otoh, if you buy somebody else's sweated-over work from them, then you have, via the agency of money or barter, enacted a sort of transfer which in effect replaces their labor with your labor, so, provided that the sale is mutually consensual, it's all good (- unless you ripped them off by paying a fraction of the true value...)
...Or, the other way around, if the actual cost of what you buy is significantly less than what you're paying for it...
This gets into, as a concrete example, the problems I have in dealing with recording companies at face value- when I buy a CD for 14.99, the greatest part of that money goes not to the store from which I bought it (which nevertheless underpays its employees by as much as it can get away with, in order to pass as much as possible of the profit from that sale to management goons), not to the studio at which the music was recorded (but again, generally speaking, more goes to equipment purchases and maintenance and to management than to the guys (& gals) who actually twiddle the knobs and make it come out sounding good, unless the place is self-owned), nor to the artists themselves, but to the management goons at the recording companies who write contracts that backbill performers for everything from material costs to performance hall rentals and studio time in order to gank back every penny that can be taken away.
...but I digress...
We get into the area of "intellectual property", in which making a copy of something that already exists does not destroy or remove from someone else's grasp the already-existing original...
If I buy a CD and burn a copy of it on my computer, there is no physical 'theft'- it's not the same as if I walked back into the store from which I bought the original and walked out with another copy without paying for it-
But that's how the recording industry wants it to be treated...
Now, if I make a copy and sell it, that's one thing- and that's where my point about sweating to take something away from someone sweated to who creat it not being equal sweat comes in- that is theft-
But if we take into consideration what it actually cost the recording company to produce that CD, other than the genius (whether real or supposed) of the artist featured thereon, and divide it into what the recording company charges me to purchase it- let's say, in a spirit of generosity toward the recording company for the sake of making a point, that it cost them a dollar to produce and distribute the particular CD in question in the example, and they charge me 14.99 to purchase it- round to 15.00- I should be able, in my opinion, to make 14 copies (14 copies + 1 original @ 1.00/ea = 15.00), provided that they are for my own personal use, before the record company has a right to accuse me of theft. That's more copies already than I'm liable to make unless it's for other than personal reasons... but the recording company wants to limit me to 1 copy ever- and that's hardly fair.
I'm thinking that that's enough for now, but it's not the end of the story- unless you think I'm going too far beyond the bounds of what you wanted to hear about it?
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-16 05:40 am (UTC)...Or, the other way around, if the actual cost of what you buy is significantly less than what you're paying for it...
This gets into, as a concrete example, the problems I have in dealing with recording companies at face value- when I buy a CD for 14.99, the greatest part of that money goes not to the store from which I bought it (which nevertheless underpays its employees by as much as it can get away with, in order to pass as much as possible of the profit from that sale to management goons), not to the studio at which the music was recorded (but again, generally speaking, more goes to equipment purchases and maintenance and to management than to the guys (& gals) who actually twiddle the knobs and make it come out sounding good, unless the place is self-owned), nor to the artists themselves, but to the management goons at the recording companies who write contracts that backbill performers for everything from material costs to performance hall rentals and studio time in order to gank back every penny that can be taken away.
...but I digress...
We get into the area of "intellectual property", in which making a copy of something that already exists does not destroy or remove from someone else's grasp the already-existing original...
If I buy a CD and burn a copy of it on my computer, there is no physical 'theft'- it's not the same as if I walked back into the store from which I bought the original and walked out with another copy without paying for it-
But that's how the recording industry wants it to be treated...
Now, if I make a copy and sell it, that's one thing- and that's where my point about sweating to take something away from someone sweated to who creat it not being equal sweat comes in- that is theft-
But if we take into consideration what it actually cost the recording company to produce that CD, other than the genius (whether real or supposed) of the artist featured thereon, and divide it into what the recording company charges me to purchase it- let's say, in a spirit of generosity toward the recording company for the sake of making a point, that it cost them a dollar to produce and distribute the particular CD in question in the example, and they charge me 14.99 to purchase it- round to 15.00- I should be able, in my opinion, to make 14 copies (14 copies + 1 original @ 1.00/ea = 15.00), provided that they are for my own personal use, before the record company has a right to accuse me of theft. That's more copies already than I'm liable to make unless it's for other than personal reasons... but the recording company wants to limit me to 1 copy ever- and that's hardly fair.
I'm thinking that that's enough for now, but it's not the end of the story- unless you think I'm going too far beyond the bounds of what you wanted to hear about it?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-16 07:31 am (UTC)someone sweated to who creat it
s/b
someone who sweated to create it