overdrafts and disgruntled landlords and the need to find 
someone to cover the evening's bill."