[Upd-discuss] a longer term strategy for promoting thepublicdomain?

[Jay Sulzberger]

On Sat, 21 Aug 2004, David Basskin wrote:

> "Our" goals? Sorry, I must have been out of the room when the Kool-Aid was 
> being served.
>
> What a startling exercise in thought-policing your glossary is! Songwriters 
> and music publishers who depend on copyright to protect their right to 
> control the use of their works, and to be compensated for such use, would 
> find your point of view absurd and offensive ... but at least we don't try to 
> say that you shouldn't hold such thoughts.
>
> Yes, I'm aware that your interests tend more towards software than music, but 
> the world is full of cheapjacks who believe that they shouldn't have to pay 
> for the use of music. "You want to get paid? Why, I'm promoting you!" is the 
> most common justification for such theft, but any excuse in a storm will do - 
> particularly when it comes robed in the ephemera of academic discourse. You 
> may be talking about software, but the "music wants to be free" crowd is just 
> as happy to find what they're happy to hold out as justification for their 
> mendicatory impulses in anti-copyright viewpoints such as yours.
>
> Advocate, if it pleases you, for uncompensated authorship on behalf of those 
> care to work gratis. But give some thought to the fact that views of creators 
> (ooh! I've offended you! "Authors", then.) who face the challenge of the 
> empty page with the expectation of being able to earn their living thereby 
> are every bit as legitimate as your own.

For one case of a few people making money by free distribution of software
they wrote, with some comment on the position of musicians, see

http://grep.law.harvard.edu/features/04/08/18/112237.shtml

oo--JS.