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

Am 06.07.2010 08:12, schrieb Louigi Verona: In your comments you discuss the question of scarcity of ideas and you compare ideas and physical objects. But I do not think, that we talk about ideas here. We talk about manifestations of ideas in the form of compositions and recordings. If someone says: "Use all 12 tones available. Do not repeat a tone before you have written a basic line that contains all 12 tones. Do not write seqences." Well: This is indeed, an idea and nothing more or less. And everybody can use it to write new music without even attribute it to Schönberg in any way. But if someone samples a few minutes of "Moses and Aaron" to make a simple beat sound more interesting, the situation is different. It may have took Schönberg many years of thinking an studying to come up with Dodekaphonics but it took him only 10 minutes to write down the rules abovementioned. He should be attributed and praised for writing down the rules but he has never claimed a right to make money with these rules or even control their usage. But "Moses and Aaron" took Schönberg months if not years to write and of course he claimed a right to be compensated for this work. Because he needed to: pay rent, buy food, having luxouriuos suits taylored, travelling the world etc etc etc. One may philosophize all day and all of the night about how works of art are derived from traditions that belong to everyone or if maybe Shiva, Hekate or God himself or mother earth or whatever instance beyond our realm of economics and physical needs are to be attributed for inspiration. But nobody can ignore physical needs, at least not for long ;-) It is a social issue: creators need food and shelter, they need a social status that is adeaquate to their work. The given system of ASCAP, entertainment industry, etc does this job. But it does it very bad. With a unacceptable level of control about the artists and their work and the usage of this work by the public. And with an unacceptable overhead that leaves only but a few percent of the money users pay for getting the works, for the artists. So there should be a better system to make sure the work of artists will be compensated if you want fulltime artists. And such work is scarce, because you need to have people working for months to get an album filled with ideas manifested in actual recordings. The ideas themselfs may be in the artists minds anyway, you do not need to rent a rehearsal room or to learn how to play an instrument or how to program a sequencer to have an idea. But you do have to do all these things to make an idea become something, you can actually share with others. best regards HZN