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Copyright Law for the Future: Control & Creativity
ablair writes: "MacSurfer is linking to a truly excellent article by Stanford Law's Lawrence Lessig, on the copyright balance between Control & Creativity. A must-read for those interested in everything from the RIAA-mp3 battles to the way GPL & BSD Licenses should be."
That would their mouths.
This is a very one sided view meant to persuade you to how right they are and how wrong everyone else is. To that end, it did a good job, it bent the truth, straight out lied, and used lots of non-sensical tidbits such as "the very premise of the Internet is that no one can predict how it will develop". If you can figure out how to mod me -50 go for it, but I'm saying it anyway.
But, it is not a good read if you want to understand the real issues and maybe get a look at the other side of the coin. The music industry is an unnecessary middle man, on which I agree. But all music should be free, there's something thats a little different. Artists work hard to create music that we listen to and they wrote it and should be able to control it as they see fit. Consumers cannot be trusted to use the music they pay for solely to create their own copies, its just not going to happen. Redistributing music over the internet does hurt artists to a degree, and people will quickly point out all the good effects like exposure to new audiences, but the truth is that it abuses the contract that you and the artist have made. He has worked long and hard to create this thing of beauty and you have paid a price to listen to it unlimited by anything else. But people don't pay the price, they download hours on hours of music and never buy anything except blank cds.
You'll see the other side come up with all these arguments about, "they can make all their revenue off concerts" when they shouldn't have to, or "we should be able to make our own copies" when consumers constantly abuse this right. It all comes down to how the artists themselves want to distribute their music. If they decide to hand it out and go play a shitload of concerts, then good for them. If they decide that people should *gasp* compensate them for a song they've worked long and hard on, thats their choice. If you don't like it then don't listen to their music. What, you really like their new song? Well, they did not have to spend countless hours writing it and should be somehow compensated for their work.
No, I do not agree whole-hearted with everything I've said above. But there is another side to the issue. Realize that this is a persuasive opinion piece and only shows an over dramasized and inaccurate version of one side of the story.