copyright infringement is also 'law'... so I'm comparing laws with laws.
I'm not comparing the individual actions of the companies. Only that sometimes "the law" is not useful anymore.
Which yes, I am saying that copyright needs to change, the notion of a 'rightful owner of content' needs to change. Having laws that are completely contrary to how society operates are generally doomed to fail.
I'm not sure where this type of opinion came from but it definitely has been becoming more prevalent in the last 5 years. I think it is just people are becoming more inclined to think they are entitled to someones else's creative content just because it has been easy to acquire free for years now.
Just because it is easy to copy music online doesn't mean all music should be 'free' and every artist should just abandon what many of them rely on to make a living just because you want to save some money on your entertainment.
I will point out that copyright is extended to creatives by the general population as a mutually beneficial agreement to foster the development of creative works to be shared with said population. In the past five years, and to some extent before that, certain groups have started to abuse that relationship. I should come as no surprise that the attitudes towards the arrangement are starting to change. When the mutually beneficial part starts to erode, something is bound to give.
I'm not sure how the last handful of years of copyright law changes have done anything so dramatic to cause this. Copyright was extended an extra 20 years, that doesn't change the fact that the most popular content, ie the new stuff out right now, should still be paid for at the artists asking price.
It should be up to the musician to reject the culture of monetization and distribute their music for free, not you. Musicians shouldn't have to work another job so they can have the privilege of supplying you with music. If you value their music, you should demonstrate it to them, so they make more for you.
If no one wants to buy (the right to listen to) a song then it 's price is too high.
Given a lot of arts are heavily inspired by the culture around them, who gives the artist the 'right' to own all 'rights' to music they create
Poetry is an art that doesn't make money (compared to music), has poetry died? Just because we monetized something doesn't mean it was the right thing to do.
> If no one wants to buy (the right to listen to) a song then it 's price is too high.
Wait. The music industry made some 2 digit billions of dollars last year. No one wants to pay for music entertainment?
> Given a lot of arts are heavily inspired by the culture around them, who gives the artist the 'right' to own all 'rights' to music they create
Substitute your profession above for artists. Do you feel the same? Everyone is inspired from things which came before them, and yes you can profit off of your new creation which has been influenced from culture which has come before you.
> Poetry is an art that doesn't make money (compared to music), has poetry died?
Top 3: Shakespeare, Beowulf, The Odyssey. The publishing companies who printed these books and spent the time typesetting, translating them etc aren't making money?
> Just because we monetized something doesn't mean it was the right thing to do.
This argument only seems to come up in context to books/music/movies. IE: Entertainment which you can easily get for free and think people should be compensated zero dollars for it now because of the internet. Ridiculous. Why are the people who create entertainment the only ones who should work for charity? Note: it isn't some noble cause, it is because you don't rely on that industry to put food on the table, are cheap, and can get your entertainment online for free instead.
> Wait. The music industry made some 2 digit billions of dollars last year. No one wants to pay for music entertainment?
I posed it as a question, if people are not prepared to pay for something (e.g they download it for free), it because it is priced wrong (too high). That doesn't mean all music is priced too high.
> Substitute your profession above for artists. Do you feel the same? Everyone is inspired from things which came before them, and yes you can profit off of your new creation which has been influenced from culture which has come before you.
You can't substitute any profession over the top. Arts are intrinsically different, their value is much harder to calculate. This has long been discussed throughout history, it is only in very recent history that some of the arts have become a 'profession'.
> Top 3: Shakespeare, Beowulf, The Odyssey. The publishing companies who printed these books and spent the time typesetting, translating them etc aren't making money?
Right...not the artist.. That is a strange argument to make. In all those cases, the artist is long died, and someone (else) is trying to make a buck off of their work... Copyright is only meant to last the life time of the author + 50(?) years... So Shakespeare and Homer are really bad examples in a copyright debate.
> This argument only seems to come up in context to books/music/movies.
This argument comes up every time there is a major shift in how people act/produce. The same 'debate' occurred when the printing press destroyed monopolies on books... Who's response was: Copyright.
> it isn't some noble cause, it is because you don't rely on that industry to put food on the table, are cheap, and can get your entertainment online for free instead.
Nice ad hominem. Though try to keep that out of the discussion please.
This is more like talking past each-other than a real discussion, since you're not making any solid arguments addressing the points you're responding to. People downloading music can be an indication of opportunism as much as of market failure.
Think about how much smaller the music industry would be, and I'm just talking about the number of people making music themselves, if there were no sales of recordings. No more buying a CD on your way out of a local or touring band's show, no more iTunes Music Store or Amazon MP3 or CD store, no more labels; you're talking about taking away a majority of these artists' revenue. If musicians can't ever hope to get paid enough to put food on their table and a roof over their head, how many will put in the energy needed to bring their music to fruition? How many will put in the effort to make good recordings for you to enjoy? Making a good recording is difficult and expensive, and we benefit greatly from it. There is value there for us that we should have the courtesy of recognizing if we hope to enjoy a wide selection good music recordings in the future.
I'm not comparing the individual actions of the companies. Only that sometimes "the law" is not useful anymore.
Which yes, I am saying that copyright needs to change, the notion of a 'rightful owner of content' needs to change. Having laws that are completely contrary to how society operates are generally doomed to fail.