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Originally Posted by samiam
One real issue here is copyright and copyright infringment. If I create something, whether it is music, prose, poetry or film, I am the author and deserve a return for my efforts. If you reproduce it without my consent or get my consent by paying me or my agent, I have the ability to continue creating. No-one would think of going up to an employed person and say that they won't be getting paid this week because someone is taking their efforts for free. The people who expend the effort to create deserve to be rewarded and in our society that means being paid. We may choose to argue about the amount a movie star gets for acting or an athlete gets for entertaining, but they do deserve to receive compensation for their efforts. This may be a simplistic arguments for paying for what you get, but as someone involved in writing, I really resent if anyone chooses to photocopy my work instead of buying the book.
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Excellent points, but obviously printing your books in light blue ink that won't photocopy is going to affect your bottom line too, because you're going to piss off your customers. This is what the RIAA and the MPAA are doing now, and it's not going to help anyone. Instead, let's come up with a new distribution model that fits the way people want to use the content - give consumers more power and STILL MAKE SURE THE CONTENT PROVIDERS GET PAID. No one is against content providers getting paid - they just want to be able to play their music on their computer and in their car and in their living room and on their pocket MP3 player and maybe one day on their laser-encoded acrylic crystal reader. Why lock up the media or the content? Just distribute it in the forms people WANT it in, and let them DO WHATEVER THEY WANT WITH IT BECAUSE THEY'VE ALREADY PAID FOR IT. What's pissing the RIAA off is that even though we all bought their product on vinyl discs, and then on eight-tracks, and then on cassettes and finally in digital format on compact disc, they want to be able to control what we do with it when a new medium emerges. Well, too late, your control is gone. Get over it.
Change, adapt and move on or die.