By which you mean middlemen like banks and insurance companies right?
No, actually. Banks and insurance companies play a vital role in any modern economy. I couldn't earn my living if I couldn't make use of banking services and couldn't manage risk through the purchase of insurance.
Are you more in the mood for bartering of chickens for IT services, and milling your own grain? Don't like the idea of paying a few bucks a month for liability insurance so that you can't be sued into oblivion if something accidental happens on your watch? If you really think that banks and insurance companies "do nothing," don't lecture me about intellectual dishonesty.
No one has ever said that the only way the climate can warm is due to humans burning fossil fuels. Deniers like to act as if AGW proponents have said that, however. 'Tis just a strawman
Regardless, the AGW pushers continually uses phrases like "climate change is the result of human activity." Sometimes they qualify that with "mainly" or "predominantly," but that's precisely the meme they're peddling... along with it's implied counterpart: that absent human activity, it wouldn't happen. It's not a straw man argument to point out that bit of nonsense, since it's used loudly and regularly by people like Gore, and repeated ad nauseum by a generation of students who will soon be old enough to vote based on bad information.
Which is worse, people who have contributed nothing to society receiving small amounts of money to keep them alive, or people who have nearly destroyed the economy of our country receiving millions of dollars for their efforts?
Bad facts, and a false dichotomy.
Entitlement spending isn't a "small" amount, it's the reason for the huge debt, and Obama has just added unsustainable new mountains of debt to the pile because of it. Are people really in need of me buying them - forever - visits to the dermatologist for all of their kids in order to "stay alive?" These are structural changes, putting in place colossal new entitlements that will cripple the beasts of burden that actually pay taxes.
Do you really see no additional choices to go with reducing the Nanny State's confiscatory nature, and not having Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama handing out billions of dollars to businesses that should have failed, just to keep buying votes from organized labor? You can't separate favors done by Dems for their pet contributors (investment bankers) from the need to stop handing out cash like candy - in perpetuity - to people who don't actually do anything for it?
You mean like how in the US things such as the military, police, and health care insurance for government employees is payed for by tax money? Or is it not socialism when the US does it?
No, not like that at all, actually. The police and military are employed by taxpayers. They work for us. They are offered health care services as part of some of their employment contracts as a way to make those otherwise low-paying jobs more attractive.
As you obviously know, but would rather not talk about, the reference is to the taxpayer's money being simply handed over to some other person for their own personal comfort and well being. The structural creation of a system where that is a permanent fact. Entitlements. Received by some simply because they are breathing, and always paid for by others.
Wow, you must live in a place where there is equality of opportunity!
You are confusing equality of opportunity with equality of results. Not everyone has the good fortune to be raised by parents with a work ethic, for example. The same opportunities put in front of one person (raised with an entitlement mindset) will not result in the same outcome as those opportunities placed in front of a person raised to understand that opportunity, itself, gets you nothing.
I think many people confuse people's desire for opportunities with a desire for a free ride.
And I think that many people consider an education, the services of doctors, housing, transportation, food, and other creature comforts paid for by somebody else to be a vey nice opportunity indeed.
Immigrants by the millions flocked to the US because it was a land of opportunity. A place to set up shop and work. It, like Western Europe, is now becoming instead a land of entitlement. At least as long as money can be borrowed from China or extracted from the people who produce more goods and services than they consume in government programs.
Neither socialism nor communism advocate free rides for anyone
Well sure, they're not going to come right out and say that. Workers of the world unite, man!
Regardless, the free ride is delivered. Which is exactly why entire populations of leeches are moving to socialist democracies in western Europe in order to get a piece of the free pie... and thus shining a light on what a house of cards it all is.
Capitalism is one man taking advantage of the other,
No. Capitalism is two people agreeing to a mutually beneficial exchange of goods, services, work, assets, etc. If you're bad at it, you won't be as successful as someone who is better at it. If you don't do anything of value, you can't demand as much value in exchange.
Communism is the other way around.
No, Communism is the person who produces the least getting the most benefit from the person who works the hardest. It punishes hard work, and rewards mediocrity and laziness. Mostly, it rewards the statists who play the middleman.
Socialism is something else, for example people in Sweden can freely quit their jobs
Socialism is still the productive people working for the non-productive people. It's less militant, but it's still the same deal with the devil. It pays lip service to extra hard work's rewards, but is still the use of force to punish that hard work by handing the fruit of that work to those who couldn't or wouldn't do it themselves. The only places where a veneer of this appears to work is in places like Sweden where the culture has a strong historical work ethic. That's now starting to fall apart, as that culture is poisoned from the outside.
You make it sound like this would be some sort of "I told you so" moment for him. It's not. People like him know exactly what guys like Chavez are all about. Penn also wants a society ruled by Smart Lefties, since he's sure that he and the others know what's best. That allows him to wash his hands of all of the corruption, back room deals, unconstitutional compulsion and skullduggery that it takes to make those arrangements. You know, kind of like we just saw happen in the US congress over the weekend.
You are mistaking socialism/communism for dictatorship/totalitarianism
Not really. Only a totalitarian state can force productive people to be slaves to non-productive people. The two modes are part and parcel of the whole.
The problem is that medical insurance has become an essential
You mean essential... like clothing, food, and housing? Should we get the government involved in mandating the type of food, clothing, and housing you purchase?
Funny that you say that, considering ever since Reagen Republicans have done far more to increase the size of government and our national debt than Democrats
Gosh, what an interesting complete BS falsehood you have there! Still, I have to give you credit for keeping the lie succinct, and thus perhaps a bit more plausible to your own ilk.
In the meantime, behold as the Democrats are about to hugely inflate the deficits and debt with gigantic new Nanny State entitlement programs, all while seriously considering doing it without even holding a vote in the Congress they control. Fantastic.
Actually, it's always worth pointing out to somebody when they mangle a phrase, lazily and habitually intending the opposite of the words that are coming out of their mouth. Making sounds that are similar to the words you mean to use, but which actually mean the opposite, involves about the same level of comprehension and communication as a ringneck parakeet doing an impression of a smoke alarm going off.
Why say "I could care less," when what you mean is the exact opposite? All that does is mark you as someone for whom language is just empty chimp noises. Such a person is usually a poor coder, a lousy debater, an annoying coworker or spouse, and sometimes actually dangerous. Why? Because they've separated cognition from language. Typos are one thing, and we all make them. But deliberately deciding that "Ubuntu is a good distro" means the same thing as "Ubuntu is not a good distro" says a lot about your take on the world, and in how little regard you hold the people whose time you're wasting when you flap your lips to expose your thoughtlessness.
Usually, they'd claim that "we're not set up to sell directly to the public".
Right. Because that's actually the case.
Why would a manufacturer want to deal with a million people (and their credit card chargebacks, their bogus shipment damage complaints, tech support nightmares with people who bent the pins on their processor, etc... when they could sell a truckload of the same product, with a single invoice, to a supply chain that's already engaging with the buyers on an individual basis?
And since they'll always have customers who are in the retail business, why should they have to hear the endless complaints from their retailers about how they (Intel) would be dealing directly with the end users, and competing with their own dealers? The only way to play that game is to only sell direct at high enough prices that none of your authorized dealers can make that complaint. And then all we'd hear about is how Intel is "price gouging," etc. They can't win if they get in the business of competing with their own customers (the retailers and systems integrators) while pursuing individual chip sales to end users.
This keeps Intel from getting tangled up in hugely expensive localized tax law and liabilities and whatnot, and lets them concentrate on what they do better.
So, they're at quite a bit of risk and are probably pretty interested in seeing this thing through if they want a piece of the manufacturing action.
There are factories (with investors) that also make things like Homeopathy supplies, and special magnets to reduce joint inflamation. Just because the claims of a product's utility are lies doesn't mean you can manufacture the product without a factory.
don't pretend people are making out like bandits for a service they paid what the insurance companies themselves considered a fair amount for
No, you're missing the point. I'm talking about the huge numbers of people who don't pay at all, but still get the use of the million-dollar imaging machines in the hospital, can still sue for malpractice, and still take up the time and resources of expensive professionals and the facilities in which they operate.
Medical costs really don't mean anything. There is no rational or justification for any of it. They are just made-up numbers
Really? Do they just make up the price they pay for materials, for electricty, for oxygen deliveries, for all of the lab tests they have to run so that sleazeballs like John Edwards can't get rich suing them into oblivion? Do they just make up the dollar amounts that they have to pay orderlies, nurses, electricians, radiological equipment maintenance people, and the costs of HIPPA compliance in all of their record keeping? Does the hospital just make up the numbers involved in paying for the cable TV they run to rooms, the backup generators and fuel that allow a patient to survive through an appendectomy during a thunderstorm? Do they just make up the costs of incinerating medical waste? Of the bandwidth they use? Of emergency preparedness, for mass casualty events like train wrecks? Do they just make up the numbers involved in paying their IT staff? I see.
Here's another thing they don't make up: that huge numbers of people who walk into their emergency rooms get the full-time attention of highly skilled professionals, consume lots of sterile supplies and drugs, occupy expensive space, present the risk of lawsuit in case the doctors aren't omniscient, and then: never pay for any of it, ever. So of course they people paying for all of this (the hospitals) have to pass those costs along to the few customers who can pay.
It is also very reasonable to spend a lot of money fighting the condition that will/does kill you. Where else are you going to spend it?
But is it reasonable to spend someone else's money? Because that's usually how it goes. Have you put half a million dollars into your own health care? Even a tenth of that? I see. Most people won't, can't, and never will. But they can sure spend it when someone else is forced to fund it. And now we're looking at the government getting ready to borrow trillions of more dollars from the future (and from China) to do even more of it. Horrific.
I'm Argentinian. born, raised and living in Argentina... a big part of the US population consists mostly of racist, irrational, ego maniacal, selfish pricks
Perhaps you should leave Argentina once in a while and actually get to know a few more of the people you're describing.
What's been missing from the coverage the David Patterson press conferences has been the shrewd, insightful experience and reportage from the OMG ponies! perspective. The mainstream media has been suppressing that important voice since, like, forever. Mean people suck! Also, that young guy Aaron on America Idol - he would so make a great sparkly vampire someday.
You are confusing the normal disadvantge (in any business relationship) one has in being naive and inexperienced. It's got nothing whatsoever to do with copyright law, and everything to do with the inability of an ignorant (or lazy) person to see the big picture and think about consequences. It's exactly the same set of issues that come into play when people buy a car, or sign up for a two-year mobile phone contract. Each party has something the other wants. Foolish, lazy, or naive people will rarely have the skills or interest in choosing the right deal for themselves. Don't conflate intellectual weakness or lack of business savvy with being a copyright holder - you're confusing correlation and causation.
I pointed out that the current copyright laws don't favour the artist, they favour the corportations most of the time
Sorry, no. The copyright doesn't just favor the artist, it absolutely, 100% protects the artist and only the artist. Until or if, that is, the artist decides to take deliberate, personal action to assign those rights to someone else. There is nothing in copyright law that in any way (except for the passage of time after the death of the artist) provides any part of the artist's copyrighted works to be under the control of someone else. The only exception would be "fair use" reproductions, and that's a completely separate discussion.
The only reason that artists can be in the position to negotiate for cash in exchange for copyrighted material is because the copyright law is so strongly in their favor.
No, it's actually his name. He was born as Prince Rogers Nelson
What you mean is, it's actually his first name. Just like it's the first name of a lot of other people. He made a business decision to start taking money while performing using only his first name. It's not any different than the band Bon Jovi... doing business using part of the name of one member. Regardless, it's up to the artist to decide whether to sign something.
They favour those who are the most informed about the legal intrincacies, and have the biggest advantage in the relationship
So, you're saying that most artists can't read, or can't be bothered to ask a representative to exchange their expertise for some of the cash they're about receive? We're not talking bar bands, here. We're talking about people who are considering a relationship with a large company because both parties think there's the prospect of making a lot of money. You're feeling sorry for the party that can't be bothered to read something put in front of them? How about the other party, who commit to funding recording, marketing, etc., and find (of course) that the vast majority of the talent they sign utterly fail to produce anything memorable or saleable? Very, very few artists can possibly produce something that even comes close to covering the costs that the label risks when they take them on.
Only if the artist agrees to a contract that allows for such things. Why do that?
Take for instance the ridiculousness of "Prince" being a trademark not owned by Prince, and him being denied use of it, despite it being his real name.
A great example of a poorly structured business relationship. That's not his full, legal name. It's his brand, just like a band name. He agreed to take a pile of cash in exchange for allowing a publishing company to operate that brand name. Turns out he was more interested in the short term cash than he was in his own long-term prospects. Typical amateur maneuver.
Also, generally there's not a negotiation happening on equal terms.
Of course. That's because there are very, very few people with enough talent and obvious prospects to be completely in charge of such negotiations. The publishing company has a definite, real, tangible things (cash, and the business operations to invest in promoting and working with an artist), while the artist has the potential to be of sustained interest to a paying audience - not a sure thing at all. So the person with the most to risk (the label) has the stronger negotiating position. This is hardly peculiar to the music industry. It's just as true when you're buying cantelope or thinking of hiring a landscape designer.
I think that it should be possible to *grant* rights, going as far as granting enough rights that somebody could do as if they owned the copyright, but never actually transferring, so it's impossible to lose the rights to something you created.
That's called "licensing," and it's done all the time. But because many artists would rather have more money, they might be willing to transfer rights. Others, who know they have more to offer to their audiences, may decide to retain more control, but not initially accept as much cash. It's a judgement call, and the artist can do it however they like. Photographers, graphic artists, and a million other professional people make exactly the same sorts of decisions all the time.
Doing creative work "for hire" is simply a different relationship than licensing or assigning rights. All of those are legitimate, sensible relationships for different people under different circumstances. This is why musicians and other artists need to actually read and understand case studies before putting their name on a contract. If they're too dumb, or too fixated on bling and MTV to understand the consequences, then it's hard to care what they think, or feel sorry for them. They're probably also the type to rack up credit cards at high interest rates, make poor leasing decisions on cars, etc. Nobody is forcing someone to get into a relationship with a publisher. Artists do it because they don't want to run their own publishing company while they're busy trying to also be an artist. But it's no surprise that a lot of older, wiser artists actually form their own labels and sign younger artists - because they've learned the ropes.
Slashdot Mirror
By which you mean middlemen like banks and insurance companies right?
No, actually. Banks and insurance companies play a vital role in any modern economy. I couldn't earn my living if I couldn't make use of banking services and couldn't manage risk through the purchase of insurance.
Are you more in the mood for bartering of chickens for IT services, and milling your own grain? Don't like the idea of paying a few bucks a month for liability insurance so that you can't be sued into oblivion if something accidental happens on your watch? If you really think that banks and insurance companies "do nothing," don't lecture me about intellectual dishonesty.
No one has ever said that the only way the climate can warm is due to humans burning fossil fuels. Deniers like to act as if AGW proponents have said that, however. 'Tis just a strawman
... along with it's implied counterpart: that absent human activity, it wouldn't happen. It's not a straw man argument to point out that bit of nonsense, since it's used loudly and regularly by people like Gore, and repeated ad nauseum by a generation of students who will soon be old enough to vote based on bad information.
Regardless, the AGW pushers continually uses phrases like "climate change is the result of human activity." Sometimes they qualify that with "mainly" or "predominantly," but that's precisely the meme they're peddling
Which is worse, people who have contributed nothing to society receiving small amounts of money to keep them alive, or people who have nearly destroyed the economy of our country receiving millions of dollars for their efforts?
Bad facts, and a false dichotomy.
Entitlement spending isn't a "small" amount, it's the reason for the huge debt, and Obama has just added unsustainable new mountains of debt to the pile because of it. Are people really in need of me buying them - forever - visits to the dermatologist for all of their kids in order to "stay alive?" These are structural changes, putting in place colossal new entitlements that will cripple the beasts of burden that actually pay taxes.
Do you really see no additional choices to go with reducing the Nanny State's confiscatory nature, and not having Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama handing out billions of dollars to businesses that should have failed, just to keep buying votes from organized labor? You can't separate favors done by Dems for their pet contributors (investment bankers) from the need to stop handing out cash like candy - in perpetuity - to people who don't actually do anything for it?
You mean like how in the US things such as the military, police, and health care insurance for government employees is payed for by tax money? Or is it not socialism when the US does it?
No, not like that at all, actually. The police and military are employed by taxpayers. They work for us. They are offered health care services as part of some of their employment contracts as a way to make those otherwise low-paying jobs more attractive.
As you obviously know, but would rather not talk about, the reference is to the taxpayer's money being simply handed over to some other person for their own personal comfort and well being. The structural creation of a system where that is a permanent fact. Entitlements. Received by some simply because they are breathing, and always paid for by others.
Wow, you must live in a place where there is equality of opportunity!
You are confusing equality of opportunity with equality of results. Not everyone has the good fortune to be raised by parents with a work ethic, for example. The same opportunities put in front of one person (raised with an entitlement mindset) will not result in the same outcome as those opportunities placed in front of a person raised to understand that opportunity, itself, gets you nothing.
I think many people confuse people's desire for opportunities with a desire for a free ride.
And I think that many people consider an education, the services of doctors, housing, transportation, food, and other creature comforts paid for by somebody else to be a vey nice opportunity indeed.
Immigrants by the millions flocked to the US because it was a land of opportunity. A place to set up shop and work. It, like Western Europe, is now becoming instead a land of entitlement. At least as long as money can be borrowed from China or extracted from the people who produce more goods and services than they consume in government programs.
Neither socialism nor communism advocate free rides for anyone
... and thus shining a light on what a house of cards it all is.
Well sure, they're not going to come right out and say that. Workers of the world unite, man!
Regardless, the free ride is delivered. Which is exactly why entire populations of leeches are moving to socialist democracies in western Europe in order to get a piece of the free pie
Capitalism is one man taking advantage of the other,
No. Capitalism is two people agreeing to a mutually beneficial exchange of goods, services, work, assets, etc. If you're bad at it, you won't be as successful as someone who is better at it. If you don't do anything of value, you can't demand as much value in exchange.
Communism is the other way around.
No, Communism is the person who produces the least getting the most benefit from the person who works the hardest. It punishes hard work, and rewards mediocrity and laziness. Mostly, it rewards the statists who play the middleman.
Socialism is something else, for example people in Sweden can freely quit their jobs
Socialism is still the productive people working for the non-productive people. It's less militant, but it's still the same deal with the devil. It pays lip service to extra hard work's rewards, but is still the use of force to punish that hard work by handing the fruit of that work to those who couldn't or wouldn't do it themselves. The only places where a veneer of this appears to work is in places like Sweden where the culture has a strong historical work ethic. That's now starting to fall apart, as that culture is poisoned from the outside.
There you go, Sean Penn.
You make it sound like this would be some sort of "I told you so" moment for him. It's not. People like him know exactly what guys like Chavez are all about. Penn also wants a society ruled by Smart Lefties, since he's sure that he and the others know what's best. That allows him to wash his hands of all of the corruption, back room deals, unconstitutional compulsion and skullduggery that it takes to make those arrangements. You know, kind of like we just saw happen in the US congress over the weekend.
You are mistaking socialism/communism for dictatorship/totalitarianism
Not really. Only a totalitarian state can force productive people to be slaves to non-productive people. The two modes are part and parcel of the whole.
The problem is that medical insurance has become an essential
You mean essential... like clothing, food, and housing? Should we get the government involved in mandating the type of food, clothing, and housing you purchase?
Funny that you say that, considering ever since Reagen Republicans have done far more to increase the size of government and our national debt than Democrats
Gosh, what an interesting complete BS falsehood you have there! Still, I have to give you credit for keeping the lie succinct, and thus perhaps a bit more plausible to your own ilk.
In the meantime, behold as the Democrats are about to hugely inflate the deficits and debt with gigantic new Nanny State entitlement programs, all while seriously considering doing it without even holding a vote in the Congress they control. Fantastic.
Actually, it's always worth pointing out to somebody when they mangle a phrase, lazily and habitually intending the opposite of the words that are coming out of their mouth. Making sounds that are similar to the words you mean to use, but which actually mean the opposite, involves about the same level of comprehension and communication as a ringneck parakeet doing an impression of a smoke alarm going off.
Why say "I could care less," when what you mean is the exact opposite? All that does is mark you as someone for whom language is just empty chimp noises. Such a person is usually a poor coder, a lousy debater, an annoying coworker or spouse, and sometimes actually dangerous. Why? Because they've separated cognition from language. Typos are one thing, and we all make them. But deliberately deciding that "Ubuntu is a good distro" means the same thing as "Ubuntu is not a good distro" says a lot about your take on the world, and in how little regard you hold the people whose time you're wasting when you flap your lips to expose your thoughtlessness.
Yet they could care less what phone any of us have, as they rarely ever inspect it
So, if they did care less, they wouldn't inspect it at all, instead of rarely? How much less could they care than how much they currently care?
Usually, they'd claim that "we're not set up to sell directly to the public".
... when they could sell a truckload of the same product, with a single invoice, to a supply chain that's already engaging with the buyers on an individual basis?
Right. Because that's actually the case.
Why would a manufacturer want to deal with a million people (and their credit card chargebacks, their bogus shipment damage complaints, tech support nightmares with people who bent the pins on their processor, etc
And since they'll always have customers who are in the retail business, why should they have to hear the endless complaints from their retailers about how they (Intel) would be dealing directly with the end users, and competing with their own dealers? The only way to play that game is to only sell direct at high enough prices that none of your authorized dealers can make that complaint. And then all we'd hear about is how Intel is "price gouging," etc. They can't win if they get in the business of competing with their own customers (the retailers and systems integrators) while pursuing individual chip sales to end users.
This keeps Intel from getting tangled up in hugely expensive localized tax law and liabilities and whatnot, and lets them concentrate on what they do better.
So, they're at quite a bit of risk and are probably pretty interested in seeing this thing through if they want a piece of the manufacturing action.
There are factories (with investors) that also make things like Homeopathy supplies, and special magnets to reduce joint inflamation. Just because the claims of a product's utility are lies doesn't mean you can manufacture the product without a factory.
don't pretend people are making out like bandits for a service they paid what the insurance companies themselves considered a fair amount for
No, you're missing the point. I'm talking about the huge numbers of people who don't pay at all, but still get the use of the million-dollar imaging machines in the hospital, can still sue for malpractice, and still take up the time and resources of expensive professionals and the facilities in which they operate.
Medical costs really don't mean anything. There is no rational or justification for any of it. They are just made-up numbers
Really? Do they just make up the price they pay for materials, for electricty, for oxygen deliveries, for all of the lab tests they have to run so that sleazeballs like John Edwards can't get rich suing them into oblivion? Do they just make up the dollar amounts that they have to pay orderlies, nurses, electricians, radiological equipment maintenance people, and the costs of HIPPA compliance in all of their record keeping? Does the hospital just make up the numbers involved in paying for the cable TV they run to rooms, the backup generators and fuel that allow a patient to survive through an appendectomy during a thunderstorm? Do they just make up the costs of incinerating medical waste? Of the bandwidth they use? Of emergency preparedness, for mass casualty events like train wrecks? Do they just make up the numbers involved in paying their IT staff? I see.
Here's another thing they don't make up: that huge numbers of people who walk into their emergency rooms get the full-time attention of highly skilled professionals, consume lots of sterile supplies and drugs, occupy expensive space, present the risk of lawsuit in case the doctors aren't omniscient, and then: never pay for any of it, ever. So of course they people paying for all of this (the hospitals) have to pass those costs along to the few customers who can pay.
It is also very reasonable to spend a lot of money fighting the condition that will/does kill you. Where else are you going to spend it?
But is it reasonable to spend someone else's money? Because that's usually how it goes. Have you put half a million dollars into your own health care? Even a tenth of that? I see. Most people won't, can't, and never will. But they can sure spend it when someone else is forced to fund it. And now we're looking at the government getting ready to borrow trillions of more dollars from the future (and from China) to do even more of it. Horrific.
I'm Argentinian. born, raised and living in Argentina ... a big part of the US population consists mostly of racist, irrational, ego maniacal, selfish pricks
Perhaps you should leave Argentina once in a while and actually get to know a few more of the people you're describing.
What's been missing from the coverage the David Patterson press conferences has been the shrewd, insightful experience and reportage from the OMG ponies! perspective. The mainstream media has been suppressing that important voice since, like, forever. Mean people suck! Also, that young guy Aaron on America Idol - he would so make a great sparkly vampire someday.
You are confusing the normal disadvantge (in any business relationship) one has in being naive and inexperienced. It's got nothing whatsoever to do with copyright law, and everything to do with the inability of an ignorant (or lazy) person to see the big picture and think about consequences. It's exactly the same set of issues that come into play when people buy a car, or sign up for a two-year mobile phone contract. Each party has something the other wants. Foolish, lazy, or naive people will rarely have the skills or interest in choosing the right deal for themselves. Don't conflate intellectual weakness or lack of business savvy with being a copyright holder - you're confusing correlation and causation.
I pointed out that the current copyright laws don't favour the artist, they favour the corportations most of the time
Sorry, no. The copyright doesn't just favor the artist, it absolutely, 100% protects the artist and only the artist. Until or if, that is, the artist decides to take deliberate, personal action to assign those rights to someone else. There is nothing in copyright law that in any way (except for the passage of time after the death of the artist) provides any part of the artist's copyrighted works to be under the control of someone else. The only exception would be "fair use" reproductions, and that's a completely separate discussion.
The only reason that artists can be in the position to negotiate for cash in exchange for copyrighted material is because the copyright law is so strongly in their favor.
No, it's actually his name. He was born as Prince Rogers Nelson
... doing business using part of the name of one member. Regardless, it's up to the artist to decide whether to sign something.
What you mean is, it's actually his first name. Just like it's the first name of a lot of other people. He made a business decision to start taking money while performing using only his first name. It's not any different than the band Bon Jovi
They favour those who are the most informed about the legal intrincacies, and have the biggest advantage in the relationship
So, you're saying that most artists can't read, or can't be bothered to ask a representative to exchange their expertise for some of the cash they're about receive? We're not talking bar bands, here. We're talking about people who are considering a relationship with a large company because both parties think there's the prospect of making a lot of money. You're feeling sorry for the party that can't be bothered to read something put in front of them? How about the other party, who commit to funding recording, marketing, etc., and find (of course) that the vast majority of the talent they sign utterly fail to produce anything memorable or saleable? Very, very few artists can possibly produce something that even comes close to covering the costs that the label risks when they take them on.
the creation can get used against the artist
Only if the artist agrees to a contract that allows for such things. Why do that?
Take for instance the ridiculousness of "Prince" being a trademark not owned by Prince, and him being denied use of it, despite it being his real name.
A great example of a poorly structured business relationship. That's not his full, legal name. It's his brand, just like a band name. He agreed to take a pile of cash in exchange for allowing a publishing company to operate that brand name. Turns out he was more interested in the short term cash than he was in his own long-term prospects. Typical amateur maneuver.
Also, generally there's not a negotiation happening on equal terms.
Of course. That's because there are very, very few people with enough talent and obvious prospects to be completely in charge of such negotiations. The publishing company has a definite, real, tangible things (cash, and the business operations to invest in promoting and working with an artist), while the artist has the potential to be of sustained interest to a paying audience - not a sure thing at all. So the person with the most to risk (the label) has the stronger negotiating position. This is hardly peculiar to the music industry. It's just as true when you're buying cantelope or thinking of hiring a landscape designer.
I think that it should be possible to *grant* rights, going as far as granting enough rights that somebody could do as if they owned the copyright, but never actually transferring, so it's impossible to lose the rights to something you created.
That's called "licensing," and it's done all the time. But because many artists would rather have more money, they might be willing to transfer rights. Others, who know they have more to offer to their audiences, may decide to retain more control, but not initially accept as much cash. It's a judgement call, and the artist can do it however they like. Photographers, graphic artists, and a million other professional people make exactly the same sorts of decisions all the time.
Doing creative work "for hire" is simply a different relationship than licensing or assigning rights. All of those are legitimate, sensible relationships for different people under different circumstances. This is why musicians and other artists need to actually read and understand case studies before putting their name on a contract. If they're too dumb, or too fixated on bling and MTV to understand the consequences, then it's hard to care what they think, or feel sorry for them. They're probably also the type to rack up credit cards at high interest rates, make poor leasing decisions on cars, etc. Nobody is forcing someone to get into a relationship with a publisher. Artists do it because they don't want to run their own publishing company while they're busy trying to also be an artist. But it's no surprise that a lot of older, wiser artists actually form their own labels and sign younger artists - because they've learned the ropes.
To start with, if copyright was really about the artist it wouldn't be transferrable.
How is it not about the artist if transferring those rights is what artist wants?