On Wednesday, 29 January 2014 at 10:34:08 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
> On Wednesday, 29 January 2014 at 10:18:49 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> Ok. Imagine you write a song called "Destroy!" (maybe having traditions and rules in mind). Two things happen:
>>
>> 1. A band records it (or puts it on youtube) and has a hit. They respect your authorship, say "Thanks, buddy!", but they get all the money.
>
> Expected and appropriate. Don't put stuff public that is not expected to be in public domain. Once anyone else knows it, it is out of your control. Royalties should just vanish from existence.

But this is exactly what keeps people from sharing their stuff. And then you have a situation where nobody gets anything out of it. Good stuff is "kept secret".

> And even better - don't write songs if you are for money.

This is not the point. You write songs, because they come to you, not because you think of making money, at least if you are a serious musician. The point is that it is simply not fair that someone gets money for something someone else created. Many inventors and musician died in poverty while untalented but greedy business men made millions. It's simply not fair.

>
>> 2. A bunch of racists use the song (because of the titles) for one of their hate rallies, pointing at minorities and singing "Destroy! Destroy!".
>
> And you will accept it. Or try to punish them for what they actually do, not for songs they use.
>
> Accepting that you can't have control over other people is first step to become free yourself. Most police states start from restrictions appealing to public morale and greater good.

Fair enough.

>> "once it's out there, you can't claim the copyright/authorship anymore".
>
> Only copyright. Authorship is relatively easy to claim - you only need to be first documented person publishing it. About song itself - just releasing it with no further concerns can help you build the reputation. And that is most valuable thing any artist can get.

This sounds a bit cynical, doesn't it? Sounds exactly like the producers and managers that ripped off black musicians in the 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's "But people respect you for your work, what else do you want? Money doesn't count (cos I'm counting it, ha ha ha!)".
I think it boils down to fairness. If someone can have a good life with what you've created, why shouldn't you have a good life too? You have to change the system completely so that everyone gets his / her due. You cannot have a system where a band can make money with a song, but royalties don't exist, and the author gets nothing.

On 1/29/2014 9:12 AM, Chris wrote:
> The point is that it is simply not fair that someone gets
> money for something someone else created. Many inventors and musician
> died in poverty while untalented but greedy business men made millions.
> It's simply not fair.
>

I don't think the real solution to that is copyright - just kill all the MBA's ;)

On Thursday, 30 January 2014 at 05:57:30 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On 1/29/2014 9:12 AM, Chris wrote:
>> The point is that it is simply not fair that someone gets
>> money for something someone else created. Many inventors and musician
>> died in poverty while untalented but greedy business men made millions.
>> It's simply not fair.
>>
>
> I don't think the real solution to that is copyright - just kill all the MBA's ;)

He, he. No, copyright may not be the solution. But I am against a system where authors don't have any rights, while other people can still make money with the work they created. There's an imbalance there that is highly injust. If you wanna get rid of copyright you have to overhaul the whole system. Unless that's done, we'll have to make do with copyright and royalties.

On Wednesday, 29 January 2014 at 14:12:03 UTC, Chris wrote:
> I think it boils down to fairness. If someone can have a good life with what you've created, why shouldn't you have a good life too? You have to change the system completely so that everyone gets his / her due. You cannot have a system where a band can make money with a song, but royalties don't exist, and the author gets nothing.

It is. And fairness is highly subjective. Even value of fairness is subjective - no one actually demands laws of physics to be fair after all, do they? For me it is perfectly expected that act of presentation is more profitable than act of creation. Inventing stuff is by design inferior to selling stuff.

And yes, I am very cynical towards culture. We have already more books one can read and songs one can listen to in whole life. That quickly and justly diminishes value of any new one to the point where listeners attention may become more expensive than authors time. Most authors won't get a penny for their creations because they don't actually cost a penny.

But it is all about personal beliefs in the end and I am not trying to convince you that there is aything inherently wrong about your attitude. It is reasonable and solid. What I have tried to show is that statements like "BSD is less free than GPL because it does not enforce freedom" are very opinionated and boil down to very core ideological preferences. One simply can't use such statements  in article that is supposed to provide any fact-based overview.

On Thursday, 30 January 2014 at 12:36:07 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
> On Wednesday, 29 January 2014 at 14:12:03 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> I think it boils down to fairness. If someone can have a good life with what you've created, why shouldn't you have a good life too? You have to change the system completely so that everyone gets his / her due. You cannot have a system where a band can make money with a song, but royalties don't exist, and the author gets nothing.
>
> It is. And fairness is highly subjective. Even value of fairness is subjective - no one actually demands laws of physics to be fair after all, do they? For me it is perfectly expected that act of presentation is more profitable than act of creation. Inventing stuff is by design inferior to selling stuff.

Laws of physics cannot be compared to the ways humans interact. And who knows, maybe the laws of physics are fair. After all, the amount of energy remains the same, there is no imbalance.
Without creation there can be no presentation of the same. Without Mozart there would be no symphonic orchestra "presenting" his work.


> And yes, I am very cynical towards culture. We have already more books one can read and songs one can listen to in whole life. That quickly and justly diminishes value of any new one to the point where listeners attention may become more expensive than authors time. Most authors won't get a penny for their creations because they don't actually cost a penny.

It has always been like this. It's only that the internet has made it apparent (as in "any idiot can 'create' something"). In a way it is better and more democratic. A lot of the "real culture" we convinced ourselves to enjoy before the internet had been superimposed by an educated elite and their middle class tastes, beliefs and preferences. Shakespeare and Goethe, there is a lot of hype and hypocrasy involved too. Who knows how many good writers were rejected, because they didn't conform to a small elite's understanding of culture. Perhaps the problem is really just the clash of our old understanding of "culture" and new information technologies.

> But it is all about personal beliefs in the end and I am not trying to convince you that there is aything inherently wrong about your attitude. It is reasonable and solid. What I have tried to show is that statements like "BSD is less free than GPL because it does not enforce freedom" are very opinionated and boil down to very core ideological preferences. One simply can't use such statements  in article that is supposed to provide any fact-based overview.

Haven't seen many fact-based overviews on the internet. I don't subscribe to any ideology. What I found interesting in that blog, however, was the mentioning of the wars in the BSD community. This is something to ponder on.