Quote:
Originally Posted by timj219
How do you propose that authors and composers and movie directors and software developers should get paid?
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Obviously by providing a product that people are willing to buy.
There are some things that you just can't bottle up.
How do you stop people from singing a catchy tune?
Linus Torvald gets paid for consulting, because he is the worlds foremost expert on Linux , the operating system he created and gives away for free.
But Red Hat still makes money selling Linux, because they add the value of the manuals.
A business model that calls for the government enforcing your "rights" by invading people's homes and searching their hard drives for contraband, and then leveling a fine that is completely ridiculous, is not a long term strategy.
At some point you need to make a distinction between commerce and speech.
Exchanging something for something else of value is commerce, passing information to another without remuneration is speech.
One can be regulated, the other cannot and should not be regulated.
In the past, when a new technology replaced an existing technology, the providers of the old technology went out of business. Today we expect the same record companies to dominate the music business, because they have the money to pay lobbyists get laws passed that hobble the new technology.
When the automobile replaced the horse, it killed the buggy whip business, but we didn't insist on laws that required automobiles to be equipped with buggy whips.
If a company sells recorded music in CD form, there is no reason that they should also dominate the music download business, and there is no reason why the pricing of the music download business should be set to be competitive with CDs.
Why should a downloaded song cost as much on a CD purchased at a record store. Free market theory says the market price will approach the marginal cost in a free market. The marginal price of a download is close to zero, why do they charge 99 cents?
As with all other goods, a reasonable price in the legal marketplace is the greatest deterrent to a black market, an outrageous price in the marketplace spurs the development of the black market.
In the final analysis, only reasonable laws will stand the test of time, laws passed to allow special interests to gouge consumers will only succeed in the short run.