note: I have searched to confirm this but cant find any confirmation, but thought it best to post here anyway so someone better abled could confirm or deny the legitimacy of the claim. Linkage Leaving the point that it may be legal, is it moral? Personally, I think copyright and patents are stifling the creativity of the world, and they entire concept should be abolished no matter the costs to the few if we all as a whole gain. On another note: I wonder if it counts if you have a server in the UK and are an Irish resident /me needs to find an Irish equivilent of this...
well it's all a bit off, i think. related to this, some dude spent a few years building a model where internet connections would be taxed (about $100 a year, i think) and this money would go to respective companies/record labels by tracking the popularity of files through P2P networks. there's an article about it on the register, or the inquirer, i forget which. just google it.
That's a load of nonsense, if I copy a CD the electrons in the signal path are just as abstract as those in your internet phone wire or the photons between a photographic negative and positive. But at the end of copying I end up with a concrete thing, whether it's a piece of paper or a load of magnetic domains on a disk or patterns on a CD. Mark McCarron is a fool. The "few" including the creators. So why should any artist or designer bother, if anyone is free to duplicate their creation? A sense of achievement doesn't put food on the table. Far from stifling progress, copyright and patent protection allow the creator to show his work without losing possession, promoting progress. Everybody else is free to study and learn from his creation, quite legally, but not free to just copy it and use the copy for their own benefit. Creation is a marketable commodity, just the same as your job skills. I suppose you expect to be paid for your work?
What if, instead of *having* to pay for a download, the user was encouraged to donate some money to the artist via PayPal or similar, perhaps making the 'encouragement' pervasive on the site itself, and/or getting users to subscribe to a version of the site in question, killing the ads for a fee. - H.
I dont believe that nonesense about patents being good for progress. its just rubbish, with more and more software patents, the individual software engineer is becomming extinct for the simple fact that its impossible to pay the enormous licensing fees. Patents only help the wealthy get more wealthy. As for artists going hungry, if it was for the art, they would do it regardless, if its for the money, they shouldnt exist to begin with. People should have the OPTION to pay, like donations etc. - when someone is playing music on the street, do they grab you by the arm as you leave saying "oih!, my music is copyrighted, pay me or I'll sue!" ? no, and somehow they still survive.
How much of the money spent on a CD does the average artist actually get in their pockets? If i donate 1$ and download the CD that would sureley be a better deal for the artist. But who would pay the advertisement?
