Moral Dilemma Chris Parich
Copyright is an issue of Morality Legality Economics
Copyright is an issue of Morality People deserve to get paid for their work Who will make art if there is no money in it? People can't make money from giving away their product for free. Legality Economics
Morality People deserve to get paid for their work A chicken-and-egg issue Does a person deserve compensation for work? Or does a person work for compensation?
Morality Who will make art if there is no money in it? Youtube? Dailymotion? Value and price are not necessarily the same thing.
Morality People can't make money by giving away their product for free. A straw-man argument No business can survive without selling a product. The trick is properly defining the product. Music can sell merchandise, concert tickets, and artist time while using the music as a marketing tool
Copyright is an issue of Morality Legality What does the RIAA (and friends) say? What do the courts say? Economics
Legality What does the RIAA say? “Downloading is stealing, just like shoplifting” (paraphrased from riaa.com) The law is quite clearly against illegal downloading The Recording Industry loses billions of dollars a year to 'piracy'
Legality What do the courts say? Theft and infringement are different (Downling v. US, 1985) The law has trouble deciding what is and is not a fair use. Many government sponsored adjacencies and studies cannot find the correlation between piracy and lost sales, and some find benefits towards the music industry as a whole.
Copyright is an issue of Morality Legality Economics Ignoring moral and legal concerns for artists and producers opens new opportunities The digital age reduces costs to zero for the barrier of entry into the music industry.
Economics Ignoring moral and legal concerns for artists and producers opens new opportunities Stop worrying about what they ought to be paid Focus on connecting with those true die- hard fans Give those fans a good reason to support you and they will. Earn your pay like everyone else, don't deserve it.
Economics The digital age reduces costs to zero for the barrier of entry into the music business. Recording is your buddy's instruments and your computer Mastering is your computer Distribution is zero (bittorrent, limewire, emule, etc) Promotion is automatic
Economics IF YOU ARE ANY GOOD
Success Stories Chinese, Indian, Nigerian Film Industry Rampant 'piracy' Combined 3500 films per year 4x output of Hollywood Nine Inch Nails Turbine (Dungeons & Dragons MMO) Jonathan Coulton Jill Sobule Jonathan Coulton
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