Why precisely would the "rights" other people supposedly have supersede the rights of artists (or, for that matter, inventors) to profit from their
own work? Why precisely do you deserve to get someone's music for free? They did something. You didn't. Seems to me their rights in the matter ought to
trump yours.
1) Irrelevent. You could use the same argument to say doctors ought to earn the same as Walmart cashiers, but we very quickly would not have many doctors left.
2) That is due to how the industry is currently set up, and any and all problems with that are an entirely separate issue.
3) Fanfiction exists in a legal grey area under current copyright law (and is pretty much legally clear if it can be reasonably defined as parody). Destroying
copyright in order to make fanfiction authors (who are not routinely prosecuted) slightly more legally safe strikes me as a very dubious reason. It is, in
addition, already possible for fanfiction and other derivative works to make money via obtaining legal permission to do so. See: Star Wars novels, Star Trek
novels, video-game tie-ins, and so forth.
4) What about movies? What if it's instrumental? What if you just wrote the song? What about books? What if you can no longer sing? What about the myriad
amount of examples where artists will not be able to monetise their creations without copyright?
5) Go try and sell some software in Taiwan and tell me again how file-sharing increases legitimate sales. The real world performance of every single industry
affected by file-sharing is uniformly negative, everywhere in the world. Yes, some people will benefit from file-sharing. I will note that people are perfectly
free to share their creative works and waive copyright under the laws that exist now. So, since they can already do this, why do the laws need to be changed to
force those who do not wish to waive their copyright to do so? The concept of "benefit to society" is completely nebulous and meaningless. I am
concerned with people being rewarded for their work, a far more concrete and measurable concept.
6) There are already legal filesharing methods, and many free pieces of music, film and so forth that can be downloading. Your comparison to Prohibition would
be invalidated by that, as well as the many other differences (the product is not addictive, the product is not necessarily physical, and so forth).
7) When there is little money to be made from something, generally speaking far less of it is made. That too is part of a "free market", which,
incidentally, neither you nor I nor anyone else on this planet live in.
own work? Why precisely do you deserve to get someone's music for free? They did something. You didn't. Seems to me their rights in the matter ought to
trump yours.
1) Irrelevent. You could use the same argument to say doctors ought to earn the same as Walmart cashiers, but we very quickly would not have many doctors left.
2) That is due to how the industry is currently set up, and any and all problems with that are an entirely separate issue.
3) Fanfiction exists in a legal grey area under current copyright law (and is pretty much legally clear if it can be reasonably defined as parody). Destroying
copyright in order to make fanfiction authors (who are not routinely prosecuted) slightly more legally safe strikes me as a very dubious reason. It is, in
addition, already possible for fanfiction and other derivative works to make money via obtaining legal permission to do so. See: Star Wars novels, Star Trek
novels, video-game tie-ins, and so forth.
4) What about movies? What if it's instrumental? What if you just wrote the song? What about books? What if you can no longer sing? What about the myriad
amount of examples where artists will not be able to monetise their creations without copyright?
5) Go try and sell some software in Taiwan and tell me again how file-sharing increases legitimate sales. The real world performance of every single industry
affected by file-sharing is uniformly negative, everywhere in the world. Yes, some people will benefit from file-sharing. I will note that people are perfectly
free to share their creative works and waive copyright under the laws that exist now. So, since they can already do this, why do the laws need to be changed to
force those who do not wish to waive their copyright to do so? The concept of "benefit to society" is completely nebulous and meaningless. I am
concerned with people being rewarded for their work, a far more concrete and measurable concept.
6) There are already legal filesharing methods, and many free pieces of music, film and so forth that can be downloading. Your comparison to Prohibition would
be invalidated by that, as well as the many other differences (the product is not addictive, the product is not necessarily physical, and so forth).
7) When there is little money to be made from something, generally speaking far less of it is made. That too is part of a "free market", which,
incidentally, neither you nor I nor anyone else on this planet live in.