[wos] Survey: Copyright laws work against creativity

[John Howkins]

This kind of survey is pretty useless.  It depends on how you define
'musicians'; either as a full-time worker or as someone who makes music.  It
is misguided to expect someone who makes music to necessarily expect
full-time earnings.  In a free and open creative economy many people would
be writing and making music because they enjoy doing so.  It is ridiculous
to expect all those people to have full-time earnings, or to twist the law
so that they do.  It is much more sensible to expect only a small proportion
of people to earn enough to live off their work - as happens.
John  

On 9/2/05 6:30 pm, "Philip Steffan" <philip at lunique.de> wrote:

> A new survey shows that copyright doesn't earn musicians a living, quite
> contrary in some cases it costs them more that they can afford:
> 
> <http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_1/kretschmer/>
> 
>> Abstract:
>> 
>> Digital technologies are often said (1) to enable a qualitatively new
>> engagement with already existing cultural materials (for example
>> through sampling and adaptation); and, (2) to offer a new
>> disintermediated distribution channel to the creator. A review of
>> secondary data on music artists¹ earnings and eight in­depth
>> interviews conducted in 2003­04 in Britain and Germany indicate that
>> both ambitions have remained largely unfulfilled. The article
>> discusses to what extent the structure of copyright law is to blame,
>> and sets out a research agenda.
> 
> (Seen on Boing Boing,
> <http://www.boingboing.net/2005/02/09/musicians_dont_earn_.html>)
> 
> Regards,
> Philip