Hey guys!
And while I am preparing my answer to some very excellent points made here (some of which made me rethink several particular situations), I want to give you some food for discussion - do we really want more professionals in the field of arts? Is it an unquestionable good that musicians make a living out of music?
Or, more obviously, writers? What would a writer have to say if all he sees is his writing desk? So many creative people, both musicians and writers, changed many professions, received lots and lots of life experience before they started to seriously create stuff, reflecting on their experiences.
But so far the law assumes that if someone makes a living off of his creativity, it will necessarily make him more fruitful. But I've seen several cases when the effect was the opposite. And that was actually in the field of music, when a musician would loose his originality and touch once he got a contract and started to pump out professional cds. Something did not work out.
Also, when the professional scene is not so dominating, people tend to be more musically educated. And in general more people know how to sing and/or play an instrument. It is actually a statistical fact that folk music has deteriorated with the rise of professional music and that the active involvement of people into music has decreased very significantly, since it became uncommon to compete with highly trained professionals. A lot of music today is passive entertainment, not active. This does have an indirect connection to copyright, since songs written yesterday were written for everybody to sing (even if they take money for the performance). Nowadays songs are written to be listened.
Louigi.