Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Copyright, continued

Ars Technica has another article. posted today, about copyright infringement/piracy. Now, while I have no problem with creative people getting compensated for their creativity, I do have a problem with how we, as a culture, are dealing with this. First of all, most of us do our jobs using some degree of creativity to get things done, and we don’t get paid in an ongoing stream for past work. I also have a problem with people who did not create anything owning copyrights and extracting ongoing revenue streams out of them.

As an example, take the music industry. A better model for this industry would be for the labels to charge the artists for recording and marketing without having any ownership rights in the created product. It would be up to the artist (or the artist’s business manager-a paid employee of the artist) to manage the income flow. The artist could then pick and choose which services he/she/it (bands) wanted to purchase from the label. I would much rather pay the artist directly for tracks and cut out the “suits” completely. With the evolution of the Internet, this business model is much more sustainable. In fact, as far as the music industry is concerned, I think this is where the future lies. For now, I buy my music on a “per track” basis from Amazon. I’m not thrilled, but it is the best I can do right now.

No comments: