Decklin Foster on Sat, 13 May 2000 01:48:13 +0200 (CEST) |
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[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> Napster Hurts Free Software |
Buffalo Bob writes: > But ultimately the copyright starts with the artist herself. *sigh* I see you have had some of the Kool-aid too. Copyright starts with the public. In a democratic society, there is no other justification for any law or policy. Copyright is a trade; the public gives up the freedom to copy written or artistic works so that artists and writers have an incentive (money) to produce more of them, and ones of higher quality. The trade was done because there was an overall benefit to society at the time. There is absolutely nothing moral or inalienable about it. We need to ask ourselves two things: (1) Does our government still represent the public? and (2) Is copyright still a good trade? Do note that (2) is not an all-or-nothing issue. It may be that case that trading away the right to copy benefits society up to a certain point, but things like authors-life-plus-70-years and the DMCA are far into the land where the costs outweigh the benefits. Because of the staggering influence of mega-corporations (and their mega-campaign- dollars) on the government, and the relatively small voice of individuals pursuing copyright reform, the tradeoff point has been moved to a place where the corporations' benefit is maximized instead of society's benefit. [P.S. Neither Napster nor MP3 is a ``program''.] -- There is no TRUTH. There is no REALITY. There is no CONSISTENCY. There are no ABSOLUTE STATEMENTS. I'm very probably wrong. -- BSD fortune(6) _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold