Bad for artists? On digitization, remuneration and copyright by Leonhard Dobusch, Eurozine:

According to recent research, it is not illegal copying that is threatening the livelihood of artists, as record companies tell us, but an inequality built into the existing copyright system itself. Leonhard Dobusch on why, in a winner-takes-all culture, stronger copyright protection only benefits the few.

“In what follows I want to make three points. First, that digital technology is not the problem – neither in general nor for authors and artists. Second, that remuneration for artists is, however, a problem. Third, that stronger copyright is not the solution.

I will start with two quotes. The first is from Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

Serving as a perfect illustration to Adam’s point is the next quotation:

A tuneless future is the writing on the wall. If today and tomorrow the music industry is unable to solve its economic problems, then the day after tomorrow, regardless of all the super-technologies, there will be hardly any music left to be copied.

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