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Artistic Freedom Vouchers Proposed
Corvus writes "Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research has written a paper proposing a system giving everyone a voucher which they could use to support the creative artist/writer/etc of their choice, as a way of avoiding the intrusiveness and inefficiency of the current copyright system." I'm sure I'd use mine on MC Chris.
Before we get a whole bunch of people bitching about how this might be a kind of popularity contest, note this quote from the article: "Under plausible assumptions, the savings from reduced expenditures on copyrighted material would vastly exceed the cost of the AFV."
Public domain software saves everyone money. It's about time something like this AFV came along and hammered out the details on how to achieve it in a way that's cost effective.
I don't know about you, but my first voucher will go to the person who invented AFV.
From the article: "There would be two alternative mechanisms through which individuals could use their voucher. As one option they could have the funds paid directly by the government to the creative worker or intermediary of their choice, by indicating their selection on a tax form. Alternatively, they could pay an amount equal to the voucher directly to the creative worker or intermediary of their choice, and then file for a refundable credit on their tax return."
That's amazing. I hope Canada adpots this as law, and I will vote for any left-friendly politician who supports it.
Can be found here.
I'd give mine to my local radio station.
Support local artists by downloading their tracks to check them out, then going to see their shows and buying their CDs!
If he continues to blow things up in his movies.
Can I use my voucher to support myself?
How they determine who you can give it to?
I mean, my kid made this awesome finger-painting, so I wanna give the money to him, and thus to me, so I can use it, and I'm not being greedy or anything...really.
Seriously. How do they define someone who can receive these? Can I give mine to Linus?
IMO, the National Endowment of the Arts is a waste of taxpayer money, because it blindly pays some unsuccessful artists. This would be a good alternative; give the funding to the artists whose work people actualy like.
My vouchers go to whoever will pay me the largest percentage of the value back. Start bidding please.
The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
""Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research has written a paper proposing a system giving everyone a voucher which they could use to support the creative artist/writer/etc of their choice, as a way of avoiding the intrusiveness and inefficiency of the current copyright system." "
[Looks through wallet]
I have a couple of those.
[Looks again]
Large demonination too.
Anyone else see a strange correlation between a "voucher" and the wuffie points found in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom?
Are we moving to a more meritocratic society?
'Scuse me I have to go work with my Ad-Hoc...
-Coach
"Never upset a goalie, getting hit with a blocker is an unpleasent experience - facemask or not." -Me
this is because you're a goddamn waste of space
McEditor : skilless former short-order cook rescued
from rehab by being given a job as a slashdot
editor
yes indeedy
just my 2 cents
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The Artistic Freedom Voucher:
Internet Age Alternative to Copyrights
Dean Baker[1]
November 5, 2003
Executive Summary
The institution of copyrights has its origins in the feudal guild system. Copyrights provide an incentive for creative or artistic work by providing a state-enforced monopoly. Like any other monopoly, this system leads to enormous inefficiencies, and creates substantial enforcement problems. The size of these inefficiencies and the extent of the enforcement problems have increased dramatically in the Internet Age, as digital technology allows for the costless reproduction of written material, and recorded music and video material.
The artistic freedom voucher (AFV) is an alternative mechanism for supporting creative and artistic work. It is designed to maximize the extent of individual choice, while taking full advantage of the potential created by new technology.
The AFV would allow each individual to contribute a refundable tax credit of approximately $100 to a creative worker of their choice, or to an intermediary who passes funds along to creative workers. Recipients of the AFV (creative workers and intermediaries) would be required to register with the government in the same way that religious or charitable organizations must now register for tax-exempt status. This registration is only for the purpose of preventing fraud - it does not involve any evaluation of the quality of the work being produced.
In exchange for receiving AFV support, creative workers would be ineligible for copyright protection for a significant period of time (e.g. five years). Copyrights and the AFV are alternative ways in which the government supports creative workers. Creative workers are entitled to be compensated once for their work, not twice. The AFV would not affect a creative workers ability to receive money for concerts or other live performances.
The AFV would create a vast amount of uncopyrighted material. A $100 per adult voucher would be sufficient to pay 500,000 writers, musicians, singers, actors, or other creative workers $40,000 a year. All of the material produced by these workers would be placed in the public domain where it could be freely reproduced.
Under plausible assumptions, the savings from reduced expenditures on copyrighted material would vastly exceed the cost of the AFV. Much of this savings would be the direct result of individuals' decisions to use AFV supported music, movies, writings and other creative work in place of copyright-protected work. A second source of savings would be the result of lower advertising costs, since much of the material used in advertising supported media would be in the public domain.
In contrast to copyright protection, which requires restrictions on the use of digital technology, the AFV would allow for the full potential of this technology to be realized. Creative workers would benefit most when their material was as widely distributed as possible. They would therefore have incentives to promote technologies that allow for recorded music, video, and written material to be transferred as easily as possible. By contrast, copyright enforcement is demanding ever greater levels of repression (e.g. restriction on publishing software codes, tracking computer use, and getting records from Internet service providers) in order to prevent the unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted material. The police crackdowns on unauthorized copying by college students, and even elementary school kids, would be completely unnecessary for work supported by the AFV.
Introduction
In the last few years, it has become increasingly apparent that copyrights are an anachronism ill-suited for the Internet Age. The Internet and digital technology make it possible to instantly, and without cost, copy recorded music, movies, or written material. The response of the entertainment and publishing industry to the development of technology has been to demand more r
That said, I love this idea. Do actors and musicians really need millions to live on? No. $40,000 a year should be enough for most of them. Live with one car! One house! Don't buy $1,000 suits! Live like a normal American! You don't NEED to be rich to have a good life!
Beyond that...free is always good. I still don't think it will happen, but I'll support it wholeheartedly if someone tries to make it so.
/my $.02
Goo goo g'joob.
Heck No! Not a replacement at all!
Without funding for unsuccessful artists trying random crap, you get recycled crap. And, yes, I honestly prefer random crap to recycled crap.
The NEA is still useful, as the majority of people have shitty taste. Just using this vouchers system would result in most of the money going to Britney and N'Sync. And then, I'd have to kill myself (shortly preceded by a few hundred random idiots).
Interesting idea. I wonder how long it will take before a secondary market forms to buy/sell these vouchers. Since the cost of vouncher to the owner is less than voucher's benefit to the artist, there is opportunity for the sale of voucher rights. For example, an artist might pay $10 (up to $99 if the artist is in a 0% tax bracket) to people to sign their $100 voucher over them. The voucher owner gets cash and a tax break, the "artist" gets $100 minus what they paid to buy the vouncher.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
In the article he said that under the current system a minority of the artists are making a majority of the money. I think that under the proposed system this would not be solved and might be even worse. There is a small number of artists that most people consider their favorites, and people would tend to elect for their money to go to them rather than going to all of the people they listen to. So the most popular artists would still make tons, and few people would send money to the little guys. The proposed system of intermediaries might help a little, but I still think that come April 15, most people would just write down the first name that they think of.
I'm sure I'd use mine on
MC Chris.
On a whim I thought I would check out MC Chris and try and find any music
samples I could listen too. I found
one and I have to say that
is the worst thing my ears have ever heard. Did I mention I work weekends
at a karaoke bar? We have regulars that think they're going to be
discovered there, and this guy sounds about 10 times worse.
What happens when most people don't bother?
I mean, most people don't vote for president, or bother with much of anything else. How would they make this easy enough to do that it would be resilient to fraud and commonly done?
We already have a system of vouchers which can be given to artists, who in turn can exchange them for goods and services. Those vouchers are called "money."
I say M.C. Hawking
"E" stands for energy, yo that's me,
I'm a brilliant scientist and a dope MC.
Before you step to me I'd think twice G,
I'm the Lord of Chaos, King of Entropy.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
The only reason slashbots don't like the current copyright system is that they want to be able to get all their mp3s and divxes of copyrighted shows/movies for free, legally, like they can the latest linux distro.
The majority of important work in a book is the actual writing by the author. Other costs such as printing are incidental, and are becoming even less of a factor with digital reproduction. Therefore, it is even more important now then ever to protect copyright. An author needs compensation to pursue his trade. Copyright didn't originate with feudalism, but as an attack on feudalism. It was the merchants and craftmans that formed the middle class which helped destroy feudalism, a system in which land was owned arbitrariyl by aristocrats, who forced peasants to till the land and took most of the profits, distributing a small amount to the peasants to keep them alive. So familiar. Socialism is not much different than feudalism. A small minority (the rulling class or govt.) comtrols all the wealth, and doles out enough for the proletariat to keep them alive. Albolishing copyright is socialism, a concept where the public automatically owns the work of an author. Supporting such a concept is supporting theft, and hinders creativity and productivity by forcing the talented people to support themseves by means other than by using their real talent.
Vote for Pedro
Why not spend the money on the grade-school kids that need an education? The money would be far more useful there.
How about I want the money myself? I don't really like it. Why can't people just be expected to donate on their own accord. If no one wants to donate to the artist then too bad. What is soo dificult about this?
I have mixed feelings on this. It's interesting, though. The government actually saves money, cause it costs more than to 20B now to issue and enforce copyrights and all the overhead that goes along with it. But, I have a hard time supporting another "entitlement".
/. crowd.
Also, $100 per person isn't enough. What you'll get, IMHO, is simular to today's "free" music scene. The little guys get more exposure, but they're drowned in a sea of content. Just finding the good stuff can be difficult. The entertainment industry currently employs a heck of a lot more than 500,000 people, most of them making a lot more than $40k a year, so anybody that's ever been in anything won't go for it.
The current system COULD work, unfortunately the "Mischiefs of Faction" have induced our government into perverting the original intent and plan of copyrights.
What I'd like to see is a way for individuals to give money via paypal to whatever cause they want, and the money goes directly into buying off politicians. Really, the amount of money some of these companies pay political campains to curry favor is pittiful if spread across a large group. It's about time our government came clean, usually the biggest wallet get's their way, let the people put their money where their poll numbers are. SCO and M$ would be toast just based on the donations from the
Only things the masses like or know about would get funding. That leavs a lot of people out in the cold. If we paint this in terms of music, only the mass-consumed features would get funding, and the independent, lesser-known things would not get enough funding to continue, regardless of quality. Once again, mass-consumer-appeal (boy-band-of-the-week, etc) would take precedent over real talent.
Basically, I just don't see this solving any problems.
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
I don't use special vouchers; just these little green paper things.
Problem with my system is the green paper things I give never get to my artists although that is my intent...
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
"That said, I love this idea. Do actors and musicians really need millions to live on? No. $40,000 a year should be enough for most of them. Live with one car! One house! Don't buy $1,000 suits! Live like a normal American! You don't NEED to be rich to have a good life!"
So when are musician and actors jobs going to be outsourced like those "Made too much" tech dot-boomers?
This idea is a silly, feel-good proposal that will not compensate artists in a reasonable way. Instead, people will assign their voucher to a friend, whether or not they'd ever pay for any of their music. Cash is a very effective way to compensate artists, and consumers choosing to use their own cash (not some free voucher that every taxpayer will subsidize) is the best way to allocate these scarce dollars.
Music consumers like these "compulsary licensing" schemes because it means that non-music listening people will be forced to subsidize their favorite things. Seems like a good idea. Let's require poor kids to pay $10 a year so the rich kid driving his dad's Ferrari doesn't have to spend an extra $100 a year on his music.
It's nothing more than a naked political grab, and the EFF is losing mainstream support because of their regressive stance.
As I understand this, it is basicly a proposal to do away with copyrights, and in turn force donations from the people to artists. The donations would be collected via tax, but there destination would be determined by the population on an even basis.
While this on the surface looks like a great idea, it strikes me as one of the sorts of Ideas which has a huge collection of hidden negitive repercussions. One which comes readily to mind is that for large projects the star or lead would get most or all of the money regardless of how much work, say, the lighting guy put into it.
It is also worth pointing out that there is a great deal of cultural interia which would fight this. Media producers would work against it (put them out of bussness) republicans would work against it (government supported art). Its a nice thought exsparement though.
Hate to say it, but is it really the government's role to promote the arts?
I'd rather see the government relax its regulation of various forms of communication. Deregulate LPFM, for example, and let small hobbyists operate LPFM stations that give play to local artists. This would help to break the monopoly of "Big Media," which IMO has a stranglehold on what we listen to mostly because of the scarcity of legal broadcast media.
At the same time, this would allow "open-source" music to thrive. You could just donate the money directly to artists in appreciation of their music. It (kinda) works for NPR. Under the current tax scheme (scam? hehe) artists could even unite under not-for-profit umbrella organizations that would pay them to produce music and accept tax-deductible donations to help pay the artists.
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
What happens if an artist signs up for AFV, but gets only $1000. They are screwed because in signing up for AFV, they had to sign over the copyright to their works for 5 years. Without copyright, no traditional publisher will sign them.
So any artist who enters the AFV program better have a good marketing budget to ensure that they get their promised $40,000. Maybe they can get marketing help by signing over some of their AFV money to a publicist. Maybe they need to promise the first $20,000 to the marketing person, and a fat percentage of any AFV money above that $20,000. Maybe this look just like a traditional publishing deal.
Whoops! We're back where we started. The artist is poor and the people so sell art to the public are rich.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
If you like random crap then I agree that you should be entitled to pay for it. It's forcing the rest of us to pay for it that I find objectionable.
Under this modle it would be quite possible to support your favorite peice of O.S.S. via voucher. Every little bit of cash helps, particularly for small projects.
I'd give my voucher to the Disney Corporation. They've been ripped off on Mickey Mouse one to many times.
AC comments get piped to
"Problem with my system is the green paper things I give never get to my artists although that is my intent..."
[Taps on shoulder]
Addressed envelope with "green paper" enclosed mailed to favourite artist. If it doesn't get there, then, your country has collapsed.
People who already follow the arts, are donating money to causes such as symphonies, local plays, etc. People who are less interested -- those that just turn on the radio and listen to whatever is played are not going to be bothered with finding an person or group to support.
In my view, this is an idea that will never work.
If they are happy to download the music to see if it belongs to them, consider the mistake if it did not.
If someone has a name similar to that of their artist (or not), records some copyright material to mp3 and then puts it on the network. The condition is it is free for anyone to download, except the major record labels, their employees, agents, contractors or affiliates. By virtue of their copyright laws, they are not allowed to download it (aka steal it) and are subject to $1500 or $150,000 fine if they do.
All we need to do then is monitor the downloads of this mp3, and then sue the RIAA when they download it. If there is more than 216 of us doing this, then we can easily outweigh their laws and settle this similar to how the large companies settle patent lawsuits, you lower your weapons and we lower ours.
people would tend to elect for their money to go to [favorites] rather than going to all of the people they listen to.
BING BING BING! Do this, and it's entirely possible to make money purely by advertising an 'artist' who never produces any work and may not even exist, and by pure name-recognition gaining the royalties that would be paid to other artists who did produce work that consumers are enjoying. This scheme sounds like a great way to make Milli Vanilli clones rule the music world. It manages to take the blank-media tax idea and make it worse. As an artist, I just see people listening to my tunes, and then giving the voucher to whoever had the fanciest commercial on MTV.
I have a better idea though, as long as we're using government and texes to redistribute wealth to be spent on services, how about this: We all pay in to a pool with our taxes, and then, if we get sick or injured and need to go to the hospital, we can get the service and the hospital expenses can get paid out of the pool. Why don't we do THAT first, then worry about freaking pop-music records?
You have plenty of them. Start sending them to the creator if you're so interested in supporting them.
You can already give money to the artist of your choice. Just send him or her a check, purchase an album, or, better yet, go to a concert. There is no need to get the government more involved than it already is.
If you want to make a political gesture while supporting this artist make sure that you pay the thousands of artists that already offer their material in unencrypted formats. It really is as simple as that. If you don't like the media companies, buy from artists that aren't part of the media conglomerates. There are thousands of artists to choose from.
Artistic vouchers would be the worst possible solution. If you think that the credit card companies take a bite out of transactions they are involved with then you never have dealt with the government. The taxpayer would almost certainly end up paying at least $20 for a $10 voucher, and the record companies would still get all of the money because they still control the most sure method of getting the publicity that is necessary to make it big. The only difference would be that the RIAA companies would get paid in "vouchers," which, with our luck, would probably be tax-free money.
Not to mention the fact that you are volunteering my money, which I don't feel like spending on your "art."
Further government intervention in this arena would be the worst thing that could possibly happen. Anyone that thinks that this is a good idea needs to take a history class, at the very least, and a remedial economics class would probably be a good idea as well.
Is this middle step really necessary?
Why not go a step further and have the government directly fund all arts and creative science?
All of the programs written by companies like Microsoft were written for greed, and not for the needs of the society. With the state taking control of the funding of IT, IT will take on a greater social meaning than it does in this petty commercialized setting of the corrupt western bourgeoisie.
OSS can and should rule. The whole problem with this Windows crap is that it is so blatantly American middle class. The lowest common denomenator culture that has yet to scurge the face of the planet.
This is truly a revolutionary step. Hopefully, more and more left-friendly politicians will realize the need to take software from the control of the corrupt business sector and into the public sector where society will benefit from the software.
This is a nice forward looking half-step. But it seems that it would be better for the state to simply nationalize IT and publishing industries. When the means of production are owned by the state, then we will create a paradise for programmers and other creative artists. We could get the middle class out of the creative process and put it back into the universities where a higher form of art will evolve...one that is in tune with a higher universal conciousness.
Forcing Brittney Spears, Madonna, Eminem, Jennifer Lopez, etc... down our ears to the point that I'd pay NOT to hear it is what I find objectionable.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Under this system or any other in which copyright were abolished, indeed the GPL would lose it's might. But that is a moot point since the GPL would lose it's purpose as well. In a world where everything is in the Public domain there is no longer any risk of a corporation closing it up since their derivative would also be in the public domain.
In essence this is the ultimate GPL.
The mere fact that the government is in the business of enforcing copyright means that they are in the business of supporting the arts. As the joke goes, we know what they are. Now we're just haggling over the structure of the deal.
...is to just monitor consumption of copyrighted works. Everyone pools 200$, and each song just gets a percentage based on its "mindshare." If, say, Madonna's music constitutes 1% of all music downloads, she gets 1% of the pool. Of course, this requires huge amounts of monitoring of popular media, but it is the only way to allow art to embrace technology.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
The real question we should be asking ourselves is. Why the double standard when it comes to artists and everyone else? When everyone else wants to make a living they invest time, money and energy learning what they need to know. Then they go out and engage in the time honored exchange of skills-knowledge for money, and while there's the usual bickering (not being paid enough. work conditions suck, etc). Most people don't see anything problamatic. Now when an artist tries to do the same. To start with. There's lack of respect (Oh what you're doing isn't a "real" job, or career). Then there's people who think that what you're doing has little or no value (but don't see the contradiction in downloading, keeping and enjoying what you've produced). Grudgingly give you your due (Oh you're making too much money. You should be poor. Huh? I will if you will). Then proceeds to kick the foundations that help make your career possible (I have a hankering to abolish some "at will" laws). All artists want is the same that everyone else want. To make an honest living like everyone else, free of hassle.
Count me in, but here's an interesting question. I have a degree in Fine Art and a number of other experiences that I believe would qualify me for the program. What should really be the criteria for being accepted to the program?
stuff |
my first voucher will go to the person who invented AFV
...instead of any artist whose music you enjoy, demonstrating why this half-baked idea won't work. Not for artists, anyway - I have hundreds upon hundreds of names in my collection, I perfer micropayments to each rather than having to give the whole pot to one of them, shutting the others out of the music biz. If I were in a monopoly position and had a large advertising budget, like say, the RIAA, I'm pretty sure I could use this system to make it almost impossible for competitors to get paid, that's for sure.
You think commercial music's bad now, try compulsory royalties: the record industry gets paid no matter what, and with this scheme, you can only support one competing artist per year. Sounds like an RIAA wet dream to me. Hope you like Justin Timberlake and Britney.
Copyright is about ownership, not about the government or taxpayers "supporting" artists.
Art is not the only case where copyright comes into play.
Copyright and fraud are mutually exclusive ideas.
All of the material produced by these workers would be placed in the public domain where it could be freely reproduced.
Because you say so? What if an artist doesn't want her work in the public domain, or reproduced?
If either artists don't sign up for the program (maybe distrust of government, looking at their past record in funding the arts), or taxpayers fail to contribute. You would quickly have a non-program.
Even if all this is blatantly incorrect, I can't see any idea remotely like this going through the House and Senate; they're not gonna let a "Piss Christ" (remember Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe, the NEA, etc etc) become Public Domain.
From an old joke:
In capitalism, man exploits man
In communism, its the other way around
I really like the general idea. Capitalism works great for material goods, but it has a lot of problems for digital goods, in the face of unstoppable copying. It would be interesting to try a whole new system and see how it works. I think you could add software to this system as well as music and movies and such.
That said, I see a few problems:
- It depends on each taxpayer to be (slightly) altruistic. You have to take the trouble to remember and then designate a recipient on your tax form, but you get no direct benefit from this. What if you don't put anyone down, is the money lost? What if 75% of the people are too lazy to write down a recipient? Maybe the unassigned money goes proportially to all the artists that people did put down.
- How do you remember which artist(s) to give it to throughout the year? I predict that every album and every movie will come out in March under this system.
- How do you define a "fraudulent" registration? What if me and my buddy both register, then we each make a finger painting and give it to each other, and then we put each other down on the tax form? Who's to say that that art wasn't good enough to qualify as a "registered" artist? I think you'd have to make people pay $100 to register, to prevent this from happening.
- Do people in other countries get to copy these works? If so, then the country that implemented this system would essentially be subsidizing
listeners in other countries.
not raped.
- The gov't has no creative filter, just a system to make sure each person's only in the system once, and that real people submit their own work into the public domain in return for AFVs
- Each citizen can direct their AFV toward whoever they choose. This means that really popular artists, or groups of artists like you need to make a movie, will get vastly more than $40k a year, and that people just noodling around in their spare time might pick up a supplemental income. In other words, the government creates an alternative market system without artificial monopolies - realize that copyright is a governmental intrusion even worse than AFVs.
There is room for improvement in the proposal. A constant dollar amount (or even an inflation-pegged one) for the voucher would have the market-distorting effect of fixing the ratio of public domain artists to the population as a whole. The proportion of our dollars spent on entertainment fluctuates under the copyright regime; CD sales drop in a recession, or when people are spending their money on cell phones instead. Can anyone think of a better way to set the values for AFVs? You wouldn't want it to depend linearly on the number of artists enrolled, because that would have no mechanism to discourage entrance to a glutted market, but you do need the money available to info producers to increase as manufacturing and service industries are further automated.Sure, MC Chris is good and all, but he's no Frontalot.
[insert witty quote here]
Anything that has to do with taxes that doesn't involve the public good of everyone is a bad idea. Not only is this system highly abusable:
Anything can be considered art, therefore anyone who does anything can register for vouchers, therefore everyone can voucher themselves.
and exploitable by anyone with good business sense:
I'll pay everyone 99.99$ for them to give me their 100$ voucher. I make 5,000$ for moving money around.
but it has to do with taxes, which means if we're paying 500,000 people 40,000$ a year, that's going to be a 20,000,000$ tax increase. That price will be divided up among all tax payers.
Bad bad bad BAD idea.
If copyright only protected performance rights and not reproduction of recorded material, artists would not be hurt very much if at all.
That's because artists make the vast majority of their money from performing, merchandise, and endorsements, not from album sales. That holds true regardless of whether they are a local band that plays for $100/night or a double-platinum superstar. $1/CD isn't very much, especially after it gets split between band members, managers, and other interested parties. Britney Spears couldn't make anywhere near her $40+ million in a year just from album sales, and the local band would probably be among the many bands who lose money when they cut an album with a major label.
With recorded music being freely distributable, artists would [b]encourage[/b] people to put the music on P2P and burn CDs for their friends. Albums would serve as promotion material to attract people to buy concert tickets, T-shirts, autographed albums, etc., and the increased exposure would make up for most or all of whatever they would have earned from selling CDs.
Of course, the middlemen who eat up the other $17 out of the $18 per CD are the ones who would really hurt if all music CDs became freely copyable.
Unfortunately, just one or two artists deciding to allow free copying of their own music wouldn't help the situation much, because the RIAA still has so much control over the promotion and distribution channels. The whole system would have to be freed up in this manner for the artists to reap the benefits of the increased exposure that unrestricted copying would bring.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
Try MC Frontalot.
There is so much more to this proposal than simply issuing vouchers, this comment doesn't deserve comment.
Even worse, they can feel free to rip off anyone, so you'll invariably get great songwriters starving to death while Britney and Justin sing their songs. Many people will abandon art as a career altogether since they can expect no protection for anything the sweat over.
;))and adds a tiny bit of free choice.
Why not just allow people to spend "money they have" on "music and art?" This "freedom" voucher (freedom from income for a lot of artists) idea takes the worst of socialism (as opposed to the less worse parts
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
The AFV program makes horribly naive assumptions about the numbers of artists that a given consumer enjoys. Between books, CDs, movies, magazines, and art, I probably enjoy the artistic output of at least 1000 "artists" per year (especially when you consider the multiple artists involved in producing a CD or movie). How am I to allocate my $100 voucher among these numerous artists?
I consume media across formats and genres, so no intermediary is likely to represent even a small fraction of my interests (and the intermediary is likely to support artists that I don't like). And listing all these artists on my tax form would be a major pain. Instead, I'd rather make a small payment to the artist when I actually buy or consume their work. Sounds like the current system to me.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
This idea assumes that protecting a creative work or idea is a bad thing. Why would I, as a practicing designer and artist, want to let anyone and their dog reproduce whatever I spent many hours on for $100...maybe. Copyright, or what is stands for, IS THE INCENTIVE TO PRODUCE CREATIVE WORK AND IDEAS. It means that someone can come up with, say an illustration or a song, and be able to make a living from it. As a point, most creatives out there do not make a lot of money, they make what their talents will get them. A few make more than they need to [read pop music in general, or blow up action movies]. This is a stupid idea that would marginalize creative acts as subsidized government things. They would be viewed as unimportant, which in reality they are the things that actually create society, define culture and translate ideas. Copyright, or the right to have ideas and use them without fear of some moron copying you and marginallized your hard work, is a good thing. Just to prove a point, someone out there copy this guys entire idea, then publish it as their own idea, with no reference to the original author, and try to sell it as their own. I bet he would be pissed. The only way he could prove it was his ideas is by...anyone....copyright registration!! Stupid idea.
I think the interesting nuggest which people have often overlooked is that online distribution has already surpassed CDs. Apple has 80% of that market. If Apple started signing new artists directly instead of doing everything through the RIAA, both the Artists and apple could benefit greatly, leaving the evil megacorporation out in the cold.
"Give away the stone, let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and faded anchor." - Maynard James Keenan
MC Hawking
I'd be interested in their definition of an 'artist'
Should an artist be Patronised? Subsidised? Neutralised?
Sounds to me like being an artist could be the next cushy number under this proposal. Holden Caulfield where are you now?
Why is Mickey Mouse, The Beatles, and Aerosmith still under copyright in the usa? Because copyright lasts for 97 years last I checked, and has been extended 11 times in the past century. Anyone who has looked at this pattern will understand that when copyright lives forever, large corperations will simply aquire more and more and more copyrights until they own all the music and once they have extablished a monopoly, they then own the culture, as the RIAA does for example, and we're in a bad situation as we are now where the media is continuing to get cruddier and cruddier, news content gets worse every year, and the goverment can get away with voting machines that don't actually count votes properly.
Before we go about proposing new solutions, how about we fix the system first and slaughter the pigs at the top? I have a feeling if the system was fixed and worked properly as it was intended then we wouldn't have all these problems, or better yet. Mabye if the hippies and techies went down to the library (you know, that place with a lot of books, they rent them for free ya know) or picked up a computer with a p2p app installed and started to do some research on their culture and history, and then proceeded to teach their kids, relatives, etc then mabye we wouldn't have such dumbfoundingly stupid ideas being popped up on slashdot and nerds with little understanding about how the system works poking holes in every orifice of the idea.
Or even better, mabye if the public school system taught history properly, and taught the kids of the mistakes other countries and goverments have made, showed them what war, poverty, disease, etc is (and not bf1942 or happi dappy descriptions out of books; I'm talking graphic pictures, audio, movies, etc so they know what it is) and how to watch out for racism, fascism, and why these things are wrong, and actually helped to make kids into producive members of society rahter than complacent burger flippers we'd be better off.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
This isn't exactly the same thing, but an essay of mine proposed a voluntary compensation model for artists.
The voucher proposal is much more radical. The problem lies in who makes the decision to fund individual artists. If it is a government board of some sort, then you have the problem of government entanglement (as well as the requisite backlash from know-nothing conservatives). Interestingly, this kind of idea might swing in Europe, which already provides public support for artists. But in USA, this sort of idea is inconceivable for political reasons (especially if these donations were to be a kind of tax writeoff).
If the grantor is the individual donor, then how does the individual decide the "most worthy" candidate for these types of awards? Often the taste of the wealthy donor just won't be sophisticated enough to ensure that the right kinds of talent is identified.
The alleged benefit behind such a proposal is to eliminate economic transactional costs and to encourage works to go into the public domain. But as far as I see, it doesn't identify or support talent any better than the status quo. Yes, it would be a little prestigious to say that you've won such a grant. But it really doesn't help solve the problem of making the artist's works visible to the reader/spectator/surfer.
As much as I hate the copyright system, I don't see it as really hurting artists from the standpoint of compensation. (Yes, it hurts the right of free expression, as well as allowing corporations to prevent redistribution of creative works. But these things don't really hurt the artist immediately). A large number of content is going towards being free or legally redistributable anyway. I don't see the increased amount of public artwork as being a really big win here.
Here's a better idea (and one in which I propose in my essay cited above). Every artist seeking donations should put a link to paypal or Amazon donation system. (Helpful info for artists: Given current fees structures, it appears that if the donation is less than $5, tipping through Amazon has the lowest transaction fees. Over $5, it's probably cheaper to tip through paypal).
Having a tipjar up is not really obtrusive, doesn't make the artist sound as if he/she's begging and allows the artist to receive an enormous percentage of the cut. But the plain fact is that an overwhelming majority of artistic people just never do so (except webloggers; a large number of webloggers have tipjars; go figure). This sort of plan is far simpler and more direct than some elaborate scheme like this. (And yes, it suffers from the problem of the patron with awful taste and deep pockets).
Our society has a big problem with compensating its creative people. I have seen oodles of talented people just suffering through abject poverty without reasonable hope of support. This is an interesting plan and well worth thinking about. But it requires far too much buyin from politicians. Tipjars are a much more obvious solution.
The main problem I see with the essay is that the writer uses the proposal as a way to mend the copyright problem. That for unsigned musicians and artists is a relatively minor issue. Proposals should be directed instead towards how to encourage individual artists to seek donations from web traffic and how to make it easier for Joe Average to find out about unknown artists. Take the problem of mp3's. A good 90-95% of mp3's out there are freely and legally available by artists you've never heard of. How does the average citizen learn about great works? The problem is not technology or even the law but the discovery process itself. What media outlets provide trustworthy insights about what music is worth listening to? As Tim O'Reilly observed, "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy."
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
and it is called "please distribute my artwork as widely as possible, and if you like it, just send me 10$"
umm not sure - freeware? kinda-of-postcardware?
anyway, any artist can use this kind of licese. so why they do not?
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
Hmmm....a $100 refundable tax credit that I can give to a "creative worker". In exchange for getting my tax credit, they give up their copyright to the music I like.
Let's see....Do I give it to my favorite band on the radio? Nope. CEPR estimates that a big label musician would be giving up their copyrights for approximately $40,000. Bands getting regular rotation on Clear Channel probably don't want the voucher because they might loose money if they give away their hit song. (Yes, I know what Steve Albini and Courtney Love have to say about record contracts. I also know that big label musicians can easily make beyond $40K/yr, even with a bad contract. I saw a "Behind The Music" on VHI that said the female rap group TLC, who filed for bankruptcy after having a notoriously crappy contract, was already making $40k/yr. Their lifestyle would have caused bankruptcy on a $40k/yr income regardless of whether the money came from vouchers or copyrights.) For professional musicians, vouchers are not worth the risk.
What about my favorite indie band? Nah. They are probably waiting to be discovered and hit the big time. If they took the voucher money, someone who is already famous could use their song without paying them. If they want to let someone else sing their song, they would probably make more money selling the song. Besides, as we already know, it is possible to make a decent living without a big label or radio play.
What about that guy who sings at coffee houses on open mic night? Yeah, he'd definitely take the voucher. He's certainly not getting any money for his singing. Oops! You don't know about that guy, so I'm the only one signing a voucher for him. He may want it, but how does it benefit the public to have his songs in the the public domain? How many people will want to sing songs written by Joe Coffeehouse?
This is not a solution to the copyright problem.
Fine.
We're putting YOUR tax dollars into Halliburton subsidies, instead.
IIRC it's possible to specify that your tax dollars don't get spent on the military - which results in them shifting your money around on paper. Hey, if it makes you feel better...
The article clearly states that artists would get to opt in or out of the voucher plan. The only thing compulsory about it is the use of tax dollars, and the figures that you also didn't read make a pretty good case for the public payback being a lot larger than the input.
Things weren't quite so messed up ten years ago.
In my ideal world. . . People and people's families would be allowed to hold a copyright for, say, 60 years, after which the material would go into the public domain.
Corporations, because they are souless entities and not people, should be only be allowed to hold copyright for say, 40 years, (the approximate length of time the original people who worked on the project can be expected to remain employed at the company.) After that, the work should go into public domain.
Further, I think that the transfer/sale of copyright should be completely illegal. The origin of a creation doesn't change simply because you sign a paper. The ability to sell and trade copyrights has been an undermining factor Western society for a long time.
Corporations, if they are dissolved or sold, should be considered as dead and all their works should become public domain. --Or perhaps the copyright should defer to a coalition of the original creators should they choose to create a co-operative holding company, underwhich the copyright would remain in effect for however many years remain of the original 40.
And public domain isn't so bad. It means ANY company can publish a creative work. This, dare I use the word, would result in a COMPETETIVE market place, rather than the (communist) state-supported monopoly market which America has devolved into. Disney and WB and, heck, most major American companies are Anti-competetive despite their bullshit complaints to the contrary.
This voucher idea is insane. The DCMA is insane. Everybody is insane.
The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the coming planetary cleansing is in fact a blessing in disguise.
-FL
I don't think this is going against copywrite (the rights to owning your work and being able to protect it from redistribution, ie, "A Good Thing"), but rather against the publishers. Publishers in a lot of entertainment groups wield a lot of control, just as much in music as in video games. I think this is a good idea as I wouldnt have such a problem with giving money to the RIAA to give to artists if I actually knew they were getting the money. Not to mention, the RIAA's accounting within its parent companies is so shadowed and such, that we have no idea. Hopefully this would push a president for these record companies to be more accountable to the artists.
These companies succeed due to obscurity and burying of facts when it comes to this, so maybe this will scare them into being more open. Or by the same token, they can come down with some ridiculous legal fist against artists taking fan 'donations' or whatever. Who knows what breech of contract they can make up with their legions of lawyers.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
Do these people even live on the same planet as the rest of us?
I understand how this would work for independant artists contributing to the public domain, but what about all the others, who are bound by exclusive contracts (if not worse - *cough*workforhire*cough*) ?
I suggest the system gets extended to them, except that the money would then come from the majors, instead of tax returns from the Government.
Before you complain, yes, I know the RIAA will fight this to the death...
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Why would I pay $100 to some artist of my choice? I dont even SPEND $100 on CDs in a year!
Keep Linux Free!- Give the 100 to Linus
Enough said!
What about putting more than one name on the voucher ? Then the value gets divided upon them. With nowadays information system this could be implemented without too much of a cost (hopefully).
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Hesh will see you, in robot hell!
And why did you staple the trout to the RAM?
Seriously fuck them if they can't figure out how to earn a living w/o some legal fiction/intangible consenual hallucination perversion of PROPERTY.
If you make it you own it and can sell it.Once its sold thats it you no longer control it.If the Louvre would sell it to me I could cut the Mona Lisa into strips and use it for toilet paper.
The RIAA and music shares are focussed almost exclusively on the top 40 artists. No one seems to be noticing that thousands opon thousands of artists in the free market are now hawking limited run CDs. Anymore, you can cast an extra vote for your favorite local bands by buying a CD directly from the band when you attend their concerts.
The problem we have now is that a left leaning sub group is intent on undermining the music community by building an expectation that all music must be free...just like roads, health care and sex must be free.
IMHO, the best model that has appeared in the Internet was the original MP3...that distributed works of unsigned artists. It was a shame that they destroyed their company trying to capture the lame top 40 crowd.
There are lots of hurdles to be overcome -- computer security, "gaming the system", etc. But it still seems quite possible that these models would work better than DRM-based copyright.
See the article, Virtual Markets for Virtual Goods for more details. It's rather long, and aimed at an academic audience which spends a lot of its time thinking about copyright (hey, that's slashdot, right?) but addresses most of the immediate concerns and attacks which posters are thinking of.
Fixing copyright
You're obviously un-aware of the low regard for integrity and high amounts of corruption going on here "in the states". Most of the politicians in Az, Ak and Wa would be in jail if they were private citizens [or vulnerable to the effects of breaking the law they way joe average is]. I don't know about any other states, but I doubt they are different.
Everyone "gives" (or else) 100% of their money to the government. The government then gives (some) of it back in the form of vouchers, to be spent only on certain items the government thinks you should have. Oh wait, they already tried this, it's called the Soviet Union.
Everyone together, say it with me now -- stay the fsck out of my wallet!
This post is based on a paper I wrote in 2001-2002
posted anonymously since I now work in DC where people
aren't ready for good ideas that change things drastically.
During the fall of my *** year at ***** University, I had the pleasure of attending a round-table discussion about the impending Napster case. Earlier that year, the university had acknowledged student use of the "peer to peer" system by limiting the bandwidth Napster clients could use. As a result, when the heavy metal band, Metallica, filed suit against Napster, ****** was named among the contributory infringers. Speakers at the round-table discussion, argued over whether or not the university constituted an Internet service provider, over whether or not enabling peer-to-peer sharing was contributory infringement, and even over what else the music industry should be doing, besides threatening higher education, to address the problem of piracy. But no one questioned that problem was real. Nor did they doubt that the problem was growing rapidly, and that regardless of the outcome of the Napster case, a serious challenge to copyright law was under way.
History
Copyright law is far from new. It's source dates back to the writing of the Constitution - or further if you consider that the Constitution draws from a long tradition of English law that began with the Licensing Act of 1662. In the three hundred and forty one years since its creation, copyright law has gone through many transformations. Before suggesting a new approach to copyright law, we should certainly understand how the law functions today, and why it breaks down. So what is copyright law, and how does it work? Allow me to review a few key points, salient to the discussion ahead.
Every time you fix in tangible form some original creative work or expression you automatically gain a copyright on that material. You draw a finger painting and presto, instant copyright. The definition of what exactly is copyrightable has also changed over time, but currently the standard of an "original creative thought" seems to hold. This of course includes songs, books, and movies, but it also includes things like computer source code. While computer code's functional aspects fall into the domain of patents, the actual expression of that function in a programming language is covered by copyright. Once you have a copyright, it allows you to attribute the work to yourself, to create derivative works, to publicly display or distribute the work, to demand your name not be applied to other's derivatives, to sell the rights to the work to another, and of course to copy or reproduce the work. These last two rights will be the most important in our discussion. You can also register your copyright with the government. If you register, your work is protected by customs, and someone infringes on it, you may seek greater damages as well as legal fees from the infringer. You must register your work prior to filing an infringement lawsuit.
Now you have a registered copyright, but how are you going to enforce it? You are afforded full protection under the law, but unfortunately, the structure of the legal system and of copyright law itself makes actual enforcement difficult. A century ago, if you wanted a copy of a work or a copy of a derivative work, someone had to make it for you. Most likely, it would come from a printing house. Thus, historically it made more sense to bring a suit against the company or person producing the offending works, rather than trying to find and litigate every person who purchased a copy. Today, this is simply impractical. One of the first examples of this new era in copyright law came with Sony vs. Universal in the early 1980's. The case centered on the misuse of VCRs to infringe on broadcasters copyrights. There was no central producer or distributor to challenge in court, since it was the end users who where making the copies. The case was brought against Sony because they produced the VCRs and thus were the only centralized entity even
"Sweetie-darlin'.. we's just got 'dis vow-char whoozits in the letterbox."
"Well, what's it fer Sugar-pumpkin?"
"Sez we kin gives it to what-so-ever arteest we's want."
"Hot damn, Sugar-pumpkin! Gives it to me! I'm an arteest!"
"But Sweetie-darlin, you ain't not no arteest."
"Like dangnation I'm not! What do you call those scrapin' books I been makin' all these years?! If'n those tain't arts, then what's is?"
"I reckon you's right Sweetie-darlin! Gather up the younguns! We're dinin' at the Outback Steakhouse to-night! And Uncle Sam's a pickin' up the check! YEeEEe-HawW!"
But MC Frontalot has way more computer references, and hence greater nerd appeal.
Whoa, does this mean my favourite rapper is more "real"? Can I shoot CowboyNeal now??
"Gang war!"
free speach
Did you mean: free speech
This looks like an interesting proposal. I get $100 to give to the artist(s) of my choice, I get a tax break on it, and the artists I like actually get the whole amount (provided I send it to them and not an intermediary). In turn, I go out and give them free promotion by placing their music on P2P networks, burning CDs for my friends, etc. and they end up getting a few more vouchers in their name.
People that don't want their work funded by the AFV can choose not to. They can instead go to the RI/MPAA and choose to get only small fractions of sales whilst still having their music illegally traded on P2P networks. But this alternative doesn't seem so pleasing.
This also promotes a system where the end-users decide who is popular, not the corporations telling us who is popular. No-talent hacks such as Brittney Spears would fail miserably while truly gifted artists would be successful.
People are saying that this would destroy the GPL, but as someone mentioned, this would render the GPL useless as everything would be in the public domain.
In C++, friends can touch each others private parts.
This money will all go directly to people's family members, and be transferred around like that. Unless we have some sort of giant government registration for "artists", and if you're not good enough, you can't be paid for your work.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
"IIRC it's possible to specify that your tax dollars don't get spent on the military"
YDNRC
If we dispense with the vouchers and think of it as a change in the laws about what's allowed to call itself a charity. The IRS publishes some guidelines, the official rules aren't so easy to find. Currently you need to be an "organization" (so maybe artists would need to group together) and one of the allowed types is "literary", so this isn't entirely without precedent.
Would people collude with their friends, and declare themselves artists, cheating the system with 5-minute finger-painting exercises done in macaroni and cheese? This kind of thing doesn't happen very much now with ordinary charities. That might mean that the government would insist on some criterion of artistic quality before giving out tax-exempt status. In any event it's an interesting idea.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
In what way?
I'd use mine for the SCO legal team.
Or perhaps for Bill "Security of Job One" Gates.
=brian
thats exactly what i addressed at the end of my 2 cents. the record companies are quite happy to have you license the work and pay royalties. why should they want that to change?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Government control of something is far, far better than monopoly or oligopoly control of that thing.
According to the plan, artists who participate in the voucher system become ineligible for copyright protection for 5 years. Mega-stars would have no incentive to participate. That's an integral part of the plan. They probably couldn't if they wanted to anyway, because when they sign record contracts they largely lose control of their copyrights.
Without funding for unsuccessful artists trying random crap, you get recycled crap. And, yes, I honestly prefer random crap to recycled crap.
Recycled crap turns into design by selection - evolution that is; from crap into art. Think about it, we start off primitive and not very interesting, then involve into humans. Art should do the same, select that which is good, throw out that which is bad. Down with the NEA I say!
Look in your wallet.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Many local artists make enough money from these sales to do what they love, create art. Sure the rich wife might make $70K from the deal, but the artists often see $20 - 30k of that plus whatever commission or sale of orginials.
Several local artist have their own stores and sell orginial works of art that we scan in using QTVR and most make between $20,000 - $30,000 a year. Not a lot, but around here average salary is $24,600. Now many of the artists are professors or teachers at one of the 12 colleges in a 90 mile radius, others are retired and might only make enough to pay for their paints and some extra spending cash.
I like how artist were "sponsored" by the rich and powerful like back in the 16th and 17th century. I mean Joan Kroc (sp?) just gave NPR 200 Million.
I support local bands I like by purchasing their CD's and giving donations (okay this is to the Drum Corps I marched with to provide scholarships for good players without the $3k per summer or whatever they are charging)
I go see plays by the local theatre troop and help support they types of art I enjoy WITH MY HARD EARNED DISPOSABLE INCOME. A vouchure program would just be abused...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I'll give you my money, and then you take a cut, and then you give it back to me as a "voucher!" This is so cool!
so you'll invariably get great songwriters starving to death while Britney and Justin sing their songs
The effect might actually be the reverse (which would still be unfair). Many people listen to cheesy bubble-gum pop, but they don't feel proud of it. Artists who create something which seems important, insightful, or just high-class might be the ones who get the donations. Sometimes the public can be embarrassed to admit that lowbrow entertainment is their favorite.
Most extremely, when it comes time to send in his voucher, is a man going to feel more comfortable giving it to the National Review, or to Playboy? But which magazine does he really spent more time with?
The proposal is not a replacement for copyright, it is an alternative. It therefore has no bearing on the GPL or any other scheme that chooses to remain in the copywright system. Both GNU/Linux and Windows copyright law is still enforceable.
At least one solution to the problem of 'buddy systems' developing has been proposed here already, which is a $100 (or $x) registration fee. Make this yearly, or a total for however many years the AFV remains and this prevents people from giving each other money. Or rather it means that several people have to nominate you for oyu to benefit. There are still holes in this, but they are now much smaller.
Although there have been many doubts expressed here about how many people would be willing to participate I think you might be surprised once people become generally aware of it. It is NOT like political voting - you know exactly what effect your nomination will have and you get something in return. Also it could be made simple by just adding the number / artist reference to your tax form.
The problem of the people all picking their ONE FAVOURITE and all the money going to Britney and none to Pink, could be countered by community's of artists that arrange the division of the loot amongst themselves by some agreed method. Your less popular metalband may not compete with Korn, but the Metal Collective of half a dozen bands you've been listening to might just flatten them. Not a perfect solution - Korn might ally with Mariah Carey, but it is A solution and nothing is perfect.
Also, it doesn't have to be run by the government, but until the revolution, it will require their support for it to be tax deductible and easy to select an artist/collective.
Big projects like hollywood movies that require massive initial outlay will probably continue to be released under copyright for a good long time.
This is a great idea and it deserves a bit more thought to see if it could be made to work.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Oh, say - being threatened by the FBI any time you watch a video? Getting fined or even jailed for linking to de-CSS or the Diebold memos?
"I'm sure I'd use mine on MC Chris"
I just clicked one one of the "listen" links.
I so fucking hope you were joking.
just...
I so fucking hope you were joking.
What's a voucher worth? $5? $100?
What politician will decide how much can be spent annually? Why? Of course, this will not be filled with fraud.
And expect an entire new industry to spring up: Become your own legal religion^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmusical artist who can accept this voucher!
And then there's the industry to train people to become their own artists. This new industry will replace training losers to be real estate salesmen, debt management counselors, and the like. Train folks on how to game the system to get that voucher for your own self, legally!
Send only 7 easy payments of $39.95 to the address below.
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
I fail to see how this proposal affects non-label artists. What about painters? What about indie bands? What about unpublished writers? What protects them from being ripped off? Who keeps track of all of the artists in the world and routes money to them? What happens when the "$20 billion annually" is spread so thin that no one makes enough to have it be worthwhile? The proposal is laughable. If the music labels want to stop getting ripped off, they need to a) produce music that people respect enough not to steal, b) put serials on all CDs that people can register (like software) to get discounts, online chats, etc. and c) provide fair contracts to artists and fair prices to consumers so no one gets screwed.