Fuck the music industry.
Fuck the music industry. At this point american music has degraded so much that it all sounds the same. I don’t care how “personalized” you feel because you think you listen to some kind of “indie” label or what not which turns out to be a sub-label of you guessed it, some huge label under the RIAA’s jurisdiction. Music isn’t personal anyway.
You think copyright is good? You must be thinking only in terms of personal gain in that case. Copyright is the prohibition of thought and patents are the prohibition of the thought process. I don’t care that you feel you deserve reimbursement for your long and hard efforts, I sure as hell didn’t force you to make anything. Or sign a contract legally binding you to make money from selling your “intellectual property” or else you’ll be in debt to your RIAA sponsored label.
Intellectual property is somewhat of an oxymoron, because if anyone using it was truly intellectual they certainly wouldn’t be so unwilling to share their ideas. Sorry, this is capitalism so being trained like a robot to do a certain task is the way to be, even if your task is an artistic one. The whole meaning of art is destroyed at this point so I don’t need to hear any mushy mushy bullshit about the starving artists. Let’s get to the facts.
The big corporations are the main reason they’re starving, and the little guys are screwed whether or not copyright is protecting them so at this point any argument that you’re helping the little guy is quite null. If the government didn’t waste so much money on useless things and all the money that the RIAA extorts went back to the public, all the basic living needs could be covered while still being able to pursue a hobby of your choice. Any inefficiencies can be made into beneficial things with a little effort and greed is no excuse to keep a broken system.
At this point with more and more corrupt laws coming into effect as we speak the possibility for any change seems slimmer and slimmer and with most people still believing incorrect facts or that think they should be compensated for their hard work instead of looking at the alternatives which not only would benefit the average person more it’d also take a huge chunk out of the current corporate corruption making the advantages much greater then any disadvantages, of which I can’t even think of any.
Right now the only companies I can even think of that benefit off intellectual property are huge monopolies, media companies, software companies, and basically companies which consistently screw over the public. Occasionally the artist gets some of the profit, and this accounts for some of the few that still support it. Service based payments seem to be the future of art and or paying for the original. These days the original is not worth any more then a copy for certain media types making the laws protecting it outdated and exploitable by large corporations looking to make money off of a product which costs them nothing to produce.
You could say that a small software company would get screwed by removing copyright but you know what? There’s a huge free software movement going on right now, maybe they should stop trying to make money off an outdated system and get with the future before complaining that they’re being screwed. Provide services, and physical products, not digitalized thoughts.
Keeping this outdated system will screw any small company even more as it lets competitors crush them easily since only the huge companies can support themselves after the losses that an intellectual property based product causes, usually using unfair business tactics and locking people into the product by making it proprietary, in which you can then go after a few corporate users with lots of cash to bring in some money and scare others to pay up as well using that method. The music industry is using the same scare tactics against individual consumers, which tends to make people a little bit more angry as the individual doesn’t have as much money as a large company.
I’d think that an original painting is usually worth more then a copy as I’d think the master recording by an artist would be. One cd is no different from another though, and when it can be digitalized and copied without any effort at all the value of the media is now gone. Maybe someone would pay extra for some included artwork or the master (which probably isn’t on any common format to begin with (DAT or multi-track tape probably,) but for a digitalized format any reason to pay someone at this point is only for sentimental reasons or greediness of the seller.
At this point in time I only hear the same repetitive arguments about starving artists and the little guys but the little guys get hurt no matter what, if you think you’re helping by paying them you’re not, you’re just supporting the system which hurts the consumers more, benefits the little guy slightly if at all, and helps the corrupt monopoly vastly.