Please don't tell me you are justified in infringing an artist's rights because current business models keep you from doing a certain something you want to do.

If enough of you want to do that same thing, a business model will develop. If you find yourself alone, then it hardly seems reasonable that an artist should forfeit her rights to satisfy your particular quirk.

This is very important to keep in mind as we consider interoperability, the movement of creative works across platforms and devices. The demand for interoperability varies by person, creative work and device, but it's there, and it's already found in a number of places. Now we have two new services being announced this week. One, by that gentleman who has shown so much respect to creators, DVD Jon, and another, by the French media company Vivendi. From what I can see, the former chooses not to license creative works; it just hacks them. The latter licenses works, and even authorizes some sharing. The former dismisses the rights of creators, and thus disincentivizes the creation of new works. The latter celebrates creators, and finds an authorized way to allow more people to discover their works without robbing them of their ability to profit from their hard work.

This isn't rocket science, people. Let's all agree that anything we reasonably want to do as consumers can come from respecting artists' rights. We don't have to resort to taking their work from them either through unauthorized file trafficking, or by herding them into an EFF-style licensing regime where they have their rights taken away in exchange for pennies. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 1:38 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under copyright opponents, creators, drm, interoperability, market forces. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.