Copyright

A masterpiece about online sharing:

When Pigs Fly: The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide


There are also many others interesting discussions in the net, I joined one on isohunt:
Join the Copyfight!

see also:
Ramblings on Creative Commons

In short: the advance of digital technology, including the internet, has allowed the distribution, organization and discovery of art in new and highly efficient ways for almost zero cost. Since byg corporations seem unable to sail the new digital winds we need an alternative method to pay directly to the artists, not by physical copy, but by virtual copy. A simple method is to tax the internet service providers with an extra tax that is then distributed to the artists. The more shared an artist is, the greater his share of the tax. It is quite simple actually, so why isn't it implemented? Because it would cut to zero the billionaire profits of the companies that represent the artists and that take the greatest part of their profits.

Although for music, books and paintings we just need an alternative way to pay the artists directly, for movies things may be different. Regarding the movie industry the story is a bit different because movies cost a lot to make, they generally involve hundreds of people with different areas of expertise, etc. So the best way to pay all of the involved is to pay to the company directly. It might happen that the cost of making movies will be greatly reduced by future technology, regarding animated movies for instance, but presently movies cost a lot to make and their revenue must match the (in this case) real expenses of the studios.

Implementing this model with music will also take a long time, because distribution companies (like Sony, EMI, etc) have amassed large quantities of money in the past century. And even though they didn't created the works of art that gave them profit they got used to two things: 1) having the copyright of the works of art; 2) having the largest part of the profit. Therefore it will be exceedingly difficult to get these companies to agree to pay directly to artists, for they will obviously disappear in the process. Moreover they are also considered the legal owners of the music created by artists (so it's not The Beatles that own the music that they have created, but the record company). So, even if we convince present and future artists to get paid directly, the songs they have made in the past, because they don't legally belong to them, will likely remain difficult to obtain legally. From this it seems clear that the old methods of distributing works of art will gradually be replaced by the internet, because they are better and inexpensive, but it will be a change slowed by the old technology owners.