Some of the articles in the reg are good, some are very good and others fall into the category of historic. Andrew Orlowski’s thorough bashing of freetardedness is definitely in the historic category. The article is notionally about his experiences at a London School of Economics hosted debate on “Music, fans and online copyright” which according to the author degenerated into a farce. It’s certainly believable that such an event would put forward such a one-sided view with little consideration to the rights of artists to profit from their work. It’s funny how artistic effort is devalued by so many people when they have to value it. It’s something I’ve experienced first hand but a desire to have free to amazingly cheap access in perpetuity to various art works (especially music tracks) is not particularly reasonable. There’s a non-sequitur often purported by the comedy of the commons advocates that suggests that because it’s good and enriching to the community to share knowledge (and various other works covered by the term intellectual property) that it’s value should always be accessible. Painters are lucky in the sense that owning an original painting by Pollock, Rothko, Van Gogh etc. is not considered an entitlement by the masses. However, owning an “original” from a recording artist (exactly the same inherent “stuff” as the original anyway) is considered an entitlement, something so self-evident that any peskily intruding law should be circumvented to do so. Maybe I’m just biased but I don’t think that the great popular (or otherwise) recording artists of their day should be denied royalties because technology makes it easy to rip-off their work.
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