* Artists(haha, really? is Spears and "artist"?) perform live to earn income
I know... it's earth shattering.
If people don't think it's worth the trouble of recording, then they shouldn't do it. See how many people come to your live performance without the free advertising that recordings provide.
Oh, maybe they won't make hundreds of millions of dollars. Should I give up my rights so "recording artists" can be filthy rich? I think not. And also, I don't give two shits about all the administrative ppl in the recording industry. They can all live in the streets for all I care. The current system is worse then welfare.
At this point the author (or the publisher) is seeing NO money. Is there a real reason why I can't just take a copy of the book, put it to PDF and distribute it for free? The people that were involved in the production of the book have essentially abandoned it, but they will definitely jump out of the woodwork to try and cash in on it if someone were to 'make it profitable again' (which includes suing a person for distributing it).
I see these as the moral equivalent of submarine patents. (Patents where you wait until something becomes popular, and then pop out of the woodwork to sue the biggest companies that you can find for millions or billions of dollars)
Of course, their market will implode once we get thin and light screens that can deliver the crisp of type printed on paper.
(Interlibrary Loan is awesome.)
It's a fallacy that most recording artists are "filthy rich", not mention how much they make is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. What "right" are you giving up?
* The right to share * The right to modify * The right to use in anyway I want
The current model isn't working if it's so easily subverted. The solution is to figure out a model that's pirate-proof. They exist.
A few of the models I'm going to be experimenting with: Raising money before you release an album, with certain perks given to people that pay the money for release. Offering special exclusives that people can choose to pay for, that most people interested in just music won't bother pirating. That's why I'm excited for the iTunes LP: It's an idea that's worth money even after you own the music, that appeals to fans and less to casual criminals.
I'm currently thinking of launching an ARG with a future music project. I think that launching a video game through an album distribution would be really fun and potentially really profitable.
Not all pirates are freetards, i'm talking about the two ends of the spectrum here. I am a pirate for example but I also subscribe to EMusic and make a point of buying direct from artists when I can and seeing bands live. Some people however are loathe to do this as well and believe that content should always be free.
As it stands both models are somewhat flawed and neither are the way forward in their present state.
My policy is, I buy from artists who I feel aren't big. I bought Joanna Newsom's album for a friend of mine after I downloaded it, and I just got a song from Pomplamoose, which is a crazy duo I found on Youtube. When I feel like my money's going to a good cause, then I pay.
Gee, I didn't know this "intellectual property" war has gone this far! Is it now a crime not to provide a realistic revenue model for artists?
Just in case it's actually true (I haven't been following the news recently) I am hereby providing a realistic revenue model for artists: get a job.
No, really. I don't believe that being an artist (or an author in general) entitles you to anything. Copyright is a privilege, not a god-given right. Its original purpose was to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", a social contract designed to provide fair compensation for contributing to the public pool of ideas.
Then the suits came and fucked this up with their concept of intellectual "property" and perpetual copyright term extensions. Copyright doesn't serve its original purpose anymore, we should just drop it. If you don't like it, don't publish. It had been this way for most of human history and it worked fine.