[A2k] Iceland to become a model for freedom of communication

[Federico Heinz]

On 18/02/2010, Peter Jenner wrote:
> I am not talking about demanding, I am talking about agreeing. If we want
> plumbers we have to pay them.

If I want musicians, I pay for them, too! That doesn't mean that I think that
musicians are entitled to get paid for all kinds of use of the recordings they
made, or the music they composed.

> If we want high quality professional recorded music we have to pay for it.
> [...] if something gives a lot of people a lot of pleasure I see no reason
> why the the creator of that 'thing' should not get a lot of money, and if no
> one likes it none.

Even if we agreed that high-quality work won't exist unless musicians get paid
(a debatable proposition: plenty of high-quality musicians out there who don't
get paid well enough to stop flipping burgers, and too large a proportion of
worthless but well-paid ones), you are making quite a leap here. I also don't
see why the author of a popular song shouldn't get a lot of money, *if the
public wants to give that money to her*. But if the public doesn't get enough
pleasure from the music to compel them to support the author, I don't think the
author has a right to coerce that money out of them.

Again, I don't think anybody is against artists making a living. What really
does rub a lot of us the wrong way is the notion that authors should somehow
have the right to coerce the rest of society into making a living for them.

Personally, I don't buy the "high quality work will not exist unless we find a
way to make people pay for using it", and I have empirical evidence to support
my skepticism. The evidence is the Internet, a place where paid access is the
exception, not the rule. If your premise were true, the 'net should be a
wasteland, with only very few starving authors who stubbornly press on for no
good reason at all. Yet look around you, and you will find that authors are all
over the place on the Internet, and plenty of people find the motivation (often
financial motivation) to actually produce quality works without charging for
access. A lot of it is crap? Agreed. But enough of it is not.

	Fede