"and frankly, I'm starting to get more than a bit sick of the copyright creeps demanding that all society and technology bend over backwards to help them profit."
It might not be what the parent meant, but I ready this a little differently (and I agree):
These creeps (with Disney spearheading the effort, just lately taken over by the music labels) have completely warped the entire copyright process to be a guaranteed money flow for the copyright holder, far beyond it's intended purpose, to the detriment of society at large, and other artists in particular. The fact that the major labels still own copyrights to works produced in the 50s and 60s, and will continue to be able to collect royalties 95 years after the artists have died, really ruins the "who will save the Artists" line of reasoning... Copyright used to protect a work for some reasonable number of years (around 10 - 20?), which would easily guarantee that an artist could profit from their work (given that it was worth paying for in the first place). With the current system, it is so out of proportion to the intended goals that society at large couldn't give a flying fuck about those goals, and just says to hell with it, I'll just download it.
I can't count the number of people who have stopped purchasing and started ripping / downloading, specifically to send a big "fuck you" to the labels. Lawfulness and fairness have gone out the window, and are irrelevant in a time where there is such disdain for the public domain and production of works for the joy of producing the work. Perhaps this would all be less of an issue if the artists didn't think they "deserved" millions of dollars for any crap with their name on it, and just took a flat production fee instead of royalties. But, hey, where would we be as a country if we though about the impact of our actions on everyone else instead of just thinking about how to have more money...
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"and frankly, I'm starting to get more than a bit sick of the copyright creeps demanding that all society and technology bend over backwards to help them profit."
It might not be what the parent meant, but I ready this a little differently (and I agree):
These creeps (with Disney spearheading the effort, just lately taken over by the music labels) have completely warped the entire copyright process to be a guaranteed money flow for the copyright holder, far beyond it's intended purpose, to the detriment of society at large, and other artists in particular. The fact that the major labels still own copyrights to works produced in the 50s and 60s, and will continue to be able to collect royalties 95 years after the artists have died, really ruins the "who will save the Artists" line of reasoning... Copyright used to protect a work for some reasonable number of years (around 10 - 20?), which would easily guarantee that an artist could profit from their work (given that it was worth paying for in the first place). With the current system, it is so out of proportion to the intended goals that society at large couldn't give a flying fuck about those goals, and just says to hell with it, I'll just download it.
I can't count the number of people who have stopped purchasing and started ripping / downloading, specifically to send a big "fuck you" to the labels. Lawfulness and fairness have gone out the window, and are irrelevant in a time where there is such disdain for the public domain and production of works for the joy of producing the work. Perhaps this would all be less of an issue if the artists didn't think they "deserved" millions of dollars for any crap with their name on it, and just took a flat production fee instead of royalties. But, hey, where would we be as a country if we though about the impact of our actions on everyone else instead of just thinking about how to have more money...