[Volpe]

If no one wants to buy (the right to listen to) a song then it 's price is too high.

Given a lot of arts are heavily inspired by the culture around them, who gives the artist the 'right' to own all 'rights' to music they create

Poetry is an art that doesn't make money (compared to music), has poetry died? Just because we monetized something doesn't mean it was the right thing to do.

[res0nat0r]

> If no one wants to buy (the right to listen to) a song then it 's price is too high.

Wait. The music industry made some 2 digit billions of dollars last year. No one wants to pay for music entertainment?

> Given a lot of arts are heavily inspired by the culture around them, who gives the artist the 'right' to own all 'rights' to music they create

Substitute your profession above for artists. Do you feel the same? Everyone is inspired from things which came before them, and yes you can profit off of your new creation which has been influenced from culture which has come before you.

> Poetry is an art that doesn't make money (compared to music), has poetry died?

It doesn't? Here is a list of the top selling books on Amazon labeled poetry: http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Books-Poetry/zgbs/books/1...

Top 3: Shakespeare, Beowulf, The Odyssey. The publishing companies who printed these books and spent the time typesetting, translating them etc aren't making money?

> Just because we monetized something doesn't mean it was the right thing to do.

This argument only seems to come up in context to books/music/movies. IE: Entertainment which you can easily get for free and think people should be compensated zero dollars for it now because of the internet. Ridiculous. Why are the people who create entertainment the only ones who should work for charity? Note: it isn't some noble cause, it is because you don't rely on that industry to put food on the table, are cheap, and can get your entertainment online for free instead.

[Volpe]

> Wait. The music industry made some 2 digit billions of dollars last year. No one wants to pay for music entertainment?

I posed it as a question, if people are not prepared to pay for something (e.g they download it for free), it because it is priced wrong (too high). That doesn't mean all music is priced too high.

> Substitute your profession above for artists. Do you feel the same? Everyone is inspired from things which came before them, and yes you can profit off of your new creation which has been influenced from culture which has come before you.

You can't substitute any profession over the top. Arts are intrinsically different, their value is much harder to calculate. This has long been discussed throughout history, it is only in very recent history that some of the arts have become a 'profession'.

> Top 3: Shakespeare, Beowulf, The Odyssey. The publishing companies who printed these books and spent the time typesetting, translating them etc aren't making money?

Right...not the artist.. That is a strange argument to make. In all those cases, the artist is long died, and someone (else) is trying to make a buck off of their work... Copyright is only meant to last the life time of the author + 50(?) years... So Shakespeare and Homer are really bad examples in a copyright debate.

> This argument only seems to come up in context to books/music/movies.

This argument comes up every time there is a major shift in how people act/produce. The same 'debate' occurred when the printing press destroyed monopolies on books... Who's response was: Copyright.

> it isn't some noble cause, it is because you don't rely on that industry to put food on the table, are cheap, and can get your entertainment online for free instead.

Nice ad hominem. Though try to keep that out of the discussion please.

[WiseWeasel]

This is more like talking past each-other than a real discussion, since you're not making any solid arguments addressing the points you're responding to. People downloading music can be an indication of opportunism as much as of market failure.

Think about how much smaller the music industry would be, and I'm just talking about the number of people making music themselves, if there were no sales of recordings. No more buying a CD on your way out of a local or touring band's show, no more iTunes Music Store or Amazon MP3 or CD store, no more labels; you're talking about taking away a majority of these artists' revenue. If musicians can't ever hope to get paid enough to put food on their table and a roof over their head, how many will put in the energy needed to bring their music to fruition? How many will put in the effort to make good recordings for you to enjoy? Making a good recording is difficult and expensive, and we benefit greatly from it. There is value there for us that we should have the courtesy of recognizing if we hope to enjoy a wide selection good music recordings in the future.

[Volpe]

My initial point was not that they should give away their music. It was that people are taking it for free, regardless of copyright law.

That, plus the fact I think copyright is the wrong way to monetize this, and new ways need to be created.

But you are right, the discussion has deteriorated.