Re: Stallman calls for an end to file sharing war

[David Kastrup]

Hadron<hadronquark@gmail.com> writes:

> Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> writes:
>
>> In article <4C9CA1A9.8B995B66@web.de>,
>>  Alexander Terekhov <terekhov@web.de> wrote:
>>
>>> Uh comic rms.
>>
>> But at least he's consistent.  I haven't read the GNU Manifesto in a 
>> while, but I'm pretty sure he suggested a similar system to compensate 
>> programmers in a world where all software is free.
>>
>> BTW, we already have a program where the government pays artists: the 
>> National Endowment for the Arts.  Does anyone really want to see that 
>> become the sole way that artists get paid?
>
> Yup. In Ireland IMRO, Germany GEMA etc etc.
>
> And how does he propose to judge who gets what? Everyone gets the same
> or what?

Uh, how about you actually first _read_ what you are flaming about?
It's not like he does not address this.

One problem is that even the recompensation schemes he proposes (with
diminuishing returns) are problematic to address works like the major
works of James Joyce which were groundbreaking, but in rather limited
circulation during his lifetime, for one thing because they were not
easily accessible, for another, being prohibited due to pornography
laws.

Even worse in that respect would fare J.S.Bach's magnum opus, the Mass
in B minor.  Written by a protestant in an old catholic rite outdated
for at least a century, it was not performable until churches opened up
for secular music and concert halls for sacred music.  When it was
initially performed in full, he had been dead longer than he had been
alive, some 80 years after his death.

How do you compensate somebody for great works written in the wrong
century?

In the end, even the schemes Stallman proposes are based on numbers of
copies in circulation.  So in special cases like that, humanity still
has to be lucky.

-- 
David Kastrup