“Copyright does little for new and niche creators who often sign away their bargaining chips cheaply. In the absence of alternative compensation schemes, digitisation so far appears to have brought few financial benefits from disintermediated distribution.” – First Monday essay by Martin Kretschmer.
The TeleRead take: I’ve suggested that Draconian copyright can jack up prices for consumers and help promote poverty. Maybe, however, John Edwards’s UNC-branded poverty center can also study victims besides the usual poverty-stricken people–artists. Alas, that’s less of a joke than I’d care for it to be.
And the remedy? Perhaps a clue lies in a Pew study cited in the article: “Not surprisingly, Starving Musicians are more likely to say free downloading has helped and Success Stories are less likely to say it has helped their careers. Still just 13 percent of Success Stories say that free downloading has only hurt their career and 16 percent say it has both helped and hurt.”
Washington’s favorites: Investors, not artists
Time for a different and fairer way of paying for music–with allowances for the needs of rich and poor musicians alike? But, of course, Washington politicians care more about studios than artists. Guess which group has the most campaign money to toss at pols?
Related: In The Hacker Manifesto, written up by Simson Garfinkel of the MIT Technology Review, Prof. McKenzie Wark takes on the “vectoralist class” that profits by controlling the flow of information and entertainment.
