| Why not reply to me directly? All intellectual digital work boils down to discovering a number. A file in a computer. The path to this discovery is valuable labor. The number itself is not. The only way you can own a number is to keep it to yourself. Like a private key in cryptography. Nobody can guess it. Nobody can discover it. As soon as you publish it, there's nothing you can do anymore. It can be copied, transferred, modified, stored, used... You're not in control anymore. This will happen regardless of any rights you're entitled to. It's the 21st century. People look up songs on YouTube. They upload it there if it's missing. There's no way to go back to the old record selling world. > Maybe I should go back to painting, where I'm making an object at least, and maybe not so delusional in the eyes of the GP, not just numbers? You're correct. Physical objects are naturally scarce and paintings in particular have properties that make them valuable beyond just the image projected. It's possible to make digital reproductions but those are generally worthless compared to the original work. As they should be. |