They also come to you in your bed!
Now who can argue with that? I think we’re all indebted to Gabby McCarthy for stating what needed to be said.
So if someone invests a year of their time creating a CD you think it’s OK to steal it? That is the equivalent of someone enslaving you for a year and letting you earn extra money on the side to survive. We had a war over that. It was in the paper and everything.
Considering how many here use torrents, I’m quite positive that many do think it is OK to steal it. 
Where people with recording devices will capture the performance and upload it straight to the Internet.
The idea that, if musical artists are denied profits from royalties, they can make up for it through live performances is, alas, doomed.
There are a FEW artists who are such dynamic live performers that they could make a good living even if NOBODY paid for their recordings. Bruce Springsteen is one such artist.
But what about musicians who AREN’T dynamic live performers?
Or what about songwriters who aren’t even GOOD live performers?
Are future George Gershwins supposed to create songs for free?
ab uno disce omnes
I’ll provide the translation: “From one, learn all.” Can we trouble you to explain what you mean?
Almost all of you are missing the real meat of the issue, which is that copyright has been extended into near-perpetuity, long past the limited terms that might have encouraged creativity - and that it has been done for the benefit of large media corporations, not any original creators.
Then again, I can’t really fault you. The reality that exists today is so strongly undergirded by private and public power structures that it is essentially beyond anyone’s power to change. Maybe the pure, ideal hypothetical really is all that’s left to argue.
I asked if copyrights ever only lasted 7 years, not what they are now. 14 years used to be the life span of a US copyright, gradually getting longer until finally the change you cited as only taking place in 1988.
I’ve been thinking about this for a bit. I don’t just read books in the evening, which is when most story telling festivals would be held. I read in the morning, I read at noon, I read in the afternoon, evening, and the middle of the night. Being able to own books, either in dead tree or electronic versions, enables me to read whenever I want, wherever I want. Well, I don’t read when I’m driving. But you get my point. Story telling festivals would restrict me to ONE performance, at a time and place that probably wouldn’t be optimal for me.
It’s my understanding that a lot of musicians today – even some indie artists – make decent money from licensing their songs for use in movies/TV shows/commercials. So if copyright disappeared than that source of income would disappear as well.
Not all authors are gifted public speakers or performers. In fact I’ll say that most are not. And even if they were, I don’t want to listen to books being read; I want to sit down and read them at my leisure, slowly or quickly as the material demands, taking time to pause and consider and reread.
I can’t imagine Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell benefiting from a public performance.
As I’ve said many times (including in this thread) there’s plenty of room for reform. But one thing we don’t need is to eliminate copyright. Copyright benefits the creator - it’s an advantage the individual holds against the mega-corporations. Eliminate copyright and art will be sold by whoever has the most printing presses and the biggest marketing department.
I agree with Beware of Doug about the problem being the ridiculous amount of for which copyright lasts. And with Little Nemo that copyright doesn’t need to be eliminated. But it does need to be dialed back – 14 years would great, I could even live with 28, but any more than that seems insane.
And I say this as a poet with three books of my work (one of which is approaching the 14 year mark) published by reputable presses.
Of course, poetry is hard as hell to sell – and I don’t expect to make a noticeable profit from it before I die.
Also, *The Lord of the Rings *would take far too many séance sessions.
I assume that, in your quest to open up the ‘natural’ flow of information, you will have no problems with posting the following information.
Your full name
Your social security number
Your mothers maiden name
Your home address and phone number
Your work address and phone number
Your bank account and routing numbers (checking and savings)
Your credit card numbers with CCV and expiration date
After all, this is nothing but information and according to you all information should be free.
Or is it that information should be free when the impact of making that information free does not affect you personally?
Slee
I think copyright should be abolished.
Most of these “doom & gloom” scenarios are simply nonsense. Without copyright, writers will make money in the exact same ways the vast majority of them previously did. Musicians will make money in the exact same way the vast majority of them currently do.
For example Lemur866 asks:
To which the answer is: “someone who expects to make 300 million dollars from it at the box office.”
…and most of the current replies in this thread are the same: no thought given to the question at all, just knee-jerk reactions along with the utterly predictable “ooh, you’re all freeloaders and thieves” crap.
IIRC, artists in the pre-copyright era made money by convincing a duke with too much money on his hands to become their patron and fund their projects as a tribute to his vanity.
I don’t imagine this would work very well today. For several reasons.
I’m not talking about in the pre-copyright era, I’m talking about in the copyright era. The idea that most writers are dependent on copyright to make money is simply wrong.