copyright in general is bad for society. if you have a great idea, you should want to share it so that you can be considered the expert and thus be more valuable to society (get paid more). if you charge money for the use of your idea then you just limit the market for the idea, and the idea is yours, so ultimately you lower the value of yourself as an idea generating being. seperating the ideas from the people who have them turns ingenuity into a commodity that can be bought and sold. you can't give an idea a price and trade it like eggs or bolts of cloth. an idea isn't worth anything unless you do something with it, and it's what you do with it that's worth something.
how can someone possibly decide if an idea is worth any money before you explain to them what it is at which point they already have it in their memory and so how can you charge someone money for what is already theirs? if they decide they don't want it are you going to lobotomize them? should all these transactions be performed under hypnosis so that they can be erased with a snap of the fingers? once i've heard a song i can play it back in my mind - what are they going to do when they come up with something that can take my memory of hearing a song right out of my brainwaves and into my computer? would that be breaking the law?
artists should get paid for performing music. someone should get paid for creating a record. i'm already paying for my telephone line (or DSL line or CATV line) and i'm already paying an internet service fee of some sort. what does it cost the artist if someone else decides to let me have a copy of their copy of that artist's music? what are we paying the artist for?
i would pay if they came to my house and played a concert in my living
room for me and my friends. i would even pay to go jump around in a
stadium with thousands of other people like me if they were playing
their music on stage. i'm sure as fuck not going to pay them a pretty
penny if my buddy lets me have a tape recording of the album he just
bought (although i might pay my buddy for the blank tape). i'm even less
likely to pay anybody i'm not already paying anyway if he lets me
download it off his computer. these freaks (not mentioning any names but
their initials are
Metallica
) should see this as the promotional tool it
is, and not as :
i'll still pay to have a real album with cover art and liner notes and lyrics and thank you tos and an actual disc that isn't gold with the band's name scribbled on it in black marker. that's still worth money to me, and that's still the place that labels have. the labels should be selling their product, and not the idea.
even with mp3s, do they include lyrics? does their title even include the artist and song name every time? and do they tell what album to look for in the store if you want to buy it? wouldn't it be cool if they came with separate tracks so that you could mix and match them? isn't that the sort of thing the labels should be coming up with instead of files you can only play on one machine or only for so long or only make so many copies of? i for one am not going to be a consumer of any product (not mentioning any names but the initials are Liquid ) that is going to limit me in any way, even after the fact that i've said ok to the idea that you can charge me for an idea.
besides, if you took that far enough then the whole music industry would be a pyramid scheme with guys making millions off the royalties from being the first to come up with the simplest 3 chord riffs (?) - which from then on no one else could use unless lawyers talked it over and settled on a price.
if they don't get noticed by being out there and performing, if instead they need millions and millions of dollars worth of mtv spots and primetime commercials and record store promotions and radio airtime and www bannerads and freeway billboards and magazine placements and tv talk show appointments, then they probably aren't worth listening to anyways and napster is just saving us all from wasting our money on their totally legal and totally protected unless you pay for them and even then some recordings. (50 years+ for a copyright??) if i go on i'm going to have to throw up.