Re: Getting rich without copyright (was Napster...)

From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Wed Jul 12 2000 - 17:44:32 MDT


> things you mention are not truly good business ventures for me.
>
> Performance: costly with little return. Not available for painters
> who wants to pay towatch me paint?

As I said in the note, I limited the scope of discussion to musci
because that's what started the thread. Painters can't perform,
that's true--but lack of copyright affects them far less than it
would musicians anyway because original canvases are hard to
duplicate (especially if they are tied to locations like murals
on the walls of a building).

> Work for hire: never a good way to get rich, under any circumstances.
> Someone else makes money off you. I prefer to hire rather than be hired.

Nice of you to ignore my examples of work-for-hire millionaires and
dismiss the way /I/ happen to make money with intellectual property.
I earn my living, and have for some time, writing works for hire. I
have done magazine articles and web sites, and I currently write
software that's used internally by the company I work for (it controls
unique hardware that we sell the service of using). Even when I was
working for shrink-wrap software companies like MS, I was in QA,
writing internal-use software to test and debug the selling software.

> Sampling and collaginging _ fail to see how that makes money, unless
> you sell your work.

Yes, this obviously has to be combined with other methods like live
performance or sales (note that sales of recordings still make money
without copyrights, just less). The point here is that elimination
of copyright reduces the investment in creating these works. This
isn't such a big deal for music, but it's a /big/ deal for books.
 
> beggin; or street art: demeaning, and for females, possible dangerous
> Mugs and shit: also same, costs a bundle, (or if hand made redisculously
> time consuming)

"Demeaning" is just snobbery, and like I said, that's expensive. It's
only dangerous if you do it on the street, which is one method among
many, and not even among the examples I gave (PBS, SPP). If you
don't want to do merchandise, fine, hire someone to do it for you,
or don't make that money. I'm arguing that the money is there for
the taking. If you don't feel like taking it, I can't argue with that.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC



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