[shoham]

"Screw the producers" With all respect to you as a person, fuck that. I'm an independent artist and I don't want to be screwed. Consumers tend to get what they want and eat what they're told to. It's small, independent businesses and artists who shape, have shaped, and will always shape the world that you live. you're welcome.

[angersock]

"It's small, independent businesses and artists who shape, have shaped, and will always shape the world that you live."

General Electric, Du Pont, Mobil, AT&T, Sun, Oracle, Microsoft, and Google certainly have been overshadowed by the powerful snowflakes of the world!

[shoham]

All of which started out as tiny businesses. And it's true most businesses that are successful are NOT internationally renowned. There are hundreds of millions of small businesses worldwide that keep it turning, friend.

The supply chain is much more diverse and interesting than you think, and most growth comes from new starts that will become <250K a year top line revenue corporations. These are the kinds of businesses who buy licensed copies of Office for instance, adwords, and adsense ads as well...

[figglesonrails]

Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Netscape, Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, Dow Chemical (lol), Monsanto (lol), Pilgrim's Corp (lol)

EDIT: You didn't say shaped "for the better". :\

[shoham]

It's kind of myopic, there's a hundred million + small businesses worldwide, these guys may be on top of the food chain (this week), but remember, the bigger they are, the harder they fall...

[figglesonrails]

Agreed that consumers can be sheep. Here's the problem though: the (BIG) producers are using various means inaccessible to smaller ones to change laws. And not in small way. And not in a way that benefits consumers.

People who get uptight about independent artists having their works digitally copied probably don't realize that this is a good thing. It means they are popular, it means people desire them, it means there is a market just waiting for you. Maybe it is time for a live performance, a tour, a gig, an exhibition, etc.

People seem to be so obsessed with selling copies of our work that perhaps they are forgetting what it meant to be an artist before easy, direct, reasonably faithful, copying was even "a thing".

Digital art, like code, is too easily copied to be controlled. As a programmer, I've come to terms with this. That doesn't mean that I won't ever make money, it just means that I'd make less than if there was a DRM system for everything that criminalized all of my users (note: users, not customers). And I'm OK with this. Perhaps this not OK with everyone (from the RIAA to the self-important programmer/artist), but I see fighting "pirates" as counterproductive and a waste of resources.

I work as a programmer full time. I get paid to do in-house company development. We don't sell any software, we sell physical products. I get paid for my expertise and for my ability to fix issues immediately.

I work as an open sourcer whenever-time. My work is free. Not "GPL", not "BSD". Free. As in, go, take it. No copyright asserted. Public domain where exists. WTFPL. Companies can steal my work and make it their own. They can modify it and resell it if they choose. It's financial suicide, right? It is, until you realize that programming is a skill that has to be paid for. Companies can steal and modify code IF AND ONLY IF they have someone to modify it. That means they are paying someone to modify the code. That means a programmer is still getting paid. The question is -- why can't that be me? Maybe I need to advertise myself as being the person you SHOULD hire instead of diverting company resources on acquiring an in-house person who is vaguely familiar with my code. What if they need a fix NOW, not 3 weeks from when I plan to release the next version for them to steal? They can escalate the priority with $$$. There are too many ways to monetize this.

This leaves me in an interesting position then. I'm the creator, and I'm getting paid for my services and my knowledge. I'm not getting ANYTHING for my product. Easy conclusion: if your only value is your product, and your product is free (or can, via Copy/Paste, be made free), then you are worthless.

If you're an artist, you have it even easier. Music will pretty much always sound better live, pictures of sculptures will never do them justice, a video of a play will never be the same as a live performance where you can see and smell the sweat, and seeing the paint on a framed, rough canvas will never be the same as 1000 DPI print.

In a way, this digital revolution has expanded art's ability to spread (unwillingly or not) but has also put a spotlight on novel ways of collecting payment for art and taken things back to a more traditional role. Like it or not, it is the result of the ability to digitize information. Make your peace with this system; anything else is just creating problems.

[shoham]

What I didn't like specifically was "screw the producers". I'm optimistic about the future of my craft, for sure, but I'm not on the happy talk information is free bandwagon, I'm just not. If I mark a tune as CC, so be it, otherwise it's All rights reserved. I don't encourage piracy, even if it's 'good for me', and that's a traditional system worth making peace with, called an honor system.

[figglesonrails]

I don't think the "pure piracy" model will ever come to pass, but I don't see piracy going away either. The people who seek to eliminate piracy can only do so with modest efficacy by resorting to systems that severely limit freedom and have the implicit assumption that the user is a potential criminal instead of a patron. I respect copyrights the best I can, and I don't see copyright laws disappearing, I'm simply stating that I wouldn't rely on today's model of business for tomorrow when there are clear cracks and a lot of legal question marks and civil disobedience. If nothing else, assume piracy will happen and diversify (i.e. don't risk house and home on CD/print sales).

Trust me, plenty of people thought Red Hat was crazy for "selling" Linux when you could just download the source and compile it yourself. Heh, turns out that building 10,000 packages using a 233 MHz CPU takes a few days, and isn't nearly as convenient as an autoupdate service that works on a whole network of PCs.