Re: "art" & money, was: amanda palmer

[doc rossi <docittern@gmail.com>]

Maybe I can add something valid from another perspective.

First, I thought the point of this particular thread was the economic side of things - we know about all the other aspects of art and they aren't under discussion here.  We're talking about having the dough to continue making art full-time.

I used to be an academic - a little blip in my life where I was involved in literary criticism. We had to publish articles and books, and in them, we had to quote. Seeing as how this was, for the most part, an exercise in CV enhancement (for the university as well as personally), there was no money involved and nobody cared - we could quote from living authors' copyrighted works for academic rather than commercial purposes, but the publisher still had to get permission. However, the minute there was money involved, every concerned party wanted to be paid, so right of use cost money. What's the problem? Someone is using someone else's creation - for which copyright and intellectual property rights exist - to make money, so permission must be had and fees or percentages paid.

How much sampling and remixing is for non-commercial use? Authors and performers and all of the other folks involved in the bit being used by the other person should be paid.

If so-called consumers want to sample and remix and post stuff and share it with their friends - non-commercial use - we seem to have another issue. The software company that made the stuff the remixer is using is paid, the internet provider is paid, the host site is paid - everyone seems to get paid except the people who make the content other people are playing with. Is that just? Sure, an artist can say "Go ahead - knock yourself out", but this is a pretty good example of how so many people put artists on another level, as if money isn't and doesn't need to be a part of their lives. Magari!!!  We have to eat, pay rent, buy stuff, some even have families and other economic responsibilities. What's wrong with paying artists for their work, just like everyone else with a legitimate gig?

It baffles me that people still think artists don't "knead the dough" or it isn't important. Sure, we do what we love - but lots of other people do, too, and get paid for it. Money may not be important in an abstract sense, but it sure is necessary living here in the West.

Doc Rossi

http://www.myspace.com/docrossi 

http://www.myspace.com/bucheronnegalante

http://www.myspace.com/lesdexters

http://www.cmtra.org/spip.php?article3659

http://www.magnatune.com/artists/docrossi.html

http://www.adem.ch/Cours/rossi.html

On Oct 8, 2009, at 10:38 AM, Louigi Verona wrote:

Hey guys!
Interesting points everybody.

I would like to make two small points here, but in my opinion, very important.

1.
We all hear that they say "an artist has the right to decide what people do with his creation".
However, I would challenge this statement and here's how.

A person can make a decision solely by himself ONLY if that decision affects only him. As soon as the decision
affects not only him, but someone else too, it would be just to decide together with the affected party. Moreover, this approach should not be simplistic, meaning that in each particular case you have to analyze to what degree the decision would influence all sides and thus give the more affected side
more power in the making of a decision.

In case of music very often the situation will be that it affects the musician indirectly, while the license that dictates what the public can or cannot do
with the music affects everybody directly.

And so musician cannot be the only one who decides what everybody should do with his music - musician and the public should decide on this together, with
the public having a louder voice in the making of such a decision.
Saying that the artist as the "creator" should have more power to decide, means elevating the personality of the artist above everybody else, attempting
to say that being an artist means being the benefactor of society and that society is now in debt to all artists. I personally do not believe this is true.

I also do not believe that there can be a solid line dividing people into artists and mere consumers. This is hardly the case.

2.
And in conclusion I would also like to point out that all these copyright discussions heavily concentrate on the economic side of things, as if the world
of art in all its complexity does not matter and the only significant part of creativity is how much money people get. But this is not just simplistic, this
is actually completely wrong. Art is much more than its economical side of things, the side which was never uniform throughout the history and which differs even today in many countries drastically.

So in these discussions one must also weight the value of economics in art versus other factors, such as spiritual value of art and community value of art at the very least.

Hope this small insight is useful in spawning an intelligent and in-depth discussion of this most interesting matter.

Louigi Verona.
http://www.louigiverona.ru