Not really a flame, but OK. I addressed some of this in my other
post, but, golly me, this has turned into a long one. Here goes
(blatant exaggerations are for effect only):
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
(Hey, I should put that in my sig!)
> Here's my poisition in brief:
>
> IP is a artifact of the printing press, and the publishers that controled
> them. It's only purpose was to protect the PUBLISHERS rights and
> properties, not the artists.
In the USA, if you contract independently to create a work, then:
Under U.S. law, as soon as any work is finished (even unfinished ones,
I presume), the copyright belongs to the artist. Furthermore, unless a
contract specifically states that the copyright is transferred, ownership
remains with the artist.
Therefore the artist has COMPLETE control!
You wanna keep it? Go ahead, and sue the first person who tries to use
it. You wanna make money? Sell the copyright to a company (say, Virgin
Records or Vintage) that wants to use it. You wanna make *really* big
money? Sell the *use* of the art in bits and pieces, but retain the right to
resell and reproduce it whenever *you* desire.
The one category in which the above does not apply (and maybe this is
more along the lines of what you're talking about) is if you're creating
stuff as an employee of someone else. Then you're screwed because they
have a right to everything you do.
Now *that* is a construct built to put control into the hands of
corporations.
>The moral and legal basis of these laws were
> constructed around the fact that publishing works took considderable time
> and effort, and that publishers who invest that effort should be the sole
> entities to be rewarded for investing in the book. Now that the
> distribution of information has reached a level where the individual
> creators do not necessarily need a publisher to reach their audience,
I agree in general that ease of distribution will result in more
grass-roots level art reaching a wider audience. And I'm really,
really looking forward to that. Really.
But, for those mainstreamers out there:
Sure, currently if the artist is a dime-a-dozen singer/songwriter ...
say, Alanis Morrissette (sorry, fans) ... she needs to sign with a
company that can put up the bucks to produce a few million CDs. But
say she could borrow the capital to burn a few thousand CDs herself?
How many would she have sold? My guess is maybe a few hundred.
Enough money to pay her electric bill for a month and maybe get
a few groceries.
Because producing CDs is not what made her rich. It was the true
value of the record companies: the massive marketing campaign.
The ability to get every radio station to play her music, run full-page
newspaper ads, book her on late-night talk shows, put big cardboard
cutouts of her in every record store.
Record companies don't have their power because they control the
means of production, they have their power because they *are* the
production. They produce the fame itself. They control who will and
will not be successful ... and it has nothing to do with producing the
physical object on which the art resides (or the art itself, for that
matter).
Toss the entire notion of IP out the window, and record companies
will *still* be able to approach the next Paula Abdul and say, "We'll
make you rich and famous." Because they don't provide a *product*
to the consumer, they provide a *service* ... to the artist.
I believe that's what JP was saying when he said certain people will
be rich and famous no matter what the informational-legal construct.
And I agree.
Point 1. Because with all the talk about information being more
easily accessed, few (except JP) have talked about who *wants* to access
it! Nobody cares if a new, cool original writer is putting her stuff up on
the web unless they're told by one of the uber web sites (cnet, HotWired,
blah, blah,blah) that the writer is new, cool and original. So the means of
*informing* people will STILL be in the hands of the big corps, the ones
that spend tons of money on web sites that attract tons of people. And that's
the same way they've been making their money all these years anyway.
("You're name is what? Alanis who? Yeah, look if I had a dime for every
*budding musician* who spammed me with info about what great music
you make. ... Anyway, how come you weren't on MTV's *Top 1,000 New
Artists of the Year, 2035* list? That's where I look when I want to find out
who's hot, who my friends are listening to! Oh, you can only get on that
list if you cough up $10,000 e-bucks per week? You don't say?")
Which leads me to ...
Point 2. What, so you can rip off Janet Jackson's music for free? Big
deal, she'll sell you autographed tap shoes for $200 each and make
a killing. She'll put her name on a line of activewear. She'll do commercials
for Sprite. In other words, she'll tie her fame to material items that can't
be reproduced digitally. And her record/marketing company will
still make an even bigger killing (and still control her *persona*).
So in a world without intellectual property, most of the people who are
currently producing *art* (very loosely defined, I guess) would still
need marketing. Serious marketing. They'd still get rich, and so would
Columbia, Geffen, etc.
>and
> that the type of information that suceeds financially in this new
> electronic medium is based on repeating, context aware information, the
> standards and morals that surround IP will become increasingly irrelivant,
> until IP is relegated to the Backup Tapes of history, where it belongs.
Who needs it? Surely not the big publishing companies.
-- Dwayne Purper Chapel Hill, N.C. USA http://www.futmedia.com ---------------------------- The horror, the horror: No. 5 on the bestseller list, "America Online for Dummies." ----------------------------